The Johns Hopkins Office of Climate and Sustainability is hosting events and activities throughout April to celebrate Earth Month.
The celebration continues Friday with the third-annual Earth Fest on Keyser Quad on the Homewood campus. The festivities will feature smoothie bikes, food, tabling from student organizations and campus departments, live music, and giveaways.
Other upcoming events include a book talk, stargazing at the JHU observatory, an Earth Day baseball game, and a panel discussion in collaboration with Loyola, Towson, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The full calendar of Earth Month events can be found on the Office of Climate and Sustainability website.
The celebration kicked off on April 2 with the sixth-annual Johns Hopkins University Sustainability Symposium, hosted by the Sustainability Leadership Council and the Office of Climate and Sustainability. The event connected more than 330 students, faculty, and staff from departments across the university to highlight their work, learn from one another, and foster multidisciplinary dialogue on climate and sustainability research, practice, and education.
Topics of the day's panel discussions, presentations, and research posters included stormwater management on campus, improving K-12 environmental education, shaping planetary health policy, Baltimore-area residents' perceptions of future climate change risks, how to host sustainable events, clean energy supply chains, efforts to reduce solid waste in hospital operating rooms, and more. Centers, departments, and institutes focused on sustainability were represented, including the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative, the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation, the Center for a Livable Future, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health, and the Ralph O'Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, among others.
Serena McIlwain, secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, gave a keynote address in which she discussed the state department's focus on sustainability, equity, and organizational excellence to strengthen Maryland's environmental policies and programs. "Sustainability isn't just about protecting the environment—it's about economic prosperity and equity. One cannot exist without the other," she noted. McIlwain stressed the importance and influence of institutions like Hopkins to advance environmental research, set standards, and push for change.
Image caption: From left to right: Debi Denney, Peter Winch, Serena McIlwain, Bob McLean, and Julian Goresko.
Image credit: Larry Canner for Johns Hopkins University
Attendees also heard remarks from Peter Winch, professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of International Health; Bob McLean, vice president of facilities; and Julian Goresko, director of the Office of Climate and Sustainability. Winch and McLean serve as co-chairs of the Sustainability Leadership Council.
The symposium concluded with a networking social hosted by the university's Life Design Lab, where attendees had the opportunity to connect with one another over their shared interest in sustainability research and practice. While kicking off the networking social, Kallista Fong, an intern in the Office of Climate and Sustainability, described the importance of forming these connections: "It only takes a couple of conversations to change the trajectory of your life."
In addition to the symposium, other Earth Month events have included:
- An April "Thirst" bring-your-own mug raffle event in which participants were encouraged to bring alternative drinking vessels for April Fool's Day
- An Earth Month yoga session
- A community street tidying event organized by Off-Campus Housing
- A cooking demonstration from Hopkins Dining on preventing food waste
The Office of Climate and Sustainability's Earth Month programming is part of the Office's work to advance the university's Climate Action and Sustainability Plan. The plan, released in October 2024, outlines the university's commitments to reduce its environmental impact and leverage the multidisciplinary expertise found on campus to create scalable solutions to address climate change.
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