Macalester - Groveland : Innovation + Job News

In schools, it’s common for there to be a divide between the administration and the student body that’s hard to bridge. Local schools are trying to reach out, shown by the Minneapolis Board of Education’s decision to give a student representative a nonvoting seat on the board.

For students, though, that move rung hollow: a token position that didn’t have voting rights. Looking to improve its own interactions with students, St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) is taking a new approach through Student Engagement and Advancement Board (SEAB), a 13-student group that researches and recommends changes to improve the educational experience.

SEAB, now in its second school year, was formed under the guidance of Shaun Walsh and two of her peers. To mitigate the popularity factor of an election, Walsh and her peers chose an application process and interviewed students, grades 10-12, from St. Paul schools.

The first year SEAB established a framework. This year’s agenda is action focused. To improve student inclusiveness, SEAB recommends three changes: The ability of students to choose to wear cultural garments at graduation; to examine the district’s disciplinary programs; and to adjust the district’s social studies program to better reflect the diverse student population of St. Paul schools.

Last year, graduating senior Chandra Her was asked to remove a traditional Hmong stole that violated an existing rule against personal modifications to the graduation uniform.

“Many of the other students had their cultural items physically taken off of them and confiscated,” says Skyler Kuczaboski, a senior at Harding Senior High School. “I think this is extremely disrespectful and I want to make sure none of this happens ever again.”

This disconnect between student emotions and the Board of Education is what inspired Central sophomore Rajni Schulz to join SEAB this year. “It confuses me that decisions in SPPS are not made by the people ultimately effected by them; the students,” she says. “The diversity present in the SPPS community is a beautiful thing,” she adds, which is why the graduation rule has become one area of focus.

While the experience gives its participants valuable leadership and community building experience, the purpose of the group is to improve the student experience for all 60,000 SPPS students. They research and identify issues, taking suggestions from the Board of Education but making their own decisions on topic, tone and recommendations, and speaking with the general student population.

Walsh recalls a presentation at the close of the 2015-2016 school year as evidence of SEAB’s influence on students’ lives. “[A SEAB student] was in a meeting with a board policy work group with kind of cantankerous adults and she really held her own,” Walsh says. She’s also proud that the students followed her advice and requested the right to evaluate their facilitators. In other words, the students can fire her.

The purpose all along was “to take the power to the people,” Walsh explains. Students are standing up for themselves, using their power in constructive methods that are bearing results.

“I’ve been surprised at the receptiveness with adults,” she says, citing a presentation from late last school year where SEAB members used their own experiences as students to describe challenges to their learning environment. “Different departments have used that phrasing in their presentations [this year],” Walsh says, showing that when SEAB speaks, educators listen.

“They still only represent 13 students, they don’t represent the student body,” Walsh admits, but she sees SEAB as a foundation for more effective student-education board interaction.
 

Eureka Recycling, a homegrown, progressive recycling nonprofit based in Northeast Minneapolis, is upping its “zero waste” game. The company is sponsoring MSP’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit on September 18 from 12:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
 
Brave New Workshop, an all-purpose venue and gathering space in downtown Minneapolis, is hosting the event. General admission tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. Scholarship tickets, which include the cost of admission, two drink tickets and an admission scholarship for another attendee, are $100. Anyone who arrives by public or active transportation (bus, LRT, bike or foot) earns free admission to a future Brave New Workshop event of their choice.
 
“We want attendees to get information and thoughts from the people who really live the vision of zero waste,” says Lynn Hoffman, Eureka Recycling’s chief of community engagement and principal event organizer. “Equally important will be the time to connect and collaborate so we can take action while inspiration is still fresh in our hearts and minds.”
 
To that end, Eureka’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit features nearly 20 speakers, many of whom have close ties to MSP’s sustainability movement.
 
Amanda LaGrange works as marketing director for Tech Dump St. Paul, an innovative electronics recycling outfit that offers free, eco-friendly disposal services (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds per year) and provides living-wage jobs for economically disadvantaged adults.
 
Eartha Bell is director for the soon-to-be-operational Frogtown Farm, an ambitious project that promises to be Minnesota’s largest urban farm (and one of the country’s biggest, as well).
 
Tracy Sides is director of Urban Oasis, a “sustainable food center” that offers healthy cooking education, small business training, catering with seasonal and locally sourced ingredients, and other sorely needed food services on St. Paul’s East Side.
 
These speakers and their organizations, and all the others represented at the Zero Waste Summit, live and breathe Eureka’s commitment to low-impact communities.
 
“Eureka Recycling is the only organization in Minnesota that specializes in zero waste,” says Christine Weeks, co-principal at Field Guide, a St. Paul-based boutique communications firm that caters to progressive clients. “The organization's services, programs and policy work present solutions to the social, environmental and health problems caused by wasting.”
 
“Zero waste is more than an empty garbage can,” adds Hoffman. “The way we consume accounts for almost half of the CO2 that threatens [our] healthy food, abundant resources, clean air and water, safe and reliable products, and healthy families and communities.”
 
 
 

St. Paul’s Macalester College is aiming to be the first higher education institution in MSP to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources. In mid-April, the college announced a partnership with SunEdison, a leading builder of solar generation infrastructure, to purchase a share of the output of a soon-to-be-constructed community solar garden in rural Dakota County. The deal permits Macalester to offset up to 120 percent of its campus consumption.
 
According to the college and SunEdison, the solar garden should be mostly built out by the end of the year and will be operational sometime in 2016. As soon as the facility is reliably generating enough electricity to offset consumption on Macalester’s campus, the college will be functionally carbon-free (or better). The agreement will remain in force for 25 years, guaranteeing Macalester’s carbon-free status for a generation.
 
“Given our projected consumption patterns and the expected rising trend in electricity rates over the period of the agreement, we believe that the savings over the term of the agreement could be in the millions of dollars,” said David Wheaton, Macalester’s vice president for finance and administration, in a recent release.
 
Wheaton estimates that the partnership will cut the college’s power bills by 50 to 67 percent over the life of the agreement, though the exact savings depend on long-term pricing for carbon-intensive energy sources. It costs more than $1 million annually to power Macalester’s roughly 50-acre campus at current prices. Colorado College, a similarly sized institution near Colorado Springs, has saved more than $1 million per year since switching to solar.
 
Macalester also recently applied for a state grant to fund the installation of solar panels on the roof of Markim Hall, a building on campus. Those panels would supply some of the energy used on that part of campus and would help make up any deficit if output at the SunEdison garden dips temporarily.
 
Given the clear financial benefits — not to mention the cachet of being a sustainable trailblazer — other MSP higher education institutions may soon hop on the solar bandwagon. Just down Summit Avenue from Macalester, the much larger University of St. Thomas has committed to carbon-neutrality by 2035, and may push that timetable forward if circumstances dictate. Even the University of Minnesota, a far larger institution, has made noises about going carbon-neutral. Such moves could be a boon to Minnesota’s solar industry, which employed about 1,000 people last year, not to mention MSP companies like SimpleRay Solar.
 
Macalester’s ambitious 100 percent-solar initiative was made possible by the passage of a solar-friendly law during last year’s legislative session. Though Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, recently warned the state utility commission that the law was promoting the growth of “utility-scale” solar installations that could have unintended consequences for the state’s energy grid, the commission isn’t bound to act on Xcel’s recommendations. Macalester officials have expressed confidence that the college can make good on its 100 percent-solar commitment in the still-unlikely event that the SunEdison deal falls through.
 

The St. Paul Healthy Transportation for All Convening, held on October 25 at Carpenter’s Hall in St. Paul, found St. Paul’s alternative transportation advocates celebrating their movement’s growing momentum and planning for challenges ahead. The goal of the conference, according to St. Paul Healthy Transportation for All (SPHTFA), was to “actively engage St. Paul grassroots community leaders to create a sustainable multimodal transportation system.”
 
“Based on what our planning team has heard from community members, walkable streets with safe and accessible infrastructure is the most widespread issue,” says Lauren Fulner, who coordinates the “District Council [members], transportation focused non-profits and relevant agencies” that comprise SPHTFA. “[Our unofficial motto is] ‘everyone is a pedestrian at some point', so...awareness of the pedestrian realm is a natural place to focus.”
 
As SPHTFA’s first major event, the Convening drew community leaders and citizens from nearly every St. Paul neighborhood. At workshops and breakout sessions, participants learned how to lead conversations and initiatives around public and alternative transportation, collaborate with counterparts in other communities, and work directly with city and state decision-makers to effect positive change.
 
The Convening covered most of the day’s hot transit topics. Workshops included “You and the St. Paul Bike Plan,” “Racial Equity in Transit Decision Making” and “From Vision to Plan to Project.” The event also featured a session devoted to “Organizing Friendly Streets and Better Blocks,” which highlighted Fulner’s work with the Friendly Streets Initiative. And the conference explored useful tools for transportation advocates, including an “Equitable Development Scorecard” and a “walkability/accessibility survey” for SPHTFA attendees.
 
Despite St. Paul Healthy Transportation for All’s community-driven focus, the conference attracted key state and local leaders. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman opened with remarks on St. Paul’s transportation system, followed by Minnesota Commissioner of Health Dr. Ed Ehlinger’s keynote speech on the health benefits of walking, biking and public transit. Charles Zelle, Minnesota’s Transportation Commissioner, closed with remarks on past and future developments in road use and public transit.
 
According to Fulner, SPHTFA formed out of “several years of conversations around more intentional collaboration and sharing of resources between District Councils,” with the Macalester-Groveland and Hamline-Midway councils taking the lead. Fulner stresses that SPHTFA is “in it for the long haul, in the sense that [this isn’t] a one event or one meeting kind of project,” she says. “We want to foster increased collaboration and creative, big picture thinking in community members and decision makers.”
 
SPHTFA takes a “whole city” approach to transportation, paying special attention to the needs of traditionally underserved communities and marginalized demographic groups, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. While celebrating the better-than-expected debut of the Green Line, Fulner is quick to point out that it “does not serve many of the traditionally under-represented and under-resourced neighborhoods and populations.”
 
“There needs to be more focus of the city as a whole, including the East Side and the West Side [meaning the area south of downtown],” she adds.
 
Overall, Fulner and SPHTFA would like stakeholders and citizens to recognize the fundamentally interconnected nature of St. Paul’s urban fabric and work to strengthen it. “Transportation and health are both issues that function in a web of interconnectivity, rather than as a series of isolated issues, and should be addressed with this in mind,” she says.”
 

The Minnesota Social Impact Center (MSIC) will launch in early 2015 spearheaded by Katie Kalkman, Terri Barreiro and Beth Parkhill—three Twin Cities’ residents with deep roots in the local business community. MSIC aims to build on the momentum generated by other recent social innovation startups in the area, including Social Innovation Lab, Social Enterprise Alliance Twin Cities and GlobalShapers Hub.
 
According to MSIC's launch-event manager, Michael Bischoff, the organization’s goal is simple: Connecting “change agents” from the nonprofit, business, government and philanthropy sectors to improve citizen engagement, access to education and the arts, and conditions for Twin Cities residents of all ages.
 
Despite a dense concentration of such change agents right here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Bischoff laments, there’s no single framework for integrating their activities, or even ensuring that they’re on the same page. “Our goal is to foster real world solutions to address some of the greatest challenges facing our communities and the world,” Barreiro explains. “Pick any major issue and you’ll find groups convening in our region, seeking new answers that will achieve better results than what we have today.”
 
On November 12, MSIC hosts a “pre-launch” event (6:30 pm to 9:30 pm in Macalester College’s Kagin Ballroom). Macalester College is “a natural choice for the pre-launch event,” says Bischoff, “because social innovators have been gathering there for several years as part of the Bush Foundation’s Social Innovation Lab.”
 
The event will include announcements about specific programming initiatives and membership options, as well as material on “more than 30 stories of transformative social impact in Minnesota,” says Bischoff.
 
There is a sliding-scale fee for the event registration, but for $275 attendees can distinguish themselves as “founding members.” Although many details still have to be worked out, membership at MSIC would include access to a co-working space similar to those currently administered by Joule and CoCo. Other levels of membership would include access to MSIC’s facilities, staff, collaborators and other members—all offering a wealth of social enterprise expertise—without physical co-working space.
 
According to Bischoff, MSIC’s programming will initially utilize several spaces around the Twin Cities, but the organizations is in the market for a permanent location. Board members Kalkman and Tim Reardon are heading up the search, weighing site options in downtown St. Paul, along the Green Line and at unspecified locations in Minneapolis.
 
“We know innovators want us to get this going now,” says Reardon. “We need a minimum of 5,000 square feet to start. Long-term, we’ll need two to three times the space to build the right environment for this dynamic, interactive community.” Reardon and Kalkman hope to find a space, at least on a temporary basis, for the center’s anticipated launch.
 

Got big plans for April 26? Lu Lippold, the local producer for One Day on Earth’s “One Day in the Twin Cities,” has a suggestion: Grab whatever video recording device you can—cameraphones included—and record the audio-visual pulse of your neighborhood.

On the final Saturday of April, the Twin Cities and 10 other U.S. metros will host the fourth installment of One Day on Earth’s celebration of film, culture, and all-around placemaking. Founded by Los Angeles-based film producers Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Litman, One Day on Earth (ODOE) has a “goal of creating a unique worldwide media event where thousands of participants would simultaneously film over a 24-hour period,” according to its website.

The first event took place on October 10, 2010 (10-10-10); 11-11-11 and 12-12-12 followed. ODOE skipped 2013, but its organizers weren’t about to wait until 2101 for their next shot. Instead, they selected a spring Saturday—both to accommodate amateur filmmakers with 9-to-5 jobs, and to give participants in the Northern Hemisphere longer daylight hours to work with—for a bigger, bolder, slightly revamped version of the event.

For the first time, participants get 10 questions to inspire their creativity and guide their storytelling, from “What is the best thing happening in your city today?” to “Who is your city not serving?” The goal is to create a multi-frame snapshot of “cities in progress,” one that doesn’t simply answer the who-what-where of the places it covers.

As One Day in the Twin Cities’ point person, Lippold supervises local filmmakers and pitched the project to dozens of partner organizations, including the Science Museum of Minnesota and Springboard for the Arts to visual media companies like Cinequipt and Vimeo. (The McKnight Foundation and the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative are the largest local sponsors.)

The upside? “[The event] is a great way to shine a light on all the hard work that our nonprofit community does,” says Lippold.

Lippold also works with a handful of local ambassadors, some of whom enjoy national acclaim. These include noted cinematographer Jeff Stonehouse, veteran documentarian Matt Ehling, and community-focused filmmaker D.A. Bullock. They’ll be contributing their talents—and stature—to One Day in the Twin Cities’ promotion and execution.

One Day in the Twin Cities could be seen well beyond Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Along with their counterparts from other participating cities, local filmmakers may see their work incorporated into a condensed, three-part series that Litman and Lichtbau will market to PBS affiliates around the country. No word on whether TPT will air the special, but TPT Rewire has agreed to publicize the event in the coming weeks.

The real stars of One Day in the Twin Cities, though, are its filmmakers. Even if you’ve never filmed anything in your life, says Lippold, you can contribute meaningful work. Thanks to an interactive map feature on ODOE’s main site, the work will visible to anyone who visits.

“If I were just starting out in video, I would see this as a huge opportunity,” says Lippold. Since all contributions are credited by name and location, each participant “instantly becomes a documentary filmmaker,” she adds.

Source: Lu Lippold
Writer: Brian Martucci