Colgate University
EN-1: Student Educators Program

Colgate's Green Raider Program promotes individual sustainable behavior at Colgate University in a fun and competitive way by hiring and training student interns to promote sustainable living on campus. 13-15 student interns are chosen to become Green Raiders. Their responsibilities include organizing events, advertising outreach campaigns, mentoring first-year Green Ambassadors and facilitating sustainability-related PE Courses. The interns also aid in the completion of the annual Greenhouse Gas Inventory in order to ensure that we will meet our carbon neutrality goal by 2019. The program raises awareness around issues of sustainability in residential halls and utilizes online support, videos, how-to-guides, social media, and other tools to aid Colgate students in their pursuit to be more sustainable. The program seeks to connect individual behaviors on campus to Colgate’s overarching sustainability commitment. During the academic year, each member of the team is responsible for implementing elements of Green Raider Program (designed during the summer), making progress on an individual project that advances sustainability on campus, and completing creative writing exercises designed to raise awareness of sustainability among peers.

Students are selected through an application and interview process. Students who display a passion for institutional sustainability and demonstrate a high degree of professionalism are selected as interns. Students who are are interested are permitted to return to the staff year after year.

Before the official start to the new academic year, student interns return to campus early to participate in a full-day of training/orientation workshops. The workshops include field trips, ice-breakers, readings, and a review of sustainability in higher education and at Colgate University. They are informed of the current problems and they think of ways that they could reduce or solve those sustainable problems throughout the year. The interns also participate in a retreat to the Adirondack mountains a few weeks into the semester in which they engage in team-building activities, develop skills to communicating sustainability-related ideas, and develop ideas for the program. In addition to these training programs, the Green Raider team meets on a weekly basis throughout the semester to organize and plan, share progress, troubleshoot, assign tasks, and to exchange best-practices.

This program is a part of Colgate's Office of Sustainability, which is staffed by a director, program coordinator, and administrative assistant. Interns are paid through the Office of Sustainability. Budgeting was approved by our VP of Finance and Administration as part of our 2011 Sustainability and Climate Action Plan.

The Green Ambassador volunteer program works closely with the Green Raider Internship program to develop programming and encourage sustainability engagement among first-year students. This program seeks to find connections between the Green Raider programming and the first-year students and then utilizes those connections to drive greater engagement among the first-year students. The Green Ambassadors assist with spreading the message of sustainability to their peers in their residence hall, participating in and advertising for Recyclemania, and other novel programming catered specifically to first-years.

The Green Ambassadors are first-year students and are selected based on the residence hall in which they reside. The goal for our selection process is to have 2-3 Green Ambassadors per first-year residence hall. These students express their interest in the program through an application. The sustainability interns and program coordinator then select Green Ambassadors based on the expressed enthusiasm in their application, and their residence hall. During the 2016-2017 Academic year, there were 30 Green Ambassadors.

The Green Ambassadors have weekly, one-hour trainings for three weeks with their Green Raider mentors on the basics of sustainability at Colgate and the overview of their programming for the academic year. After the initial trainings, the Green Ambassadors meet with their Green Raider Mentors and the Program Coordinator every other week to continue education and plan upcoming events.

Funding for this program is provided by the Sustainability and Climate Action Fund, as these behavior change efforts are a part of the larger goal of getting Colgate to achieve climate neutrality.

Community Garden interns work at the Colgate Community Garden and develop programs and activities to promote sustainable agriculture and food practices. Most notably, they organize "Work Parties" that encourage students and other community members to come and help out at the Community Garden.

The educators are interviewed by the garden manager and selected based on experience, enthusiasm, and knowledge of sustainability.

These interns are trained by the garden manager on sustainable agriculture practices. The interns also partake in a 6-week summer course to learn about the foundations of sustainability and community-based social marketing.

Student educators are paid through the Sustainability Office and are overseen by the garden manager and the director of sustainability.