Earth Club, one of Dominion’s oldest clubs, is getting a revamp this year. For the first time since it’s founding, the club has a new sponsor. On top of the change in leadership, it is also partnering with Robey High School’s environmental science classes for many projects and activities this year. 

After Mary Young-lutz, the previous sponsor, told math teacher Patrick Cox that she was retiring, he accepted her request that he keep the club going. “This is the only club that has always been around at Dominion since it started, so I want to keep that tradition,” said Cox, who was part of the Earth Club at Dominion as a student from 2014-2017, when Young-lutz was a sponsor. 

“Obviously, the environment is important. I’ve always been a big lover of animals and just enjoying nature. Even though I didn’t go into the life sciences, I had that background from my parents,” said Cox, whose mom worked as a Dominion biology teacher.

Earth Club does activities such as park clean ups, fundraisers, environmental projects including the Keep Loudoun Beautiful Video contest (which gives the club the opportunity to win up to $400), and other volunteering activities. “We’re going to continue with the [school] courtyard cleanups, except this time, we’re partnering with Robey,” Co-President of the club Maya Abduhamdeh, said. 

This year, the Earth Club will be collaborating with the newly integrated William O. Robey High School’s environmental science classes. Andrea Wallace, Robey environmental science teacher, is spearheading the partnership, with their main goal being to clean up the school courtyard to make it an accessible place for students of all backgrounds to use. 

“We really want to make it special for everyone, for both Dominion and Robey kids to work on it,” Wallace said. “The more hands involved, the better, more kids working on it. [means] more ideas, more people who like the environment, the more they’ll care about it, want to do good, and enjoy it,” she adds.

Club co-president Maggie Chang said, “It’s really important that people know that even though we’re here, and we’re kind of one of those institutionalized things kind of like DECA, or National Honor Society, we’re not a super formal situation, there’s no barrier to joining, you can just show up to a meeting.” 

For students who want to become more involved in the club beyond just participating in the group activities, Earth Club has opened a new leadership position this year, “Officer In Training,” giving underclassmen a way to prepare to lead the club in their future years. “As most of our staff are seniors, we want to make sure that we’re really opening up opportunities to have good leadership next year,” Chang said.