Eastern Connecticut State University
EN-9: Community Partnerships

Eastern has a supportive partnership with GROW Windham through Eastern’s community garden, which is located on university property. Staff from Eastern and volunteers from GROW Windham provide community outreach through sustainable agriculture education and upkeep of the garden. A percentage of the crops grown at the community garden are sold to the farmer’s market and the rest is donated to the Willimantic Covenant Soup Kitchen. For more information please visit: http://www.growwindham.org/local-gardens/ecsu-community-education-garden/ Eastern’s Center for Community Engagement volunteers at the Covenant Soup Kitchen which is also located in Willimantic, CT. For more information please visit: http://www1.easternct.edu/cce/elderly-and-special-populations/ Eastern’s Institute for Sustainable Energy provides support and community service to CLiCK, a local commercially licensed kitchen for local farmers to use. For more information please visit: http://clickwillimantic.com/ The Institute for Sustainable Energy has a partnership with BenchmarkCT whose mission it is to promote the use of benchmarking through Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager to benchmark municipal buildings and K-12 schools that align with the State’s energy programs. ISE benchmarked all of the technical high schools and identified cost-effective saving measures of over one million dollars. For more information please visit: http://www1.easternct.edu/sustainenergy/benchmarkct-support-and-coordination/

SolarizeU is a collaborative partnership with the CT Green Bank and Eastern, UCONN, University of New Haven, Wesleyan, and Yale that is a solar discount program that makes solar affordable to faculty, staff, and families of students. This initiative allows faculty, staff, and families of students to compare online competitive bids from pre-screened installers for solar energy systems for their homes. This partnership ran from October 2014 - August 2015. This partnership emphasized faculty and staff energy efficiency and incentives for switching to solar energy in residential areas. The Institute for Sustainable Energy dedicated staff time to run campus workshops, and the local community were engaged via email, social media, radio and TV. For more information please visit: http://solarizect.com/solarize-u/ The CT Alliance for Campus Sustainability is a partnership launched and co-chaired by Eastern CT State University and Yale University. The partnership's mission is to empower sustainability actions in public and private higher education institutions throughout Connecticut. For more information please visit: http://www.easternct.edu/mt-static/press_releases/2014/04/connecticut-campuses-connect-at-statewide-sustainability-conference.html

This information was completed with information provided by ISE staff Laura Miller who coordinated the Solarize U program at Eastern, as well as the CT Alliance for Campus Sustainability, a collaborative co-chaired by Eastern and Yale.