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When Syracuse University’s campus bee hives were damaged by a car in July 2021, Lisa Olson-Gugerty was amazed by her colleague Meg Lowe’s determination to help move the hives to a secure location, despite the 90-degree heat and an injured wrist.

“(Lowe) made sure everything was running smoothly,” said Olson-Gugerty, an associate teaching professor at SU’s Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. “Every step of the way, she has been there in supporting me beyond what anyone would expect a colleague at work to do.”

Lowe will be leaving her role as a sustainability coordinator at SU this Friday, which happens to be Earth Day. She will be joining Montera Health, a health care company, as a graphic designer.

“I’m really sad to go because I think I’ve poured a lot of myself into my work at the university, so it’s bittersweet,” Lowe said. “I’m ready for something different, and I’m ready to see what else the world has to offer, but at the same time, it’s kind of hard to go.”

Lowe has aimed to spread sustainability awareness and community engagement on campus, including making SU a Bee Campus USA affiliate and establishing Pete’s Giving Garden.

Those who have worked with Lowe at SU, including Olson-Gugerty, said they will miss her constant support, energy and character.

After earning a master’s in nutrition sciences at SU in 2018, Lowe applied her skills and passions to take on different sustainability projects across campus.

She was also the first summer student intern for SU’s sustainability management team in 2016. Following her internship, Lowe was hired as a sustainability coordinator in 2017, helping the university strive toward its climate action goals.

“I think we all recognize the current state of the world, and climate change, and that we all play a part in that too,” Lowe said. “(SU has) been here over 150 years. We should be here another 150 years, and so forth, so continuing our longevity and our influence on the community, helping our community, there’s no reason not to do it.”

Melissa Cadwell, SU’s other sustainability coordinator, said she interviewed Lowe for her intern position. She said the department’s internship program aims to figure out a project that each student is passionate about and will help them reach their sustainability goals.

“I think if you’re going to nurture students the way that we do, you either have it or you don’t, and she’s one of the people who has that,” Cadwell said.

Cadwell said the department created a position to fit Lowe’s skills at the time, as Lowe came to the university not knowing exactly what she wanted to pursue.

Lowe has led the sustainability department’s social media, has illustrated graphics and spent the last year revamping the department’s website. She reduced the site’s page count from 144 to 23 to streamline the site’s information.

Lowe said she wanted to focus her work on social issues incorporated with environmental issues. She wanted to start a community garden to address food insecurity, and in 2019, she helped establish Pete’s Giving Garden, which provides fresh produce within Hendricks Chapel Food Pantry.

“Making sure that our people are fed and taken care of is something that’s really important to me,” Lowe said. “Maybe it’s the hospitality aspect that I grew up with, but there are a lot of ways that you can take sustainability. You can go all corporate with it if you want, but I’m definitely not; I’m hippie by all means,” she said.

Growing up in Michigan and North Carolina, Lowe spent much of her time at her grandparents’ farm in Michigan, where her passion for sustainability developed. She watched her grandpa rotate his crops, limiting his use of pesticides, and helped her grandma grow vegetables out of her garden.

Inspired by Lowe’s work, Grace Cho, a student intern in the program, has been working on a garden guidebook for Pete’s Giving Garden to ensure proper sustainability management.

“I want to make some type of difference. I feel like Meg has been a good inspiration,” Cho said. “She’s made a lot of good impacts that are going to be lasting here after she leaves the university, so that’s something I want to do too.”

Cho said she has noticed how Lowe reinforces inclusivity and accessibility within the interns’ projects, both when it comes to design and community engagement. She mentioned the Three Sisters gardens, which brought traditional seeds used by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the land that SU occupies, and the importance of bringing this recognition to campus.

Christopher Kalaw, another student intern in the department, wasn’t sure if his internship placement would be a good fit, but he now feels it is a perfect placement. He said he looks up to Lowe and her personality.

“She’s a model leader,” Kalaw said. “Not in-your-face, very knowledgeable, and shows you that this can still be a form of leadership and guidance.”

Lowe has collaborated with departments across campus, including the School of Design. Seyeon Lee, an associate professor focusing on environmental and interior design, worked on projects with Lowe including one that utilized a Campus as a Laboratory Grant to reduce waste produced by the studios at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse. Lee described Lowe as proactive and said she strived for a better environment for everyone.

“She is definitely a go-getter,” Lee said. “She will try to make everybody succeed and if she says she is going to do it, we know for a fact she is going to do it.”

Lowe hopes the university continues to strengthen its sustainability goals.

“I think the university is at the cusp of something big with sustainability. What exactly that will look like we’re not sure yet, but we know that we have big carbon neutrality goals to accomplish,” Lowe said. “And I’m excited to stand back and see what they can do.”

Published on April 18, 2022 at 1:24 am

Contact Lilli: [email protected] | @LilliIannella