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The springboard for Abel’s project was a research methods class he took with Anita Tam, the ��������professor of psychology and statistics who nominated him for the fellowship.

“When I heard about the fellowship, I had a handful of students in mind. Alexander was at the top of the list,” Tam said. “He’s been a top performing student over several of my courses. And he’s a motivated, thoughtful and open-minded learner who cares about the world around him.

“He has a genuine desire to learn,” she added. “I took note that he always came to class prepared and engaged, and in a world where many people seek information simply to confirm their own biases, Alex welcomed information that challenged him.”

Tam serves as the faculty mentor for Sprouting Sustainability. A student survey in one of her classes addressed the sustainability of university swag, and that planted the idea for Abel’s project.  

“We got some ideas from it, including tote bags that are more sustainable, ��������T-shirts that have natural fiber instead of plastic cloth and even water bottles that are reusable,” Abel said. Already ��������in Asia has switched out its single-use university-branded water bottles for reusable bottles. Natural fiber T-shirts and lightweight tote bags that can be used again for shopping are next on the wish list.

Sustainable swag is one of the three prongs of the project. The second component, dubbed #Make Climate A Class, focuses on ways to bring even small discussions about the environment into courses so that students are exposed to eco issues.

“We aren’t talking about changing the curriculum,” Abel said, “but we want professors to think about the climate and the way they can fit a discussion of it into one class.” For example, a statistics class could look at temperature fluctuations or one session of a writing class could include an assignment with an environmental focus. 

“The goal is to have at least 50 percent of the professors find a way to introduce the environment into one class discussion,” Abel said. “By doing that, I hope it can help military members and affiliated people learn more about the environment and carry what they learn to smaller discussions with people they know.”

Tam said she liked the bottom-up approach of Sprouting Sustainability, in which students—like Abel—approach professors about infusing environmental ideas into classwork.

The third component of Sprouting Sustainability—which focuses on ��������Asia, including Japan, Guam and South Korea—is an Asia Chapter of UMGC’s Environmental Awareness Club. The Facebook group for the Asia club is already up and running.

The club is modeled on the stateside Environmental Awareness Club supported by ��������faculty member Sabrina Fu, who directs the Master’s in Environmental Management and Bachelor’s in Environmental Health and Safety programs and is the recipient of several high-profile awards for her expertise and work focused in environmental science.

Having an Asia chapter of the club enables students in Japan to mitigate the time-zone challenges of being part of the stateside club. It also opens opportunities for the club to host local activities and events. Abel envisions a beach cleanup that could bring together both the ��������community and local residents in Okinawa. Work is also underway to organize a 5K environmental awareness run.

“We have space on one of the bases for an easy long-distance run,” Abel said. “We want to invite Okinawans to take part.”   

Abel has high praise for ��������and the way it has made him love learning.

“I didn’t do well in high school—I barely graduated with just over a 2.0 grade point average—and college was not necessarily on my list of things to do,” he said. “Even when I started working to get my associate degree, I was of the mind that … I would just sit in a corner quietly and do my assignments.”

He said his classroom experiences upended that assumption.

“The teachers are spectacular and I’ve become a completely different person,” he said. “I’m still of the mind that you don’t have to have a college degree to be a success, and a degree isn’t a measure of how smart you are. But a college education is a way to expand your mind and diversify your critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

“In the Marine Corps, we get training, which is learning for situations you know you’re going to be in. But education is learning for situations you don’t know you’ll be in,” he added.

The Langenberg Legacy Program evolved out of the Langenberg Lecture and Award program, which was established through an endowed foundation fund in honor of former USM Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg upon his retirement in 2002.  

��������is one of 12 institutions in the USM. The others are Bowie State University; Coppin State University; Frostburg State University; Salisbury University; Towson University; the University of Baltimore; the University of Maryland, Baltimore; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; the University of Maryland, College Park; and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The USM also includes three regional centers: the Universities at Shady Grove, the University System of Maryland at Hagerstown, and the University System of Maryland at Southern Maryland.