Point Loma Nazarene University hosted its annual Creation Care Week two weeks ago, featuring multiple events to educate and encourage the community in sustainability.
The week-long event, organized by the Office of Sustainability, held from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, featured chapel services and guest speakers, a beach cleanup, snorkeling, a marine conservation nonprofit panel, a sustainable seafood presentation and a sunset roundtable discussion. Visual reminders highlighting the theme of creation care were also placed around campus to inspire continued awareness and engagement.
According to Anna Mason, a fourth-year environmental studies major and student programs coordinator for the PLNU Office of Sustainability, this year’s theme was “Living Water, Living Earth.”
The theme and events of Creation Care Week change slightly each year. Mason said this year’s theme was selected, hoping to connect students to the ocean surrounding PLNU’s campus.
“We intentionally chose ocean-related events in hopes that we connected to the shared love of the ocean that we have at Point Loma,” Mason said. “So our goal is to reach students and hopefully allow them to learn and therefore help them to act sustainably in the future.”
Mason said about 15 people attended the first event of the week: a beach cleanup and devotional. The final event, a sunset roundtable discussion, was designed to create conversation between students and faculty.
With the understanding that sustainable efforts involve the entire campus community, Mason said the Office of Sustainability approached the week intending to reach as many people as possible.
“We try and approach sustainability as interdisciplinary, meaning that it relates to so many different people,” Mason said.
One way they aimed to reach a broader portion of the campus community was by partnering with the PLNU chapel team.
Kristyn Teegarden, director of discipleship ministries and creative arts, said the sustainability team has been a long-standing partner with chapel in planning Creation Care Week, directing their efforts to highlight the week’s mission.
“We intentionally choose speakers for chapel during that week that can bring an emphasis for creation care and help point us back to the biblical call from God to care for his creation,” Teegarden said in an email interview. “We also make ourselves available to partner with the sustainability team on any additional events they may want to collaborate on.”
According to Teegarden, the goal of the directed chapels was to “bring deeper awareness to God’s call to care for and steward his creation, acknowledging both ourselves as God’s creation and the community/world around us.”
One chapel service, she said, that received strong student engagement was the “Praise & Worship” midway through the week.
“[Students] seem to really engage and respond well to the worship and the interactive prayer stations,” Teegarden said. “I think they appreciate the creativity and the chance to engage in prayerful practices together.”
In addition to physical events, Creation Care Week offered alternative ways to learn about environmental issues through the posters displayed around campus.
Another long-standing partner in promoting the week is the graphic design department.
According to Cascia Collings, a fourth-year graphic design major and creator of one of the posters, students were given about three weeks for research and completion.
The prompt asked them to choose a country and educate others about global and environmental issues affecting it in a visually compelling way.
“It made me happy to see students stopping to look at my poster because that was exactly the goal: to get people thinking and talking about how we can all help,” Collings said.
She said the process of creating her poster and seeing her classmates’ work was impactful.
“I learned a lot about how climate change is impacting the coral reefs [in the Maldives] and how that affects the whole ecosystem,” she said. “Everyone’s work taught me something new about different countries and issues around the world.”
The Office of Sustainability hopes to expand its reach and increase the number of events it holds throughout the year, Mason said. Their goal is to have one event each month, in addition to Creation Care Week and Plant Loma, the two main events they’ve hosted in years past.
Ava Bailey-Klugh 
Sydney Brammer 
Carson Dillon