CANTON -- The Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley will hold its annual Sustainability Day at SUNY Canton Friday, Sept. 29.

The event, which is free and open to the public, aims to create a culture of sustainability at the four colleges -- Clarkson University, St. Lawrence University, SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam -- in partnership with surrounding communities.

Sustainability Day will begin at 1 p.m. in the Richard W. Miller Campus Center's Kingston Theater with a welcome address by SUNY Canton President Zvi Szafran. There will also be a performance by Maia Weiss, a student at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music.

Breakout sessions beginning at 2 p.m. will cover a variety of environmental topics, including campus ecological design, invasive species eradication in Norwood Lake, composting, sustainability in theater production, Alaskan indigenous communities and climate change, water quality analysis of the Grasse River, a tree-planting event, and a laughter yoga workshop.

The keynote address, titled "The Real Human Being and Challenges to Our Survival in Today's World," will be delivered by Ilarion Merculieff from the Global Center for Indigenous Leadership and Lifeways at 3:30 p.m. in the Kingston Theater. Merculieff has served as an advocate for a sustainable planet and his people, the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands, for nearly four decades.

Following the address, a reception and Sustainability Fair will feature local food and community organizations, including Local Living Venture, Nature Up North, St. Lawrence Land Trust, Cornell Cooperative Extension, St. Lawrence County Planning Office/Environmental Management Council, North Country Faith and Ecology Group, and Algonquin to Adirondack (A2A) Collaborative.

Finally, an art installation on the Grasse River adjacent to campus will conclude the event at approximately 6:15 p.m. The display, titled "Convergence," is an interactive exhibit featuring more than 100 lights designed by Associate Professor Matthew J. Burnett, who teaches in the Graphic and Multimedia Design Program at SUNY Canton.

North Country Public Radio is Sustainability Day's media sponsor.

Visit the Associated Colleges Sustainability Web page at https://sites.google.com/clarkson.edu/sustainabilityday/schedule for a full list of events, or contact Heather Sullivan-Catlin, chair of SUNY Potsdam's Department of Environmental Studies, at 315-267-2570.