Arizona State University
EN-3: Student Life

Student-run/governed organizations devoted to sustainability efforts on campus include: Engineers Without Borders, ASU chapter, is a non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities to improve their quality of life through implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects. Accomplishment includes: During summer 2013, several members of the ASU chapter of Engineers Without Borders spent about five weeks during July and August in the Bondo Rarieda district of Kenya to resurface one of several defective dams that are essential elements of the region’s water-supply system. Sustainability House at Barrett is a residential and academic community centered on a common dedication to the principles of sustainability which supports learning and action related to these ideas. Accomplishments include: Student members went to El Salvador to work with some impoverished communities. Nourish International at ASU works to eradicate poverty by engaging students and empowering communities. Accomplishment includes: During Spring 2011, together with the Cornell University chapter, Nourish International at ASU students went to Nicaragua to assist with building and planting a nursery of bamboo trees to aid reforestation efforts in Nicaragua. In this effort, they partnered with RAAN, a local farmers’ organization, and CO2Bambu, whose objective is to increase cultivation of a Central American bamboo, and promote its use for construction in Latin America and the US. The bamboo cultivation aids reforestation, and provides an economically valuable crop. Real Food ASU is a nationwide non-profit grassroots leadership project. Real Food's goal is to address topics within food systems especially local, humane, fair, and ecologically sound food. Accomplishments include: Tabling at the Tempe campus Farmers Market to raise awareness about Real Food issues. Also, promoting the Real Food Challenge (RFC). This event was sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest that planed the first-ever Food Day across campuses nationwide. The event aims to bring attention to the issues of obesity, supporting sustainable farming and making real food available to everyone. The Honor Society for Sustainability the Alpha Chapter of the HSS fosters a network of sustainability scholars from across the campus to the workforce to promote sustainable principles and empower others for success. Accomplishment includes: The formation of the Honor Society for Sustainability the Alpha Chapter. http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/docs/sos/honor-society/flyer.pdf Arizona State University Global Water Brigades is one of many programs in Global Brigades which designs and implements water systems to prevent water related illnesses in communities with limited access to clean water. Accomplishments include: Numerous projects throughout Honduras. http://asuglobalbrigades.weebly.com/water.html Green Devils (Polytechnic campus) Our mission is to make our campuses and community more sustainable. Are members are project leaders. It is great place to get experience on how to run projects and organize events. Accomplishment includes: Assisting with green events, tabling to raise awareness about ASU’s sustainability initiatives and goals. Assisting with the Polytechnic community garden. The Barrett Sustainability Club is a group of awesome students in the honors college that enjoys learning about the world and our place in it. We emphasize learning how society impacts the environment and what we can do to reduce our personal impact. We host events, cook dinners, volunteer in the local community, and have a fun time hanging out with each other. Accomplishment include: Maintaining the rooftop garden, then selling produced at the Tempe campus Farmers Market. Farmers Market Student Ambassadors exists to increase the amount and depth of student involvement in the Farmers Market @ ASU Tempe. FMSA will create an additional sustainability minded community at Arizona State University, Tempe. The end goal of FMSA is to provide the means for personal growth, professional development, and network expansion. Accomplishments include: Setting up, providing student staffing and closing each of the Tempe campus Farmers Markets. Tabling during student events to raise awareness about the Tempe campus Farmers Market. Attending conferences and speakers series about Real Food issues and Food Justice. UpRoot, the ASU Gardening Club is a new group of dedicated and passionate students, faculty, and staff who are actively working on designing, organizing, and ultimately creating an organic community garden on the West Campus. Along with the garden, UpRoot is working with members from other campuses to start a healthy food initiative. Through this we hope to bring healthier and more sustainable food options to ASU dining halls without a significantly higher cost. Overall, UpRoot wants to advocate and promote healthier lifestyles and sustainable living at ASU and in the community through gardening, educational events, and research. Accomplishments include: A garden will be open to the nearby community and all members of the ASU West community. Plots will be assigned to and maintained by: - individual students/faculty/staff/community members -ASU West departments (e.g. Psychology, Natural Sciences, etc.) -ASU West clubs and organizations -ASU programs, such as the Young Scholar Program. -organizations in the community -schools in the community. Other student-run/governed organizations devoted to sustainability efforts on campus include: VegAware spreads awareness and understanding of the issues surrounding a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle and creates a community for students who live a vegetarian lifestyle. Arizona State Cycling Community's primary mission is to consolidate and make available resources and services for cyclists. School of Sustainability College Council (SOSCC) collaborates with other clubs and organizations within the School of Sustainability to promote student involvement, nurture faculty-student relations, recognize outstanding faculty, organization, and student achievements and offer students the opportunity to learn and develop the leadership skills needed to solve today's environmental, economic, and social challenges of sustainability. SEEDS Devils are commonly interested in ecology, environmental education, sustainability and diversity. Sun Devils for Wildlife Conservation’s goal is to spread awareness of the importance of wildlife conservation through active participation in legislation and to assist local conservation groups both financially and physically through fundraising and volunteer efforts. Additionally, we work with several animal rights organizations to improve the treatment of animals in Arizona. U.S. Green Building Council Arizona State University Chapter - as a student group to USGBC, our goal to help students at ASU gain the knowledge needed to become LEED Accredited through study sessions, educational workshops, and practice tests. The Sustainability Review (TSR) communicates sustainability challenges, developments, and opportunities through reporting, analysis, opinion, and art/visual media. We are an online journal edited and published by graduate students at Arizona State University and hosted by the university’s School of Sustainability. The Arizona Student Environmental Coalition is a political action organization made up entirely of college students in the state of Arizona. We believe Arizona must transition from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy energy economy, meaning a prompt phase-out of coal fired electricity and the creation of a vibrant new solar industry. We are diligent citizens, safeguarding our local and global environment for future generations and for our own future on this planet. Diners We Care is dedicated to raise awareness in the ASU student body about the importance of saving food in the school's dining halls and promote sustainability by reducing the amount of edible food that is thrown away. Membership in the organization is open to all ASU students who CARE enough to make conscious decisions about their eating habits, and are willing to instill the caring spirit in the entire ASU community. Greenlight Solutions exists to enable sustainability minded undergraduate and graduate students at Arizona State University (ASU) to apply their education, through consulting projects, to help organizations to operate more sustainably. W. P. Carey MBA Net Impact’s mission is to improve the world by growing and strengthening a network of leaders who use the power of business to make a positive net social, environmental, and economic impact. The FlashFood Volunteer Recovery Driver Team at Arizona State University works with the greater FlashFood organization to help deliver fresh, healthy, excess food from restaurants to the people who need it most, locally. Global Microfinance brigades seek to provide rural communities in impoverished nations with micro-lending institutions from which they can withdraw small enough loans to better themselves. Additionally, we work to inform members of the community about savings options so that they understand how to set aside money for themselves and their future generations. Global Public Health Brigades is a network of students and professionals who volunteer to help under resourced communities in the developing world by improving home infrastructure and providing public health education. Our mission is to empower rural Honduran communities to prevent common illnesses through in-home infrastructural development, community leader training, and health education.

The Polytechnic campus is home to a large plot of land that was converted to a community garden in January of 2010. The garden currently has eight 20 x 25’ plots with plans to cultivate four more. Each space is “rented out” to students, staff and faculty wishing to either demonstrate best practices or hone in on their own skills and successfully grow their own food or herbs. Three academic units center on applied work done in the garden. The garden also features a large compost area where residents can bring the kitchen scraps and effectively convert them to soil base. This eliminates the need for artificially fixed nitrogen and helps teach the surrounding community about the importance of soil building. This project is not student-governed.

GreenLight Solutions (GLS) was founded as a solution to multiple challenges. Students at Arizona State University (ASU) needed a way to apply the sustainability knowledge they were acquiring at ASU, and organizations needed a cost-effective way to start embracing sustainability. GLS has a cutting edge team of professionals and students eager to assist you with your unique sustainability solution, from inception to implementation. We have access to a pool of experts that encompasses practitioners and academics who have been immersed in the science of sustainability since it was embedded in ASU. Vision To design, promote, and educate about sustainability practices for organizations to implement through individualized solutions in order to create a more sustainable world. Mission To enable sustainability minded undergraduate and graduate students at Arizona State University (ASU) to apply their education, through consulting projects, to help organizations to operate more sustainably.

The Arizona State University Sustainability Initiatives Revolving Fund (SIRF) was established in fiscal year 2010 to invest in projects that foster and enable sustainability efforts and provide an economic return on investment. SIRF funds are available to all ASU community members. The SIRF is comprised of the following three tiers: • Tier 1 University Community Sustainability Micro Grants: Smaller projects that are designed to build a campus sustainability culture and promote student engagement. A small funding pool is set aside each year to award grants of up to $5,000, and is overseen by the director of Sustainability Practices at ASU and SIRF committee member. • Tier 2 Fund Matching and Efficiency Loans: Medium-scale, capital-improvement initiatives that return a project’s costs within 6 years or less. These loans are ideal for departments that need to upgrade or renovate space and equipment to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, and require that the department match-fund the proposed investment as well as share in the return generated. • Tier 3 Capital Expansion Loans: All large-scale initiatives that make a significant and measurable sustainability impact and return a project’s costs within 10 years or less. These loans are targeted at strategic internal and external partnerships that reduce carbon emissions. An ASU student used the $5,000 University Community Sustainability Micro Grant to engineer and manufacture and aeroponic system that mists the roots of growing plants with a nutrient solution, which eliminates the need for soil or substrate. See FY 2013 SIRF Annual Report: https://cfo.asu.edu/sirf this initiative is not student-governed.

Throughout the year, the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University sponsors, hosts, or endorses sustainability-related events, lectures, and conferences locally, nationally, and around the globe. Among the many events are two signature lecture series. The prestigious Wrigley Lecture Series brings world renowned thinkers from academia, business, and government engage the community in dialogues to address sustainability challenges. The Sustainability Series includes discussions on a range of environmental, social, and economic topics. This program is not student governed. The student-governed Campus Student Sustainability Initiative (CSSI) invites guest speakers, sponsors movies that covers pressing sustainability social justice issues, and organizes sustainability tours where students are the intended audience. CSSI is student-governed.

Arizona State University has an Arts and Humanities Sustainability Series to allow student to make the connection between sustainability and the arts.

The Arizona State University MBA Outdoors Club enhances appreciation for the outdoors through such activities as hiking, camping, rock climbing, swimming, golfing, biking, fishing and exploring. This club follows Leave No Trace principles. This program is not student governed.

The ASU Colleges at Havasu campus has an interdsciplinary program focused on social sustainability. The program crosses between General Studeis, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences and Communications programs on the Havasu campus.

Virtual Room As part of Campus Metabolism, an online Virtual Room displays the energy consumption of common dorm electronics. Students can explore the room any time and they can view the impact and measure of their energy use in their dorm rooms. Also, Arizona State University Housing maintains model residence hall rooms on all four of its campuses, eight rooms in total. To furnish the spaces, University Housing partners with IKEA, an international retailer known for its dedication to development of sustainable practices and products. University Housing also provides space within the rooms for third-party contracted partners to promote products and services for students. One such service is drinking water delivery, which was implemented in an effort to reduce the number of single-serving plastic water bottles on campus. These programs are not student-governed.

There are a number of undergraduate and graduate student employment opportunities within departments that provide special projects in sustainability. Examples include: University Sustainability Practices offers five to six Program Assistant positions and our Recycling Department offers 4 to six such positions. There are also many positions offered within the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiative. Positions are made available through Student Employment website.

The School of Sustainability offers the following co-curricular sustainability programs and initiatives. URL below provided more information about each of these programs. Community of Undergraduate Research Scholars Research Experiences for Undergraduates Study Abroad Undergraduate and Graduate Internships Graduate Research Assistantships Graduate Summer Grants