Christopher John Lapinski

I went to SUNY Broome Community College in 2013 to receive my Associate Degree in Environmental Science. While I was there, I was an avid member in the campus's Ecology Club. My first year in the club I was secretary where I would record all the major things that happened in the meeting and relay them over the club's Facebook page for the members who weren't able to make the meetings. Also this club would periodically go to a park that it had adopted and clean it up monthly. Once the club participated in a river bank clean up where the club itself removed more than 2 tons of waste including 42 tires. My senior year their I was elected the club's president and was told by many that I have run the club the best in recent years. I attended every meeting and would take the lead in the discussions and organizing the clubs activities for the semester. We organized park clean ups, campus awareness flairs about waste and composting. We were successful in making several of the buildings carry in carry out and having compost bins set up around the campus. Every April the club would join Earth Day Southern Tire and host Earth Fest to promote green technology, sustainability, and local agriculture and industry. At this event I did a combined 40+ hours of volunteer work.

At Cornell I originally planed on studying Landscape Architecture but after doing a semester of the classes for it learned that it's not what I intend to do as a career. I changed my major to Interdisciplinary Studies where I will be concentrating my studies in natural resources and ecological evolutionary biology. With these concentrations I will be getting a minor in natural resources and hopefully biology. My intent is to be able to take classes that will best prepare myself for graduate school to study conservation biology. What I want to do with conservation Biology is to be able to research on ecosystems and help conserve threatened and destroyed biomes and try to limit the effects of humans and climate change on the world's biodiversity. When I was a child, I had educational shows like Steve Irwin's The Crocodile Hunter and Jeff Corwin's Wild Experience. These two people are the reason why I want to go into a field of wildlife conservation and biology. It was their passion and love for what they do that made me what to do things with nature and wildlife. I want to be able to go out into the field and observe the vast interconnections of wildlife with their surroundings and help conserve their habitats. All I ever wanted to do was help the Earth and all of the life that it supports. I want to be able to inspire the people of tomorrow and allow them to continue to conserve and protect the Earth and its inhabitants.

I pledge allegiance to the earth
and to the flora, fauna, and human life
that it supports;
one planet, indivisible,
with safe air, water, and soil,
economic justice,
equal rights,
and peace for all.

From the Women’s Environment and Development Organization of the Women’s Foreign
Policy Council “Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth.”