Green Workforce Shaping Up: Green Schools Alumni

Miles Ten Brinke, former Green Schools student from Creekside High School, is now a part-time Green Campus intern at UC Berkeley.  Miles has been a part of the Green Schools Program since 2007, when he was a sophomore in high school.  Below is an interview with Miles, now a third year college student, and links to the audio of the interview.

• High School with the Green Schools Program
• College with the Green Campus Program
• Career with Green Aspirations

High School with the Green Schools Program - Listen Now

Alliance: How did you first get into the sustainability field or energy efficiency?

Miles: It started out with Green Schools back in the fall semester of 2007.  I heard about this green club on campus at Creekside and started getting involved.   By October, we had the Student Energy Auditing Training (SEAT).  I knew enough about the auditing toolkit to show all the other students.  There was some prior knowledge behind basic physics, but I learned the immensity about energy efficiency through SEAT and other aspects of the program.

Alliance: You recently graduated from Creekside High School. While you were there, you were involved in Green Schools. As a student with Green Schools, what was your experience like and what kinds of activities were you involved in?

Miles: It was an amazing experience.  Because of that, I have just under three years’ experience in public speaking and in working as a student leader, working as an administrator.  I have participated in an audit of a residential area, commercial area and obviously academic areas.  The activities were mainly energy audits.  I actually spearheaded and ran the Creekside audit.  The beauty of Creekside is that it’s such a small school, we only have 400 students. So we were able to get a lot accomplished.  Our audit went extremely well.  I learned all basic things you need to know. Just run the numbers, take the data down and be able to put it together in a manner that makes it obvious that these are changes that are simple and extremely powerful.  I presented to the staff at Creekside which went over really well so we had the staff behind us.  We were able to get our changes implemented.  In addition to that, I had the opportunity to get involved in the school district and help out. 

College with the Green Campus Program - Listen Now

Alliance: Currently, you are a student at Mt. San Jacinto College (MSJC).  Could you tell us a little bit about the energy efficiency work that you do with your community college?

Miles: Yes.  Right now, the majority of the work I do at MSJC has been student research.  I actually had a paper I had to write in an honors course last fall.  I had to write a scientific research paper and in doing so I had to create an experiment, then perform that experiment and write about it.  I decided I would use the data I still had from the Creekside audit.  I wrote my paper on energy efficiency and Green Schools.  I used some statistics that I got through Green Schools and I did an extrapolation.  The whole point is energy efficiency is an extremely powerful thing and if every individual would take some individual responsibility and awareness en masse it could change the entire world.

Alliance: You also still help out the current participating Green Schools. Can you describe what you do with them?

Miles: I have been able to go to Temecula and Lake Elsinore Unified School Districts. I do to a lesser extent what Rick Thomason and Lorraine Gutierrez – my two mentors and the folks running the Green Schools Program – do, which is a walkthrough with the green team, discussing the areas that could be worked on how the program is going, discussing what successes they’ve had, failures they’ve had, programs they’ve tried to implement, how far they’ve gotten on the audit.  If it’s an older group like a junior high or high school group, I’ll help them. 

I do a lot of demonstrations on how to use the equipment; in fact it’s the bread and butter of what I do.  One thing I can say is that Green Schools is giving me the skills that I need for success. I’ve really learned how to communicate through oration very well thanks to this program, thanks to my involvement – especially post-high school. I’ve been on my own and been a volunteer, a single representative so I do have a degree of responsibility.  So I am learning what comes with that and I’m learning how to function within the business world, how to function within the adult world. 

Career with Green Aspirations - Listen Now

Alliance: What are your future plans?

Miles: That’s a good question.  The field I’m looking to get into is Environmental Social Science – that definitely includes energy efficiency.  It may turn out that I might work for Southern California Edison, or the Alliance, or any number of programs that I’ve worked in the past; I may end up working for those industries.  But I know I want to work in global environmental politics – a new field that is developing. And the idea is, at least my conceptualization of it, is one that is completely interdisciplinary, and uses a systems analytical approach to deal with real world problems. I really want to help eliminate poverty, global inequality, global political conflict and warfare, as well as environmental issues.    I want to get involved in something that really works to solve all the issues we have – as easy as changing incandescent light bulbs to CFLs – that has directly measurable impact on environment, poverty, inequality, on a number of things. It’s something I know I’ve come around the right time for.  I’d love to work for federal government, work for UN, work for NGO, private, non-profit, any number of things.  But I really want to travel the world and I really want to learn as much as I can and make a difference. So to me, all I’ll be doing is extending the work I’ve done with Green Schools.

From Green Schools to Green Campus!

Hear from others like Miles who have continued the work of Green Schools at their university campuses:

Sydney Pike, a former Green Schools student, began volunteering with the UCLA Green Campus Program in November 2010.  In addition to being an English and Philosophy double major, and planning for law school, she also prioritizes being involved in promoting saving energy.  At Sultana High School, she participated in Green Schools all four years, served as an officer for two, and was one of six hand-picked members on the Student Energy Management Team.  On the teams, she spent countless hours recycling, presenting at conferences geared toward saving energy and thinking green, as well as working with other high, middle and elementary schools to start their own programs.  Other than working hard to save kilowatt hours with the Green Campus Program, she is also involved in the UCLA Daily Bruin student newspaper and a member of Kappa Delta Sorority.  

Morwenna Rowe began her passion for energy efficiency during her years at Sultana High School, largely due to energy training from the Alliance and inspiration from her Physics teacher, Mark Ziesmer.  At Sultana High School, Morwenna, along with her fellow Green Team students, organized CFL light bulb exchanges and classroom energy audits, and hosted an energy-saving campaign among staff that saved more than $60,000 each year in energy costs.  Now at UC Berkeley, Morwenna is the Team Manager of the Green Campus team.  As a Green Campus intern, Morwenna is committed to helping her campus save money on energy costs and reduce carbon emissions by working on projects such as the Energy DeCal, an intern-led, for-credit class in which students attend guest lectures, discuss current sustainability events, and are trained to conduct residential energy audits. Morwenna leads her team in projects that result in measurable energy savings, including installation of occupancy sensors for both lighting a room and turning on/off vending machines. 

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