Global Art Education Association
Past Sustainability Themed Contest
In 2016 we held China Youth Environment and Sustainability Essay Contest. Professors from five leading American universities including MIT, Boston University, and Kettering University served as judges. We travelled across China to preach our message of environment and sustainability education; in a 2-month period, we visited 50+ high schools in the Northeast China (Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang), North China (Beijing, Zhengzhou, Luoyang), Interior China (Chongqing, Chengdu, Kunming, and Xi’an), East China (Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Liyang), South China (Gaungzhou, and Shenzhen). We met with school administrators and teachers, and organized seminars for students.
Our message was very well received. And our messages actually got passed on to other schools. In fact, we even got an unexpected essay submission from Jiangxi, one of the poorest province in interior China, the last place you think would participate in something like this!
We were genuinely surprised and inspired by what we read. We expected some essays focused on macro-economics, but we did not expect daring criticisms of environmental policies; we expected proposals, but did not expect some of the plans to be highly feasible; we expected research, but did not expect the level of details; we expected dreams, but did not expect some dreams to be so “Si-Fi”; we expected a variety of topics, but did not expect someone to talk about sustainability of a culture.
Here are some of the comments and feedback from our judges to our students
Jason Jay
Director of Sustainability, MIT
-- “This was very inspiring.”
-- “I like the systems approach – seeing how these issues are interconnected.”
-- “I think it takes courage to look at the technologies out there and say, “I can do better.” That is the innovator’s sensibility. And I like how you have applied your ingenuity to efficient motors, pollution mitigation at the car level, and pollution mitigation at the city level. These are all good problems to solve.”
Don Rosenfield
Former Professor of Operations and Director of MIT Leaders for Global Operations program, MIT
-- “This is an excellent paper. It is well written backed up by data, and identifies one of the biggest issues in sustainability.”
Lester Thurow
-Former Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management
-- “I am truly inspired.”
-- "Environmentalism is not ethical values pitted against economic values. It is thoroughly economic."
Weston Dripps
Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and and Executive Director of the David E. Shi Center for Sustainabilitym Furman University
-- “Some great thinkers among the group! Always fun to see inspired youth!”
Nathan Philips
Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University
-- “All essays were excellent, and it was hard not to give all 10's.”
Jenny Isler
Director of Sustainability, Clark University
-- "I found them to be of excellent quality with original ideas and a broader than expected level of knowledge and awareness. It was a true pleasure to read the words of these young students wrestling with the most complex and urgent problem that the world has to face! It was actually rather hard to be a judge and assign numbers to the heart-felt work of the students!"
Here are some featured “sustainability people”
