Green Collar Futures Conference 2014

Teaching

Mark Fleischhaker led workshops at Green Bricks‘ Green Collar Futures Conference. He sparked sustainability curiosity in youngsters (grades 10-12) by discussing conscious engineering concepts like rammed earth, wood, cordwood, bottle bricks, earthships, and much more. He presented on behalf of Associated Engineering who he works for during weekdays.

A wonderful demonstration of giving back to our communities, sharing knowledge, and inspiring our youth! Mark Fleischhaker, a structural engineer in our (Associated Engineering‘s) Burnaby office, volunteered his time and represented us at Green Bricks‘ Green Collar Futures Career Conference workshop. This initiative involves BC youth in sustainable land use and development through curriculum-linked outreach programs, by offering free interactive sustainability workshops to secondary and elementary classrooms.

Mark spoke about the importance of an engineer’s role in creating our built world by saying, “We have many options when deciding how to build, and certain choices might have a more positive effect on people, the planet, and economy. We, as engineers, have the opportunity and responsibility to make and influence those decisions.“

Diana Klein of the Green Bricks Society expressed her appreciation, “[The presenters] were all so amazing, had such great tables set up with lots of hands-on ‘show and tell’ and were fabulous with the students. We have had lots of students share how much they learned throughout the day from you all and how inspired they were by what you do… …We hope that the students also inspired you. The future lies with them – spending the day with them, seeing and sharing in their interest and the exploration of their career journeys was for us, at Green Bricks, truly inspirational.“