Share this Content!





Share
    

Monthly Archives

Categories

Most Recent 10 Articles

Community Environmental Center joins Queens Library for “Greening Libraries” Project
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Weatherization Funding: Surviving by the Skin of Our Teeth, by Alexis Greene
Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Luck of the Irish – A Winner of the CEC Raffle
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Want to create jobs? Consider an Energy Corps, by Richard Cherry
Friday, December 9th, 2011

Community Environmental Center Installs Solar Thermal System at JCC on Staten Island
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Community Environmental Center Is LEED Consultant for LEED Gold Dormitory at Queens College
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

The partnership between Green City Force and Community Environmental Center, by Lisbeth Shepherd
Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Helen M. Marshall, President of the Borough of Queens, Proclaims Tuesday, November 1, Community Environmental Center Weatherization Day
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Community Environmental Center receives Service Merit Award from NYSERDA
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Community Environmental Center to celebrate Weatherization Day November 1
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

Gwen McLaughlin: Explorer at CEC

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

A poster about Sylvia Earle hangs on the bulletin board over Gwen McLaughlin’s desk at CEC. Earle, who was born in New Jersey in 1935, is one of the foremost oceanographers in the world. At the age of 75, she still descends to the bottom of the ocean, to study the flora and fauna that survive at the water’s darkest level. Fellow scientists call Earle “Her Deepness.”

“She’s an explorer,” says Gwen, with quiet admiration. “She goes down in submarines – sometimes in one-person submarines—to examine places most people would never dream of going. She’s led more than 50 expeditions worldwide and holds the record for the deepest untethered solo dive.”

Anyone would admire Earle. But that Gwen has particularly high regard for this scientist, whom she has met only once in passing, says as much about Gwen and her aspirations as it does about Earle’s achievements.

Born and raised in Middletown, New York, a city of malls about 80 miles west of Manhattan, Gwen says that “For as long as I can remember, environmental science and policy have been interests of mine.”

“My parents taught me that valuing the environment should be a way of life,” says Gwen. “You don’t throw anything on the ground; you take care of what’s around you. I was always taught to learn about animals and nature.”

Sylvia Earle

Despite its malls and a strip of fast-food eateries, Middletown is located amid natural beauty, near the Wallkill River and at the foothills of the Shawangunk Mountains. Gwen’s family lived across from a lake, and she and her sister and brother used to go out and feed the ducks, look at the trees and “slip around in the mud.”

Her interest in the environment became a focus. “My high-school Earth Science teacher, Mr. Allen, made me understand that earth science was something I could do,” Gwen recalls. “Before him, science was cells and atoms, and I was told that, if I learned enough about the small stuff, I could learn about plants eventually. But I was always interested in plants first and wanted to learn about cells later. My teacher made science accessible and fun, and I could apply it to every-day life.”

Indeed, at Fairfield University in Connecticut, she followed an independently designed major in environmental science and policy. But she traveled side roads through minors in English lit, studio art and marine science. “I was all over the place,” smiles Gwen.

That wide-ranging education appealed to her, and she recommends it. “Some people feel they just have to get through school and get out into the real world,” she says. “But the courses you take develop your interests. That’s really how I got into green building. I started out with an interest in water resources, which grew into an interest in understanding how we use natural resources and how we can use them in the best way.”

The Duke Marine Lab

After college Gwen pursued a Masters of Environmental Management at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, an arm of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Her concentration was Coastal Environmental Management, a specialization that led to her thesis – Sustainable Architecture on the North Carolina Coast – and to an idyllic summer internship with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Two days a week she would drive to a pier, take a small ferryboat to one of the islands of the Cape Lookout National Seashore and lead educational tours that explored the island’s rich flora and fauna. “I would take groups of people from the marsh side of the island – really a sandy tidal flat — through the island itself and then over to the beach. People would walk into the water with me, and I would pick up shells and talk about the animals that once lived in them.”

She would have been happy to stay in North Carolina. She calls Beaufort, on the southern Outer Banks, “my favorite place in the world,” what with its many varieties of animals and plants and “amazing people.”

But she missed friends and family, and when her older sister was having a baby in 2008, Gwen returned to the New York area.

She began at CEC that same year, attracted, she says,  “because CEC works with people who really need green building. They need lower utility bills and warmer housing. I really liked that about CEC.”

Initially Gwen’s work centered on creating green guides, specifically for UJA (United Jewish Appeal-Federation) and IAC (InterAgency Council of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities Agencies, Inc.). “These are green measures that you can make part of your every-day practice,” says Gwen, “at an office, school or hospital. Saving resources that you’re using within the building, such as office supplies. Saving energy in any place you can, from turning off the lights to unplugging an empty fridge.” UJA posts the green guide on their Web site; IAC distributes theirs electronically.

Now Gwen has branched out. She manages at least 5 LEED projects, including BRG River House, a Parks Department site in the Bronx that has a green wall, among other features, and is aiming for LEED Platinum.

She works on projects that apply for Enterprise Green Communities certification. A less intensive rating system than LEED, Green Communities  is a national organization that provides developers of affordable housing with criteria for creating healthy and energy-efficient homes.

And she teaches low-income homeowners who receive weatherization services how to lower their energy use long after CEC’s crews have gone.

Still, her peak experience at CEC occurred shortly after she came on board, when she visited a group home on Staten Island, to prepare for writing IAC’s green guide.

“As I was going through the building looking for ideas for the guide” says Gwen, “people started to join me and ask questions. At the end, when we sat down to talk they all took out pens and paper and started asking questions ‘Okay, what kind of light bulbs do we need? Where should we move that printer?’ They didn’t want to wait for the guides to come out; they wanted to do what they could as soon as they could. It was so good to see that I was not just writing these guides and sending them forth. People were actually going to use and learn from them.”

Would she like to move back to the south? “I would love to, someday…”

Would she like to get a doctorate and teach? “I would, someday…”

For an explorer like Gwen, there are so many options.

In the meantime, she works at CEC and lives on Roosevelt Island – at the northern end, where there are fields and trees and even a community garden.

“I miss a lot of things about the south,” she says, “but one thing I really missed when I was living there was going to concerts.” Since moving back North, she has determinedly taken in a great deal of live music. “I’ve crossed a lot of concerts off my life list,” she says with pleasure. “I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen four times in the last two years. Twice at Giants Stadium.”

And whenever she “feels sluggish” or needs a jolt of energy, she looks at the poster of Sylvia Earle. “And I think about all the things that she’s done,” Gwen says quietly, “and all the things that I have yet to accomplish.”

buy term papers