Chatham University
EN-3: Student Life

Naturality Club promotes a healthier lifestyle by educating and introducing different kinds of diets and other healthy lifestyle choices. The Fermentation Club was started by Chatham University M.A. in Food Studies students to provide opportunities to learn and experiment with fermenting food and beverages at Eden Hall campus. The Bike Collective is a group of students dedicated to encouraging and enabling students to bike, rather than drive. With the help of the local organizations, Free Ride and Bike Pittsburgh, the collective guides students through the ins and outs of bicycle commuting. Pittsburgh Student Environmental Coalition (PSEC): Although not strictly a Chatham organization, the Pittsburgh Student Environmental Coalition (PSEC) is a youth collective working to promote positive environmental change in Pittsburgh and beyond. PSEC is a cohesive organization as well as a support system for its member environmental organizations.

The garden at our Eden Hall campus is an organic student-run teaching garden. We also compost, and practice permaculture and vermiculture at our Eden Hall campus. In addition, we have bee hives that act as the primary pollinators of our organic garden and for our small heritage fruit tree orchard. Each summer, graduate assistants run the Work-and-Pick Cooperative which is open to all students, staff, and faculty to work in the organic student garden in exchange for experience and produce.

Eden Hall Coffee is a Fair Trade, certified organic blend coffee that was created for the M.A. in Food Studies program in partnership with local coffee roasters, La Prima Espresso. This is a student-run enterprise, and all of the proceeds from our coffee sales go to the Food Studies Scholarship Fund.

The Chatham University Green Fund officially launched in 2014 on the university's website, MyChatham, to easily allow students, faculty, or staff to donate toward sustainability-focused projects developed by students. Projects are submitted to the Office of Sustainability and voted on by the Chatham University Climate Committee, as well as Chatham Eco-Reps. Fundraising has evolved to include RoundUp for Green Fund, in which any credit card purchase can be rounded up to the nearest dollar with proceeds benefiting the Green Fund. In addition, Project Greensleeves, an initiative started during RecycleMania 2015, asks volunteers to create reusable coffee cup sleeves with 100% proceeds donated toward the Green Fund.

Chatham University Falk School of Sustainability co-hosted the Inspire Speakers Series with Green Building Alliance, which is a monthly speaker series dedicated to showcasing individuals who are committed to sustainability and social equity, and offers reduced ticket prices (or free tickets, depending on the event) to students. Second, the Falk School hosted the Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food, and Human Values annual meeting and conference in June 2015 that brought together Food Studies scholars from around the world and was free for Falk School students who volunteered. Third, the Falk School hosts the yearly Eden Hall Research Symposium which showcases student research related to sustainability. Lastly, the Falk School hosted the "Goat Symposium" during Spring 2015 semester to highlight student research on goat welfare and brought in farmers to provide their own experiences raising goats in Western Pennsylvania. The Office of Sustainability hosted the Rachel Carson Commemoration and Garden Dedication in April 2014 to honor the 50th anniversary of the death of Rachel Carson and the dedication of a perennial butterfly garden in honor of her life, and hosted speakers from the Rachel Carson Institute to reflect on her life and connection to Chatham. The Office of Sustainability also co-hosted the Shale Waste Disposal Forum in May 2015 with the League of Women Voters that brought together speakers with a wide range of views on the health and environmental impacts of shale waste disposal in Western Pennsylvania. In Spring 2014, the Chatham Department of Communication hosted the Media and Social Change Conference: Seeking Sustainability, that included student presentations on sustainable community projects, student-created films on topics pertaining to sustainability, and a lecture by Dr. Jennifer Adams on “Creative Inquiry and Critical Connections to Place, Identity, and Environment." In March 2015, Chatham's Career Development office hosted the Young Professional Women in Energy event, which featured a headline speaker and roundtable discussion with women who work in a range of positions with energy companies in the Pittsburgh area. Rea House, Chatham's Environmental Living and Learning Community, hosts an environmentally-focused movie series with student-led discussions afterwards (this series is student-governed). The upcoming Global Focus 2015-2016 Year of Climate Change will offer a variety of speakers and workshops on campus related to climate change, as well as a culminating international trip for students during Maymester 2016.

The Drop Project is an interactive, transdisciplinary exhibit that communicates the importance and promise of sustainability communications working together with sustainability science, to encourage action through knowledge in local stakeholders by highlighting their role in watershed wellbeing. The exhibit involved a month­long series of exhibits and workshops in April 2014 held at Assemble, a community space for arts and technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chatham University graduate students at the new Falk School of Sustainability teamed with their professor to create an experience that explores the complex pathways of water in Pittsburgh’s landscape and in local people's lives. Ann Payne and Kristen Reynolds, both second-year graduate students, co-designed the exhibit as part of their final thesis project along with Chatham sustainability professor and ecologist, Dr. Molly Mehling. In July 2016, Chatham partnered with The Opera Theater Summerfest for the world premiere of "A New Kind of Fallout," a new eco-opera inspired by the life and work of Rachel Carson '29, a Pittsburgh-trained scientist and author whose seminal 1962 work, "Silent Spring," helped launch the environmental movement in the United States. The event was geared toward current students and Chatham alumni, and was shown at the Twentieth Century Club in nearby Oakland. http://www.chatham.edu/alumni/events/details.cfm?eventID=14032

The 2014 LEAD: Wilderness Expedition was a 3-day outdoor co-curricular educational workshop that lead students through a series of leadership development experiences. Those participating in this program engaged with fellow students, faculty and staff to develop skills in teamwork, personal and group leadership, and communication. The LEAD: Wilderness Expedition guided these students through the Leadership Challenge model while participating in activities such as whitewater rafting, camping, and group facilitations and discussions. Chatham University also partners with Venture Outdoors, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to outdoor activities. Through this program students can participate in various outdoor activities such as biking, hiking and skiing.

The Global Focus program at Chatham University engages our students in the purposeful study of peoples and civilizations. Our community of scholars promotes the acquisition of sustainable global competencies through the critical and holistic exploration of one specific country or region of the globe every year. The program concurrently reinforces cross-cultural ties and internationalization initiatives in the greater Pittsburgh area and beyond. The 2014-2015 program was the Year of Southern Africa, which focused on the 15 nations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the role of the "green economy" in the development of this region of Africa. The 2015-2016 Global Focus theme with be the Year of Climate Change.

Chatham University offers a variety of programs in which students can learn sustainable life skills, hosted at both our Eden Hall and Shadyside campuses. Programs at the Eden Hall campus include mushroom inoculation and harvesting workshops, Work and Pick Co-op to volunteer at the Eden Hall Farm during the summer and fall, and canning and fermentation workshops sponsored by the Fermentation Club. Programs at the Shadyside campus include the 2014 Women and Biking Forum co-sponsored with Bike Pittsburgh, which offered bike safety and basic maintenance workshops, Bike Works bike shop walk-in hours where students can learn basic repair skills with an on-site bike mechanic, and environmental sustainability workshops sponsored by the Rea House Environmental Living and Learning community with skills such as making-your-own trail mix and bird feeder building.

There are opportunities each year for graduate students from the Falk School of Sustainability to work in the Office of Sustainability as graduate associates or graduate assistants. These positions provide direct experience in sustainability communications and outreach, metrics, event coordination, etc. In addition, through the Office of Sustainability, there is an opportunity for an undergraduate student to obtain basic bike mechanics certification to run the Bike Works bike shop on campus. There are also opportunities each semester for graduate students from the Falk School of Sustainability to work on the Eden Hall campus farm as graduate associates or assistants. These positions allow students to gain hands-on sustainable agriculture experience including vegetable production for Parkhurst Dining Services, coordinating volunteers for the Work and Pick Co-op, planning and maintaining the student garden, and running sustainability workshops such as shiitake mushroom inoculation.

The graduation pledge on sustainability is voluntary for all students. The students will be able to wear an identifying ribbon to signify that they have made the graduation pledge. The graduation pledge is through Graduation Pledge Alliance.

The Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University hosts a monthly Women Business Leaders Breakfast Series, which features prominent women business owners in the Pittsburgh region and discussions of topics such as as marketing, financing, social media, negotiation, sustainability, and innovation. Every January on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Chatham participates in the national MLK Day of Service through service projects with a variety of sustainability-related non-profit organizations including 9 Mile Run, Friends of the Riverfront, and Student Conservation Association. At the end of each spring semester, Chatham hosts University Day: Buckets and Blossoms in which Chatham students, staff, and faculty participate in cleaning the university's grounds and planting flowers. For the past two years, University Day has also been Chatham's celebration of Arbor Day through a student-involved campus tree planting, which aligns with Chatham's designation as a "Tree Campus USA" by the Arbor Day Foundation. Chatham students have also helped organized the yearly Empty Bowls Hunger Banquet at our Eden Hall campus, which supports the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. In addition to speakers from local food access organizations, graduate students from the M.A. in Food Studies program present on the challenges of food insecurity for families in the U.S.