Focus Frostburg 2025
Focus Frostburg is an annual day of learning with programs, workshops and films addressing sustainability and climate awareness. The programs are free and open to the public.
– SCHEDULE –
10:00 AM
Film: Renewal
LUC 111
Renewal captures the vitality and diversity of today’s religious-environmental activists. From within their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Muslim traditions, Americans are becoming caretakers of Earth. Their stories of combating global warming and the devastation of mountaintop removal, of promoting food security, environmental justice, recycling and land preservation and of teaching love and respect for life on Earth are the heart of Renewal.
11:00 AM
Climate Anxiety and Environmental Justice Movements
Kara Rogers Thomas
LUC 111
Climate Anxiety has spurred an international Environmental Justice Movement. Come learn about this new documented mental condition and how it’s encouraging young people to take a stand and fight for a better future.
12:00 PM
FSU Tree Campus Arbor Day Celebration
Clock Tower
FSU Tree Campus Higher Education group will proclaim Arbor Day in celebration of how important trees are to our campus, state, country and world.
12:00 PM
Film: A Thousand Pines
LUC 113
A Thousand Pines shows the lives of migrants who depend on the controversial guest worker visa program, following a crew of workers from Oaxaca, Mexico over the course of a season planting trees throughout the United States. The crew struggles to balance the job’s physical demands and its extreme isolation while remaining connected to their families back home.
Director, Producer, Noam Osband will be joining the session for a brief question and answer period. Osband is a filmmaker, radio producer, and anthropologist. His first feature was the nationally-broadcast film Adelante, and his documentary, The Radical Jew, won Best Short Documentary at the Charlotte Film Festival and the Tallgrass Film Festival. He is also a radio and print journalist, whose bylines include The Atlantic, BBC4, Criminal, and Freakonomics Radio.
1:00 PM
Sustaining Civility in 2025 and Beyond: Renewing the Choose Civility Campaign in Allegany County, MD
Elesha Ruminski and Renee Mason
LUC 111
The Choose Civility: Allegany County chapter is undergoing a strategic planning process to update its vision and structure (#RenewChooseCivility). Learn about the mission of this grassroots effort and contribute to its reframing through this listening session that invites fresh ideas for the chapter's principles and collaborative partnerships.
2:00 PM
A Tailored STATCOM new Configuration technique to optimize and dynamically control the Voltage Instability during heavy/light load Condition
Tariq Masood and Jamil Abdo
LUC 113
Come learn about STATCOM technology. STATCOM is capable of both generating and absorbing variable levels of reactive power continuously, as opposed to the discrete values of fixed and switched shunt capacitors or reactors. With a continuously variable reactive power supply, the voltage at the STATCOM-connected bus may be maintained smoothly over a wide range of system operation conditions. This enables the provision of sufficient power quality to the electric energy end-users and can significantly reduce the chances of network failures.
2:00 - 4:00 PM
Giant Map of Maryland Session
LUC Atkinson Room
Join Tracy Edwards and her Geography students and explore key MD environmental, energy, and climate action sites in our state. Take your shoes off to "tour" these sites on a giant map of MD!
3:00 PM
“Growing the Regional Outdoor Recreation Economy”-
Jeffrey Simcoe, Executive Director, Frostburg Outdoor Recreation Economy Institute (FOREI)
LUC 111
The Frostburg Outdoor Recreation Economy Institute (FOREI) strives to improve the region’s quality of life by growing the outdoor recreation ecosystem in a way that impacts our community’s health and prosperity. This presentation will frame the regional outdoor recreation economy,introduce FOREI’s programs, and highlight the benefits of outdoor recreation.
3:00 - 5:00 PM
Sustainability 455 Showcase
LUC Atkinson Room
Sustainability students share info on their Spring 2025 Engagement Initiatives, including our FSU EcoBrick Build, Nature Forward's Taking Nature Black, FSU pollinator garden progress as well as some experiences with our MD State Parks and the MD Department of Natural Resources. Also present will be Maryland DNR representative Seth Moessinger, with a station on Fisheries Science in Maryland - Coldwater Streams and Rivers.
4:00 PM
Eco Bricking Workshop
LUC Atkinson Room
Learn more about EcoBricks and how to make them. Join in FSU’s efforts to construct an EcoBrick bench – a visible reminder of how much soft plastics are in our lives and biosphere when we don’t work to remove them. Meet Sydnie Scire, event organizer and current president of the Sustainability Awareness Society. Learn how you can get involved with EcoBricks and other campus and community sustainability initiatives.
5:00 PM
Analysis of Trash in Local Streams and Waterways Through GIS Mapping and Crowdsourcing
LUC Atkinson Room
A team of local elementary and middle school robotics students developed a GIS mapping app for recording trash collected from streams and waterways. They worked with FSU students in the SUST 155 class during the fall of 2024 to collect data from local streams and areas around storm drains. Which item is the most frequently found in the trash pickup? Come to this session to find out and learn about how you can utilize the app to help in trash pickup and prevent our waterways from being polluted.