Come celebrate Earth Day weekend with 30Boltwood at the Lord Jeffery Inn! Chef Kevin Doubleday and his team have put together a special menu for the benefit of the Hitchcock Center, featuring seasonally sourced, vegetarian and non-vegetarian selections from our local farms. A portion of the proceeds from this delicious three-course prix fixe menu will benefit the Hitchcock Center.
By Katie Koerten
Hitchcock Center educators teach engineering and design with get-out-of-your-seat-and-try methods engaging children in experimental design, trial and error, teamwork, role-play, and refining of design ideas. How do we teach this?
With funding from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and in cooperation with UMass Amherst’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Hitchcock Center for the Environment presented lessons on clean water issues to all of the science students of Amherst Regional Middle School in March and April. 7th and 8th graders both received hands-on lessons in class and 8th grade students concluded their lessons with an all-day fieldtrip on water.
By Ted Watt
Spotted salamanders are iconic for many people. Shiny, black and yellow, 7-9” long amphibians, they live underground for eleven months of the year as top predators of the soil community. Mating and laying eggs in vernal pools in the spring, they then return to the forest soils, sometimes crossing roads in the process. How can we help these animals when they cross roads to get to and from their breeding pools? How can we assist them into an uncertain future? This is where salamander migration tunnels fit in.
AMHERST, Mass. — The Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst debuted its new 9,000-square-foot facility in fall 2016. Even though the environmental education center is built on the Hampshire College campus, the independent, nonprofit is completely separate, with a mission to develop environmental curriculums that are then implemented in schools throughout New England. Now, that mission is coming to life with its brand-new sustainable facility that doubles as an engaging learning tool for the center’s field trip, after-school and preschool programs, among others. Better yet, it’s currently seeking Living Building Challenge certification.
By Scott Merzbach
AMHERST — Backers of the bylaw adopted at Town Meeting last fall mandating that all new municipal buildings produce as much energy as they use are continuing to bring experts in zero-energy design and construction to town.
Forty local high school students engaged in the first Western Massachusetts Youth Climate Summit on November 17, 2017, bringing them closer to a range of local, state, and world-wide solutions and ideas to address climate change problems, to empower each of them to begin working at their own schools.
Executive Director Julie Johnson was the recipient of this year’s Green Giants Award in recognition of her work to envision and fund the Hitchcock Center’s newly constructed living building.
Colleen Kelley, our Education Director, and Jessica Schultz, our Sustainability & Living Building Coordinator, have both been accepted into the Environmental Sustainability for Latin American Professional Fellows Program.
Hitchcock Center environmental educators will be partnering with ten area schools thanks to over $36,000 in grant funding support from the Mass Cultural Council’s STARS (Students and Teachers working with Artists, Scientists, and Scholars) program.
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax