Centre News

Bethany Pratt is one of four students profiled in the Sierra Club
magazine’s feature about “class acts,” students honored for
environmental work on their college campuses.

Bethany Pratt ’10 is included in the Sierra Club magazine’s most recent issue as one of four students across the country profiled as a “class act” for their environmental work on campus.

The magazine looks at Pratt’s work in spearheading Centre College’s first on-campus organic garden. The idea for the garden was planted last fall, and the seeds of this idea are now sprouting, thanks to the labor from members of Centre’s first student garden organization, Centre Garden Research Through Organic Sustainability (GROWS). The group formed in spring term 2010 in an effort to cultivate student interest in on-campus gardening.

The garden, which holds eight three-feet by eight-feet beds, is located behind the Emeritus House on Maple Avenue. At optimum rates, the garden will produce 50 pounds per raised bed.

At Centre, Pratt self-designed her major, “Environmental Studies: Sustainable Resource Use,” which heavily included biology and anthropology/sociology courses but also integrated history and English courses. She also incorporated studio art courses and study abroad trips.

In 2009, Bethany was recognized for her environmental leadership when she became the College’s first-ever recipient of the prestigious Udall Scholarship. Click here for that story; click here to read more about her self-designed major experience.

In addition, as a member of the student group Environmentally Conscious Centre Students (ECCO: pronounced “eco”), Pratt was a big part of establishing Centre’s Green Fund. In a 2007 student-initiated ballot, 82 percent of the student population voted for the adoption of a Green Fund, which requires each student to pay a $20 surcharge on tuition that goes toward purchasing renewable energy credits from the local Mother Ann Lee Hydroelectric Plant. This endeavor was unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees in fall 2008 and was implemented in the fall of 2009.

Click here to read the complete Sierra feature.