Princeton High School’s Own Tree Hugger

By Pauline Miller
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Last spring, when Princeton High School’s garden program began to pick up speed as the season turned, Ross Mazur could often be found alongside the beds of plants which were a part of the high school’s gardening program, watering or checking up on them. “We technically re-started the outdoor gardens,” he explained fondly, “the first science class at the school, back in 1923 I think, was a gardening course, and they had gardens outside, so I guess we can’t say we ‘started the gardening program.’ But we brought it back!”
Mazur, who is a senior, has been a part of the environmental club at the high school since his freshman year, and a co-president since he was a sophomore. Environmental science is an interest that he has had since middle school, and he joined the club because of it. “I’m fascinated by things related to energy use, and I like plants and gardening, and the club enables me to express myself within the school.”
His interest in environmental science was sparked in his 7th grade year, when he first attended Longacre Leadership, a farming camp in Newport, Pennsylvania. “I really enjoyed the work they were doing there, and all of the gardening practices and farming made sense. They were basically taking care of the soil, and trying to make it as closed loop as possible.” Mazur explained. It wasn’t just the thinking that went into the farming he enjoyed, but also the farming itself. “Being on a farm in a really nice location was really relaxing and something I enjoyed, and afterwards I spent a lot more time learning about the environment.”Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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Within the realm of environmental science, Mazur is interested in “energy and biological resources, like renewable energy, energy efficiency and alternative energy sources. It covers more than just transportation – every aspect of [daily] life that you come in contact with has some impact.” But it isn’t just energy that has caught Mazur’s attention. “Something that really pulled my interest was ecological design,” he said. “For instance, taking more rural areas that have been devastated biologically and physically and redesigning them in a way that it would stimulate the local economy and improve the physical environment.”
Another area that Mazur has gotten to explore through the gardening program and the horticulture class at the school was soil – a seemingly simple field that has a complexity that is more than meets the eye. “Soil is a growing field right now,” he explained, “they’re just starting to learn more about the microbial and bacterial things going on in the soil, and even possibly using that for medicines. The soil is where the major biodiversity of the world is and we don’t know much about it, and there’s so much to learn, so that really fascinates me.”
Throughout his high school years, Ross has participated in various environmental science groups, including the D & R Greenway native plant nursery. The nursery is a project aimed at figuring out the growing requirement of about hundred species of local plants in the area. Explained Mazur, “They were planning on taking these practices and species and bring them to other and larger ecological restoration projects.” He spent some time last summer volunteering there; mostly doing greenhouse work, but a larger chunk of his summer was spent at the University of Maryland, in the landscape architecture program.
Mazur Explained, “it was a condensed version of the intro to landscape architecture class that all students in the major would have to take over a semester. We learned principles of "design in the landscape", worked on drawing and sketching skills every day, visited firms, visited project sites, (designed by an L.A.), and did a final project.”
During the school year, much of Ross’s time is spent with the Environmental Club at the high school. The club, which Ross runs with co-leaders Yael Davidov ’12 and Ian Mertz ’11, holds various projects through out the year, including the Green Cup Challenge, an annual electricity reduction competition. “We’ve been expanding on the Green Cup Challenge by collecting more data. We were measuring electricity pretty carefully this year – we have this online service that gives us a reading of our school’s electricity usage every 30 minutes – we were looking at water usage, and we didn’t have time but we were planning on looking at paper usage in the school.”
Perhaps paper usage is one that, if monitored, could have a huge payoff at the school, as the environmental club found out this year. Another project that the club has been focusing on is looking in on the garbage and recycling program at the high school. “We examined what happens to [the garbage] and where it goes after it leaves our school, and how effective the program is.” Explains Ross, who added that they “found that the system works very well, the problem is within the school. Students aren’t properly separating the materials.” Performing a waste audit, to raise awareness of how much the student body throws out could have an impact on how careful they becomes at separating materials properly.
From the environmental film festival at the Public Library, to a student environmental conference, which is to be held at Princeton Day School on April 16th, the environmental club has a lot to look forward to this spring. As for Mazur, he’s looking into attending SUNY ESF (Environmental Sciences and Forestry) next year, but there’s one problem with that: “I like every single major that they offer,” he said with a chuckle.