Hi, I’m
Giuseppe Collia
Environmentalist / Systems-Thinker / Multilingual
About Me
I've always been interested in caring for the environment and learning a second language. My education at Dickinson College allowed me to deepen my studies of sustainability, language, and culture and practice these interests through community engagement.
Thank you for your interest in me!
Community Engagement
Community engagement allows us to be active citizens. My time at Dickinson College has connected me to civic engagement on-campus and off-campus in the greater Carlisle community.
During all four of my years at Dickinson, I served as an Eco-Rep, a peer educator of sustainability, in my residence halls. I combined my interests in sustainability and community engagement by holding events to raise awareness to different environmental issues and personal and community behavioral changes that we could make to create a more livable, equitable, resilient, sustainable community for all.
The Center for Civic Learning and Action offered Student leadership positions for the first time during my senior year. As reflective practices and emerging engagement projects coordinator, I developed materials for critical reflection and led a group of students partnering with the Local Housing Options Team of Cumberland and Perry Counties.
During the fall semester of my senior year, I served as a health interpreter for the Keystone Health Agricultural Worker Program as part of my service learning class "Spanish for the Health Professions." This course combining learning with civic engagement was one of my favorite classes and a clear connection of my interests in sustainability, Spanish, and community.
Language and Cultural Studies
While choosing colleges, I knew that I wanted to go to a school with strong language and global education programs. Dickinson excels in global education and sustainability so I knew it would be a perfect fit.
I began by continuing to learn Spanish, which I had begun to study in elementary school and throughout school. I later took classes and participated in department, club, and special interest housing activities and programming in the languages I study of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as cultural exchange activities with other groups.
In my sophomore year at Dickinson, I moved into the Romance Languages House, a special interest house whose community commits to practicing their target romance language(s) and to cultural exchange. Both domestic and international students live in this community.
During the second semester of my junior year, I studied abroad in Ecuador and Argentina, taking language intensive courses in Cuenca, Ecuador and enrolling directly in the National University of Cuyo (UNCuyo) in Mendoza, Argentina in Spanish with Argentine students. I also lived with a host family in both locations and made friends in my host cities, truly immersing myself in the cultures of these countries.
During my senior year, I volunteered as the house manager for the Romance Languages House. I had served as an informal mentor to exchange students in the past, so I decided to formalize my position and commitment to the community. As house manager, I mediated roommate disagreements, facilitated cultural events and exchange, and mentored students who were navigating a US university setting for the first time.
My mentorship to exchange students also took the form as I was an international orientation assistant with the Center for Global Study and Engagement. In this position, I assisted both international first year and one-year exchange students with documentation, navigating campus and Carlisle, and the adjustment to a new culture. I continue to be a mentor to some of these students even as they've spent nearly a year on campus.
All of these opportunities demonstrate my commitment to a global education, but also to that of community engagement and sustainability.
Sustainability
My time with sustainability at Dickinson goes back to my first day when I took part in the Sustainable Adventure: Place Matters Pre-Orientation Adventure with the Center for Sustainability Education. In this pre-orientation adventure, we learned about the surrounding community and sustainability programming at Dickinson.
I then continued my involvement with the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) as an volunteer apprentice and as an intern. I worked on our Campus Energy Challenge where members of the community compete to reduce their energy consumption as much as possible, on waste minimization and diversion across campus, and by supporting my team in their endeavors as well.
As both a supervisor with Dining Services and as an intern with CSE, I was able to tackle waste from food production and take-out. Behind the scenes, I helped begin and expand a plastic bag recycling program that has diverted thousands of bread bags which have been recycled into plastic lumber in the Bags to Benches program. Socially, I have helped support promotion and behavior-centered design for the use of our Ecotainer reusable take-out container program.
I have been able to leverage my connections across the College in order to advance sustainability in our community and wish to continue this as I work in communities in the future.