The Office of Sustainability and Great Lakes Institute are working together to keep Lake Ontario clean and healthy for both the wildlife and students of SUNY Oswego.

During the warmer months of the academic year, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. every Wednesday, the Office of Sustainability set up their Shining Waters initiative, where students can meet up and spend an hour of their day cleaning up our beautiful campus and its lakeshore. Each week they choose an area of campus that has accumulated a substantial amount of trash and clean it up. Some weeks there are enough participants to allow them to split up and clean multiple areas of campus at once.

On April 15, the weekly Shining Waters cleanup was held in collaboration with GLI, which is an on-campus organization headed by Lisa Glidden, dedicated to protecting, researching and rehabilitating the ecosystem and habitats of Lake Ontario.

Bryan Santiago, a student intern of GLI, said the GLI was founded in 2024, the same year that Lake Ontario was made a National Marine Sanctuary, which is essentially an underwater national park.

“It’s great to come together with events like this, but it’s not just a weekly thing… for us, it is a day out commitment to be more sustainable, it’s not just us humans here,” Santiago said, referring to GLI’s commitment to furthering the on-campus and off-campus sustainability effort.

GLI works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect and study the Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary, which is what made this collaboration with the Office of Sustainability’s Shining Waters program a no-brainer.

“Not only is it an environmental initiative, it’s also a campus wellness initiative,” Jason Napolitano, office of sustainability intern, said.

Napolitano is a bicycle technician at the Office of Sustainability, but he says that above all, he is a sustainability intern. He helps out with all the other initiatives the Office of Sustainability undertakes such as Maple on Tap, which is a program where they tap local sugar maple trees and gather the sap to turn into syrup and sell at the campus bookstore, as well as host a pancake breakfast on April 25 for Earth Week.

“It’s not only a good thing to do for the environment, but it’s also just a really nice excuse to get outside and enjoy the lake,” Napolitano said, adding that “[Lake Ontario] is something that we want people to be able to enjoy and really appreciate and learn how to take care of.”

Napolitano said collaborations with other on-campus organizations are common, especially with other organizations that are closely related to Lake Ontario, such as GLI. Even with campus sports teams, which allows for more ground to be covered, because of how many participants are cleaning up the grounds.

“Sometimes it’s just me, another intern and then one other person, you know? Sometimes it’s just us, sometimes it’s an entire organization doing this for community hours or that does work regarding the lake that is here working with us as well,” Napolitano said.

Napolitano said he can wake up happy everyday and come do a job that is fulfilling.

“We really pride ourselves on having a large range… rarely am I doing the same thing every day. Not only am I helping the environment, I’m learning about the environment and helping others learn about the environment,” he said. “April in particular is Earth Month, so for us it’s our March Madness, we’re going all out this month.”

For Earth Day and Arbor Day, the Office of Sustainability holds large scale events where they invite the whole campus community to participate.

“For example for Arbor Day, we’ll go and plant trees and tend to the trees that surround Mackin Hall, which are part of our tree arboretum and are planted by different organizations,” Napolitano said.

GLI or Office of Sustainability events are going on all throughout the rest of Earth Month! GLI is holding a symposium for Quest. This weekend there will be an Educators’ Workshop on Underwater Robotics & Engineering with MATE ROV Academy and on Friday and Saturday the Office of Sustainability will be hosting the annual Arbor Day celebration.

Anyone interested in getting involved with the Office of Sustainability to make a difference in the environment should email them directly, as they have “an unlimited amount of volunteer opportunities,” according to Napolitano, who also said they are working on a volunteer calendar which will allow people to just sign up on their own.