With aspirations of one day working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Ashlynn Searer ’22 dreams of finding a solution to the problem of climate change.
In the meantime, Searer focuses her efforts first on our campus and sustainability initiatives.
As a project leader for the Office of Sustainability, Searer has had a hand in a wide variety of tasks, including planning events like the Solar Party for Earth Month. Students used old pizza boxes to make solar ovens to cook pizza bites and s’mores, food that they gave away to others passing by.
Searer was also involved with calculating the greenhouse gas emissions from all the GO program flights from one semester. With that, they held a contest to see who could guess how much carbon was emitted from GO programs.
In addition she helped to organize an electricity war among the 18th Street Commons townhouses, where they held a competition to see which building could use the least electricity in two weeks, where the three winners received prizes.
Searer says her favorite part of the job is seeing the results of the events she assists in planning.
“There is just something about helping other people and getting others involved and excited about helping the environment that makes my day and is rewarding for myself and the planet,” says the earth and environmental science major, who also minors in psychology.
She also noted that she hopes to one day make Susquehanna one of the greenest and most sustainable university campuses in Pennsylvania and in the country by getting more people involved in the Office of Sustainability’s efforts.
In addition to her sustainability work, Searer also plays for the women’s tennis team in No. 1 singles and doubles, is in the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society and was selected as one of President Jonathan Green’s presidential fellows.
