Chatham University
EN-3: Student Life

Student groups rise and fall, flow and change as students come and go.

Sustainability-focused clubs for 2017:
Fermentation Club continues, G3 continues, Net Impact continues.
New clubs include Sustainable poultry club at Eden Hall campus, and a chapter of Climate Reality.

In 2016, our clubs included:
-Grads Grow Green (G3) - for grad students in Health Sciences and Interior Architecture at Eastside. Club/peer educators group working to increase sustainability and green living at Eastside.

-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.
-Net Impact continues.

Clubs in 2015:
-Net Impact chapter
-Naturality, promoting a healthier lifestyle by educating and introducing different kinds of diets and other healthy lifestyle choices.
-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 of students from Pitt CMU, Chatham and Duquesne that promote positive environmental change in Pittsburgh.

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.

The aquaculture lab gives students experience in sustainable fish raising.

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. The fund has grown from the original $1000 to $7000 and continues to grow. 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. Roundup for Green fund was a class project in the Marketing program about 6 years ago. 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.

The students of Grads Grow Green are particularly avid proposers to Green Fund, and their projects include adding plants to improve the atmosphere and indoor air quality in Eastside common areas, a Green Coffee project to encourage students to make more sustainable coffee choices

In October 2017, the Food & Climate Change Conference was organized by the Eden Hall Fellows and hosted by the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment. The conference was free and open to the public and had the participation of renowned speakers (Frances Moore Lappé and Julie Guthman), panelists from Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, poster presentations from Chatham students (sustainability and food studies), among others.

In April 2016, Chatham University and the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment hosted the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium’s (PERC) third annual 2016 Student Sustainability Symposium. The conference theme was “A Climate for Change,” and over 100 students from around the region attended the conference. The conference, in conjunction with Pennsylvania Green Colleges, involved a series of panel sessions, roundtables, and poster competition.

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 Global Focus 2015-2016 Year of Climate Change offered a variety of speakers and workshops on campus related to climate change, as well as a culminating international trip for students during Maymester 2016.

Every year in March, Chatham co-hosts the Wild & Scenic Film Festival with Pennsylvania Resources Council. For the past 2 years, festival goers learn about issues relating to litter, ocean and river health, air pollution and more. The 2019 event will be held March 3 at the Eddy Theater. http://prc.org/filmfestival/

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

EHC also hosts community-wide events such as the annual Hunger Banquet, and workshops including Leave No Trace, Back Country Backpacking, Soapmaking,
Wilderness Survival and First Aid, and Community Create Nights that are open to all students.

The LEAD: Wilderness Expedition is an annual 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 guides 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. The aquaculture lab teaches fish raising and harvesting techniques. Programs at the Shadyside campus include safe commuting, 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.

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. The Sustainability Office also hires Eco-reps as peer educators for students 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. Students taking the pledge are able to wear an identifying ribbon at graduation to signify that they have made the graduation pledge. The graduation pledge is through Graduation Pledge Alliance. We try to have a separate ceremony for signing (not possible every year) or make sure that pledge makers are mentioned in the graduation ceremony or designated in the program.

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.

http://prc.org/filmfestival/