Amherst College
EN-2: Co-Curricular Activities

The Sustainable Solutions Lab (SSL) brings students together to identify campus sustainability issues, ideate on possible solutions to address the issue, and then work to implement solutions for improved campus sustainability. The group has led recent campaigns to reduce the use of single use cups in the dining hall, facilitated battery recycling across the residence halls, and explored rewilding the campus landscape.

SSL Org Site: https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/programs/ssl

The Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) is a campus student organization that looks to empower students to lead in helping preserve the health and sustainability of the world’s oceans. The group engages students through bringing in speakers, showing documentaries, running sustainability campaigns that involve students (such as going strawless), in hopes that people continue spreading the knowledge and attitude required to protect our oceans.  

SOA site: https://thehub.amherst.edu/organization/amherstsoa 

The Environmental Justice Alliance (EJA) seeks to introduce students to grassroots activism, with a focus on environmentalism and sustainability. They hold education events like panels and movie screenings, alongside more action-focused events like poster distribution and petitions to the Amherst administration.  

EJA site: https://thehub.amherst.edu/organization/sunrise_eja

The Food Justice Alliance (FJA) contributes to the struggle for a more just American food system by acknowledging and fighting against the exploitation and inequality that exists at all levels of the food system. This includes advocating for policy change and working within our own community to address barriers to equal access and choice for low-income communities and communities of color, exploitative treatment of producers (including workers in factories, in slaughterhouses, and on farms), treatment of nonhuman animals, and the treatment of the land. 

FJA site: https://thehub.amherst.edu/organization/fja 

Each year, the Office of Sustainability coordinates and organizes a campus wide Earth Week that includes daily participatory engagement events and culminates in an Earth Day / Earth Fest celebration campus festival. Each day offers a number of campus wide student opportunities around a particular sustainability theme. For example the 2023 Earth Week slate included:

• Monday - Decarbonization Day - Campus Sustainability Scavenger Hunt with prizes, and Tour of Construction for the Climate Action Plan

• Tuesday - Alternative Transportation Day - Bike Maintenance Workshop at the Tread Shed (student run campus bike shop)

• Wednesday - Waste/Compost Day - Residential Waste Audit on the quad and Farm Compost Demo

• Thursday - Food Day - Local Cooking event at the campus Book & Plow Farm with well-known food activist Neftalí Durán.

• Friday - Arbor Day Celebration - Megaflora Old Tree lunch talk with Kevin James (USDA Forestry Service), Campus Tree Walk with Kenny Lauzier (Grounds Director), and Tree Planting and Arbor Day Celebration on the quad

• Saturday - Food Systems Day - Campus Earth Day Celebration; Student foraging event / nature walk with Indigenous ecology expert, Elizabeth James-Perry; Campus Farm Book & Plow’s “Share the Share” Event at the Farm for food justice.

EcoReps Program: In the residence halls, the EcoReps program is the main catalyst for sustainable behavior change. This residential peer to peer student sustainability education program is aimed at infusing sustainable living and lifestyle choices into the residential life experience and creating a campus culture of sustainability. The program includes a series of education modules covering an array of sustainability topics (e.g., zero waste, climate change, purchasing impacts, sustainability justice), aimed at improving sustainable behaviors across campus. Each residence hall has an assigned EcoRep.

EcoReps are selected each spring for the following academic year through a competitive application process. EcoReps are paid by the Office of Sustainability and work 4 hours a week during the school year. The sustainability office also hires a student EcoLeader to help oversee and manage the EcoRep program. The EcoReps come back to campus a few days before the arrival of the first years for a multi-day training program, and then assist with move in and orientation. During the school year the EcoReps conduct weekly interactive tabling education and outreach outside the dining hall and engage in regular sustainability engagement activities within their assigned residence halls.

https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/programs/ecoreps

The college offers many opportunities for students to be employed in a sustainability focused position.

The Student Sustainability Fellows and EcoReps Programs are two of the Office of Sustainability's flagship student programs and engage students in real world, campus and community sustainability efforts and education. In 2023 - 2024, the office employed 10 EcoReps and 21 Student Fellows. EcoReps work 4 hours per week and Student Fellows 6 hours per week.

The 2023 Student fellow positions included: Climate Action Fellow, Food Systems Fellow, Green Athletics Fellows, Green Labs Fellow, Zero Waste Fellow, EcoLeader (2), Communications and Outreach Fellow, Sustainability Assessment Fellow (2), Sustainable Investment Fellow, Data Dining Fellow, Alternative Transportation Fellow (2), GIS Spatial Mapping Fellow, Amherst Mobile Market Fellow, Kestrel Land Trust Fellow (2), Hitchcock Center for the Environment Fellow, Amherst Survival Center Fellow (2).

Student Fellows: https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/programs/susinterns

EcoReps - https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/programs/ecoreps

The Book and Plow is our organic-practice campus farm. The farm is committed to sustainable agricultural practices and provides the dining hall with fresh produce. The farm offers a variety of educational, research, and community programs around food and farming and employs a large number of student workers (30+).

Book & Plow - https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/book-plow-farm 

The Tread Shed is a student-run campus bike shop that helps train students and the campus community on basic bike maintenance, upkeep, and repair. They identify and collect abandoned bikes from across campus and offer a work to own bike program whereby students can volunteer hours of service towards the ownership of a fixed up abandoned bike. The shop holds weekly drop in hours and regular bike workshops. 

Tread Shed - https://www.amherst.edu/about/sustainability/programs/transportation/treadshed 

The Option is a student run consignment bookstore on campus where students can sell and buy used textbooks. The Option is located in the basement of one of the campus residence halls and has an inventory of roughly 18,000 textbooks for sale.

The Option - https://www.instagram.com/theoptionac/ 

The Sustainability Trek Program - the trek program is a unique opportunity for current Amherst students to have a deep dive experience into a professional ecosystem. Treks typically run for 3-5 days in various cities across the US, involve a marathon of alumni visits and other educational activities, and help students gain more nuanced and realistic impressions of their career fields of interest. For many students, these trek programs are transformative and help to not only educate them on a specific area / industry, but also provide a perspective that will aid in their career decision process. 

The Office of Sustainability offers an annual trek program for students interested in sustainability related careers. In 2022 we traveled to Boston and in 2023 to NYC with 14 students for a week during the college’s January break. The trek includes over four days of discussions, site visits, panels, and group reflection covering career opportunities across a variety of sustainability related careers (from sustainability planning and management to climate and energy to food systems to sustainable architecture and design to social justice and equity to corporate sustainability). 

Based on our campus wide sustainability survey, 44.2% of students said that they have participated in at least one of the following sustainability activities:

- Bike Share Program (@ the Gym)

- Tread Shed Bike Repair (@ Cooper Garage)

- Earth Week Events

Additionally, well more than half of the student body particiated in the Campus Free Yardsale and Free Clothing Event that annually happen during Move In and the start of school. Although we don't have an exact number, we conservatively estimated that over 1,100 students attended (>50%).

Photo from the free clothing event: