Colgate University
EN-3: Student Life

Beekeeping Club is a student group that exposes students to the practice of beekeeping and engaging students in sustainable behavior. Its effort is to help fight against Colony Collapse Disorder and help the ecological well-being of surrounding farms. Students for Environmental Action is a student group that promotes green initiatives at Colgate. Their mission is to educate and energize students about recycling, waste reduction, energy consumption reduction, and greater community issues. They plan activities such as a film series. Students for Environmental Action is Colgate's oldest environmental student group, but is far from the only sustainability-focused student groups. Green Thumbs manages and promotes the Colgate Community Garden in order to provide local, student produced, organic produce to the student community. Democracy Matters is a non-partisan, campus-based national student organization that works to eliminate big private money from our political system. The Colgate chapter has focused on civic engagement and activism, and recently organized a trip to the People's Climate March.

The Colgate Community Garden was launched in June 2010. Researched, funded, planted, and harvested by students, the garden now provides fresh vegetables and herbs to the campus dining services provider for all students to enjoy. Half of the garden's produce is donated to a local food cupboard. The rest of the bounty is sold to students, staff, faculty, Colgate Food Services, and local businesses. The idea for the garden concept came when students from the ENST 480 class completed a feasibility report as a class project in 2009.

Colgate's Thought Into Action program gives students the opportunity to take initiative and turn ideas into action. The company, Treeshelf, was started by student Matthew Lee, class of 2018. Treeshelf is an online curator for organic and non-toxic grooming products for the style of source-conscious men. Pigeon Ridesharing is a long-distance ride matching service that places college students together in carpools based on their destinations. This company was started by Cristian Saguil, class of 2019. The company helps to reduce emissions by traveling students. http://ridepigeon.com/home/about Fair Harbor Clothing is an active lifestyle brand. Fair Harbor makes all of their bathing suits out of recycled water bottles. Every bathing suit you buy removes 11 water bottles from the environment, turning them into a bathing suit. They also donate 5% of all our profits back to beaches to clean them up and remove plastic waste. This company was started by Jake Danehy, class of 2016, and Caroline Danehy, class of 2019. http://news.colgate.edu/2016/01/fair-harbor-sails-to-kickstarter-victory.html/ Loophole Innovative Solutions Inc. founded by Patrick Crowe, class of 2018, produces rubber ring phone grips designed to prevent users from dropping and damaging their cell phones. By preventing the frequent destruction of cell phones, Loophole contributes to slowing the consumption of materials required to repair or replace damaged cell phones. The company also boasts a commitment to local sourcing of materials and production. http://www.uticaod.com/news/20161228/loophole-promises-no-more-dropped-phones

A pilot Green Revolving Loan Fund started in 2017, however, applications will not be open to students for another few years.

Colgate holds an annual Green Summit to address campus sustainability initiatives and sustainability within a context outside of the Colgate community. In 2017, Colgate modified the format for its Green Summit to a panel discussion format. This panel provides a variety of perspectives on environmental issues from students, faculty, and outside speakers. In addition, the Office of Sustainability, the Upstate Institute, and various departments host brown bag events on issues of sustainability and bring in speakers who address sustainable themes throughout the academic year.

In April 2017, student Kimberly Duncan, class of 2018, designed and installed an art piece entitled "The Carbon Cube" as a visual representation of the volume of carbon gas each individual on campus emits every 48 hours. The 6'3"x6'3"x6'3" piece was installed in a central location in the main academic quad, where it remained for about two months. Duncan chose to paint the cube in chalkboard paint to encourage and facilitate a campus dialogue on the piece itself.

The mission of Colgate's Outdoor Ed is to provide the community with experiential opportunities which emphasize safety, environmental awareness, and technical skills, while promoting personal growth and group development through rediscovery of the natural world. Wilderness Adventure (WA) is a pre-orientation program at Colgate, in which over 125 first-year students come to campus early to make friends, learn about Colgate from upper-class student leaders, and use the outdoors to help students acclimate to Colgate, central New York, and life as a college student. Living and traveling with a small group of other first-year students and two or three highly trained leaders, students work together to hike, paddle, climb, cave, bike, or sail through Upstate New York wilderness. All WA students receive information about the seven Leave No Trace principles, and are instructed on how to follow the principles as they travel and camp with care. Each WA student leader participates in a Leave No Trace awareness workshop during their training year before leading a WA trip.

Colgate offers sustainability-themed pre-orientation and orientation programming, during which incoming first-year students are introduced to Colgate's goals and philosophies as they relate to sustainability. Additionally, students are taught the basics of expected sustainable behaviors, such as recycling, waste management, and water and energy conservation. In 2017, the Common Read for all first-year students was The Sixth Extinction. Additionally, an orientation segment, titled Colgate Conversations, was selected to have a sustainability theme in 2017.

Colgate's Green Raider Program is a student behavior change program that was developed to educate and engage students to reduce the unnecessary consumption of resources (such as energy, water, paper, etc.) and to take greater responsibility for their contribution to university-related environmental impacts. The ultimate goal is for Colgate to reach its commitment to climate neutrality by reducing our overall and individual ecological footprints associated with the behavior of our daily lives. Additionally, the program utilizes peer-to-peer educational practices to demonstrate how environmental, social and economic sustainability relate to students on an individual level.

Colgate's Office of Sustainability hires current students for internships specific to the field of sustainability. There are typically 13-16 interns each year. These interns are responsible for assisting in the design of sustainability programming, bringing in experts in sustainability-related fields for open lectures, and coordinating major events throughout the year. The Shaw Wellness Institute also hires interns that focus on promoting the eight dimensions of wellness: emotional, environmental, intellectual, multicultural, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual.

Colgate does not have a graduation pledge program.