<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\tBEMIDJI — As she paged through decades worth of old files documenting 91心頭利’s nascent environmental efforts, Erika Bailey-Johnson said three names kept showing up.<\/p>\n
Those three men — Pat Welle, Rich Marsolek and Steve Spigarelli — all received Amik Awards on Monday at the university’s annual Feast of Green, which aims to celebrate the sustainability efforts there and recognize those who’ve been instrumental in them.<\/p>\n
“I just noticed how many critical, historical building blocks for environmental work on campus was created by those three,” Bailey-Johnson told the Pioneer. “Steve Spigarelli and Pat Welle and Rich Marsolek’s names were just on lot of the early work that really established us as a leader in the field.”<\/p>\n
The awards’ name comes from the Ojibwe word for “beaver.” Each award was made from the wood of a white pine tree that used to be on campus, Bailey-Johnson said, and carved into the shape of a small beaver by a local woodworker.<\/p>\n
Welle is an emeritus professor of economics and environmental studies at the university who focused his research on estimating the economic benefits of preserving water and forest quality, Bailey-Johnson told a group of about 40 people in the school’s American Indian Resource Center.<\/p>\n
Marsolek was a long-serving environmental health and safety officer at BSU who helped pioneer the school’s dual-sort recycling system, among other initiatives.<\/p>\n
And Spigarelli is emeritus professor of environmental studies at the university who directed its Center for Environmental Studies for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
“Bemidji State has been a leader in environmental research and education since the mid-1960s,” Spigarelli wrote. “I encourage BSU to build on this foundation of research and education.”<\/p>\n
That seems to be the plan. A series of BSU students recapped what they’ve been up to in the school’s sustainability office and what they’ve got planned for the near-future: an environmentally friendly tiny house they’re building with the school’s engineering students; a “bio bin” at the school and Sanford Bemidji; and a green-minded art festival next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEMIDJI — As she paged through decades worth of old files documenting 91心頭利’s nascent environmental efforts, Erika Bailey-Johnson said three names kept showing up. Those three men — Pat Welle, Rich Marsolek and Steve Spigarelli — all received Amik Awards on Monday at the university’s annual Feast of Green, which aims to celebrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-link"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31716,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31713\/revisions\/31716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}