The student directory says he’s from Virginia Beach. Not quite true.
“I lived in Virginia Beach for three days before I came to Wabash,” says Hezekiah Eibert ’15. The oldest son in a military family, he bounced around from New York to Sidney, IA, and graduated from high school in North Carolina before the stopover at NAS Oceana en route to Crawfordsville and the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
“I moved every year of my life until I came here, so Wabash, more than anywhere, is my home; I’ve lived in Phi Psi longer than anyplace else.”
Eibert says a desire to be deeply involved was one of the reasons he came to Wabash, and now that he has some roots in place, his community spirit is flourishing.
Take his work on campus last summer.
As a sustainability intern with Sodexo, the College’s campus services provider, Eibert’s big-picture goal was to turn Wabash green. Within two weeks he found $6,000 in savings for the College and restructured the neglected student bike rental program. He traveled to other colleges to see how their “green” programs worked and attended a conference on sustainability.
And he picked up the trash.
Every day.
From that repetition sprang a revelation: Wabash wasn’t efficient at recycling. Recyclable items were being put in the trash and adding to the costs of disposal. When Eibert began sorting the trash himself he realized that more efficient sorting could save the College $10,000 annually.
To get the word out and educate students about the value of proper sorting techniques, Eibert proposed Garbology 101—a community service project for freshman orientation.
So last August on a warm Tuesday morning, Eibert stood in front of more than a dozen freshmen explaining the consequences of inefficient sorting and the ways recycled items were used to create new products. Then he worked with the students to sort a day’s worth of campus trash and improve Wabash’s rate of recycling before taking them on a tour of a local recycling facility.
The group reduced 35 bags of garbage down to only two: Mission accomplished.
When Visiting Professor of Art Stefani Rossi asked if she could use the recyclables from that day’s sorting so that her students could create a work of art from it, Gar-bology 101 earned even more attention. Displayed at the Sparks Center, the finished artwork proved provocative.
“The project generated more conversation than I anti-cipated,” Rossi says. “And it generated both angst and glory in the students that participated.”
Eibert enjoyed the long-term attention for sustainability on campus: “Garbology was great, but it was a flame in the moment. The art piece sat there in front of Sparks and drew attention for the entire semester. Every day someone looked at it and thought about recycling. That was really cool.”
Rossi sees something unique in Eibert: “Hezekiah is the first student I’ve met since my time here who has come on the scene with a serious interest in environmental sustainability and the energy to spearhead the effort to make a positive impact.”
Director of Campus Services David Morgan says Eibert has blazed a trail for future sustainability interns: “Going into it, I was interested to find out if an intern from a liberal arts college—and not from an engineering, management, or business program or school—would deliver to Wabash valuable results. Hezekiah absolutely proved that’s possible. He lived recycling;
he was an advocate. There are students here that share enough of our interests and skill sets. We can use Wabash men to improve the campus.”
But sustainability efforts aren’t Eibert’s sole focus. He’s the Phi Psi philanthropy chair, a Sphinx Club member, and part of the Wilderness & Adventure Crew, and he mentors local youth through College Mentors for Kids. One Saturday morning last fall he led his Phi Psi brothers first to help out with Habitat for Humanity, then to assist local veterinarians at the Animal Welfare League when more than 40 dogs were rescued from inhumane conditions in Alamo.
“One of the best things about Wabash is that you can be involved in so many different things,” Eibert says. “Not just ‘I’m in a club to put it on my resume,’ but you can actually be a leader and do so many things on campus.
“I strive to be the man that people respect and know they can always call on. I believe that taking every chance to better myself is one way to do that.”