UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As an undergraduate student at Penn State, Olivia DiPrinzio discovered a passion for sustainability and pursued it to help transform the University’s approach to sustainability education.
Now as a professional, she gets to continue that work.
DiPrinzio, who graduated in 2024 with honors in energy engineering and Earth science and policy, is now associate director of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium. The nonprofit organization focuses specifically on connecting higher education institutions across the commonwealth in their efforts on sustainability through trainings, conferences and student award programs.
“We do a lot of things across the state, so my daily tasks vary by the day, but it is incredibly rewarding work” DiPrinzio said. “I get to spend my time trying to figure out how to make our campuses the most sustainable.”
That’s something she has been doing since arriving as a first-year student at Penn State.
As an undergraduate, she worked as a climate science and education intern, helping to develop a plan to transform Penn State’s approach to sustainability education.
Her project involved the creation of an attribute for Lion Path to designate courses as sustainability focused. The University Faculty Senate recently voted in favor of implementing the sustainability course attributes.
“There was a sustainability literacy assessment and that was given out to some Penn State students, and one of the things we saw was that 60% of students felt that they interacted with sustainability in their courses, but 80% wanted to see more,” DiPrinzio said. “We thought that an attribute would be the easiest way to help students more easily find those courses through Lion Path, because they can get lost in the shuffle.”
For her efforts, DiPrinzio was awarded a 2024 John Roe Sustainability Impact Award. Penn State said, “her role as a climate science and education intern has been pivotal in developing initiatives to help transform Penn State’s approach to sustainability education, positioning her as a key figure in fostering a culture of responsible consumption and proactive climate action across the University.”
DiPrinzio said she hopes one day students will be required to take at least one sustainability attributed course to graduate.
A Pennsylvania native, DiPrinzio said she came to Penn State without much formal education about sustainability issues. Initially a computer science major, she felt pulled toward sustainability seeing the environmental impacts of a changing climate.
“I still love the puzzles of computer science, and I use data and coding in my day-to-day life,” she said. “I just felt more drawn to environmental issues and focusing on how I can help others. And that ended up being sustainability and climate”
At Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium, DiPrinzio is poised to continue making a difference, but with a much broader reach.
Through activities including conferences, webinars and inter-campus projects and competitions, PERC seeks to facilitate the movement toward sustainability among its members institutions and across Pennsylvania more broadly, according to the group’s website.
“The consortium really has the ability to take our time, to find resources, to understand policies and to connect colleges or institutions together with one another,” she said. “For example, if we know one institution has had this really great solar panel set up, and there's this smaller institution that's looking to do a similar thing, we can connect those individuals.”
In May, the consortium will host a sustainability leaders’ event in State College, pulling together chief sustainability officers, sustainability directors and other university officials.
“I think we are emphasizing the importance of collective action,” she said. “Some institutions are excited about sustainability, but don't necessarily have the faculty and staff that have been working in the space. We are there to help them and connect them with what they need to continue doing the good work that they do.”