Just weeks after graduating with her BCom, Sauder student sustainability leader Rosie Pidcock took her passion for sustainable resource management to the international level.
Pidcock chaired the 2011 International Student Energy Summit (ISES), which gathered 400 international post-secondary students at the University of British Columbia from June 9 to 11 to discuss the transition to a sustainable energy future.
This isn’t the first time Pidcock took on a sustainability challenge. During her undergraduate degree at Sauder, she helped to develop the school’s Sustainability Concentration and founded both the Commerce Undergraduate Society Sustainability Initiative and the annual Chasing Sustainability Conference.
Her motivation comes from a belief that sustainability should be an integral part of every undergraduate’s education, regardless of discipline. “It has become a necessary part of life—it’s about how we’re going to survive, beyond our own immediate gain,” says Pidcock.
The ISES conference brought together post secondary students from different disciplines and locations all over the globe to explore the role they need to play in defining the future of energy development.
“The purpose of the summit was to educate students on the global energy crisis and inspire them to make change,” explains Pidcock. “We wanted to give students an understanding of all aspects—political, social, business—of the global energy crisis and inspire them to find out more about how they can contribute to solve energy problems in their careers.”
Pidcock attributes her Sauder education to helping prepare her for a career in the renewable energy industry, as well as the chairing of the ISES conference.
“It’s one thing to know a formula or to know a fact,” Pidcock says. “But Sauder prepared me to be able to look at a problem and to apply the analytical skills to come up with a solution.”
The ISES conference was all about solutions. Delegates were tasked with finding answers to the world’s ten most pressing energy problems, which the participants identified in the month leading up to the meeting.
Resulting discussions from the summit will now be synthesized into a document outlining proposed solutions. Delegates pledged to implement one or more of the solutions and to share the finalized document with stakeholder groups in their home communities around the world.
