KCC Wins ‘Most Impactful Earth Month’ Award

Kingsborough Community College’s Celebrate Sustainable Mobility event, held during the April 22 campus-wide Earth Day celebration, recently earned the College the Most Impactful Earth Month Award from the New York State Department of Transportation (NYS DOT) Statewide Mobility Services.

Forty Kingsborough community members on Earth Day signed up to take the Earth Month Pledge in the Library Breezeway, committing to use more eco-friendly transportation alternatives throughout the month of April, said Jennifer Covello, CommuterLink programs administrator with NYS DOT Statewide Mobility Services.

In addition to learning about transportation alternatives, community members could also learn about bicycle safety resource by visiting the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) table. Student ambassadors also assisted during the event.

“The interactive nature of the event and the use of Student Ambassadors were leading factors in winning the Most Impactful Earth Month Event award,” said Andrea Vera, CommuterLink operations manager at the state DOT’s Statewide Mobility Services agency.

Kingsborough was among 13 organizations or institutions to participate in NYS DOT’s Earth Month 2026, Vera said.

Celeste Creegan, Kingsborough’s director of environmental/health and occupational safety and sustainability, coordinated most of the activities for the campus’s Earth Day celebration. She pointed to the College’s campus, with its various ecosystems and natural beauty, as a constant reminder of why sustainability and ecological advocacy matters every day, not just Earth Day, especially at Kingsborough.

“When you’re here, sustainability stops being an abstract idea,” she said. “You can actually see what we’re protecting every single day. Jamaica Bay is an incredibly important natural resource, and being immersed in it like this makes that responsibility feel even more personal. It reinforces how important it is for all of us to protect and preserve it for the future.”

While students who take classes on campus regularly get to experience the campus’s beauty, Earth Day presented an opportunity to engage with it in ways they may not have before.

Earth Day on Campus

In addition to the Celebrate Sustainable Mobility event, students and community members enjoyed a full day of hands-on activities focused on environmental awareness and action that included a cleanup of more than 500 pounds of trash that had washed ashore the Jamaica Bay seawall riprap with President Suri Duitch, the student-led Environmental and Sustainability Club, and community partners Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy and New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

Students could also visit two pop-up thrift shops: one that sold upcycled, student-designed fashions, hosted by 3R (Reclaim, Reimagine, Repurpose) Initiative (all proceeds were donated to local nonprofit, Bottomless Closet) and Michael Palladino, of KCC’s Business of Fashion program; and another that was a free thrift shop organized by the Environmental and Sustainability Club and Art Professor Midori Yamamura.

 Additional activities included an  SGA-organized seedling distribution from the College’s Urban Farm, a coastal ecology walk on KCC’s beach with Professor Dmitry Brogan, and guided maritime eco-excursions on Jamaica Bay with the maritime technology and physical sciences departments, led by Professors Christina Colon and Brogan and lecturer Robert Schenck.

The 3R Initiative Re-Shop is open year-round when classes are in session on Tuesdays and Thursdays in M329 and is open to all students. Environmental and Sustainability Club founder, Earth Science major Sophia Turchin ’26, has been working hard to ensure some of her club’s Earth Day activities, such as the free thrift shop, extend beyond Earth Day as well.

“We want to see if we can make it a permanent thing on campus because we think it would be really helpful,” she said. A pollinator garden and a tree planting initiative is also in the works, she said.

Though Turchin is graduating this June, she even has a sustainability plan in place for the club’s leadership—her sister, Helen.

“She’s the vice president,” she said. “She’s going to take over the club after I graduate.”

To learn more about the Environmental and Sustainability Club, contact club advisor Midori Yamamura at [email protected]. To learn more about sustainability practices at Kingsborough, visit Sustainable KCC online.