Emory University
EN-1: Student Educators Program

All Resident Advisors (RAs) and Sophomore Advisors (SAs) receive sustainability training during RA/SA Trainings in August and January. The hour-long training sessions include information about waste reduction and waste diversion, as well as facilitated conversations about how to use campus sustainability resources and how to engage other students in sustainability programming. RAs and SAs incorporate this sustainability knowledge into hall programming throughout the year and into weekly hall meetings. Throughout the year, the Programs Manager for the Office of Sustainability Initiatives (OSI) hosts weekly office hours in the Living Green themed residence hall lobby to assist student staff and residents with their programming, research and academic and career goals. For FY 2017, the Living Green residence hall also had a graduate student sustainability fellow who lived in the hall, helped advise student staff, created sustainability literacy evaluation processes for the residence halls, and co-hosted a weekly community-supported agriculture cooking night with residents and faculty. RAs also are enrolled in a mandatory 1-credit course which has a sustainability behavior change class developed by the OSI included.

This program focuses on training peer educators who live in all of Emory's undergraduate student residence halls. These educators are the main points of contact for all 4,639 student residents living in these halls, who are ultimately the target of this program.

Zero Waste Ambassadors (ZWAs) empower students, faculty, and staff with the knowledge and resources to actualize the Sustainability Vision goals pertaining to reducing and diverting waste. It is critical to foster a community that recognizes the value of materials management and its intersections with environmental justice, resource conservation, and a regenerative economy. ZWAs gain the tools and leadership skills to educate others and the agency to share feedback on how to improve Emory’s systems, communication, and culture to achieve these goals. The program is designed so that student interns of the Office of Sustainability Initiatives (OSI) look to OSI staff for content contributions, but the outreach, communications, training and programming aspects of the program are all designed and carried out by the students.

All students, faculty and staff of Emory University and Emory Healthcare are targets for this program. We recruit students from across the University's academic units, so that they can educate their peers in their respective schools and departments. In addition to the 60 students involved in FY 18 and 19, there were also over 80 staff and faculty and 1 alumna in the ZWA program. The ZWA members are embedded in academic units, residence halls, offices, labs, and healthcare spaces across the enterprise and are all trained to activate their networks to reduce and divert waste through presenting in meetings and classes, circulating communications, answering questions individually and pointing people to resources about the Zero Landfill Waste Emory initiative.

The Residence Hall Association (RHA) works to promote the goals and purposes of the University as related to residential living, as well as to serve as the student voice. RHA Sustainability Chairs promote sustainability through several mediums. One student serves as an Executive RHA Sustainability Chair, who advocates for RHA-wide sustainable practices and commitments and seeks funding for sustainability-related programming and conferences for the hall Chairs. Each individual residence hall has its own RHA Sustainability Chair, whose job it is to develop his or her own initiatives and support the Executive Chair. Additionally, they all work to make every hall and campus-wide RHA event zero-waste and sustainably certified. This structure allows RHA to reach all Emory student residents in an efficient manner and spread sustainability efforts campus-wide.

This program focuses on training the appointed and elected RHA Sustainability Chairs who serve in each residence hall on campus. These educators interact with all 4,639 student residents living in these halls, who are ultimately the target of this program.

* Office of Sustainability Initiative's Intern Program: The 8 paid interns hired on average each Fall, Spring and Summer by the Office of Sustainability Initiatives (OSI) must submit their resume and cover letter, as well as interview in-person with the OSI staff. Once selected, the graduate and undergraduate students go through an orientation, during which they learn about the work of the university and healthcare system in the thematic areas of academics and research, biodiversity and landscapes, climate solutions, energy, food and dining, green buildings, purchasing, social justice, transportation, waste, water and wellbeing. These interns then host tables at over 30 different tabling engagement events hosted by the Law School, Business School, School of Public Health, Candler School of Theology, School of Medicine, and Emory College. The largest event is the Fall Student Activities Fair at the beginning of the year, during which the students share with over 1,000 interested, enrolled undergraduate and graduate students about sustainability practices and lifestyles. OSI interns also produce electronic communications and signage that passively reach thousands of Emory and community members who follow OSI's work. Annually, these 24 total interns work 50 weeks of the year. 8 interns in Fall and 8 in Spring work for about 10 hours per week for the 32 weeks of the fall and spring semesters (5,120 hours total). 8 interns work about 20 hours per week during the 18 weeks of the summer and winter periods (2,880 hours total), averaging out to 13 hours per week throughout 50 weeks of the year. Annually, the OSI interns contribute 8,000 hours to sustainability work on campus.

* WaterHub Student Docent Program: Each semester, two or three graduate and undergraduate students apply to and are selected by the OSI staff to serve as student docents for the WaterHub at Emory tour program. These docents undergo two weeks of in-person training, materials review, and practice tours to become familiar with the purpose of, technology utilized within, and the impact of this water reclamation facility. The students currently lead two scheduled tours a week and cover one-off requests as needed. Student docents are then expected to follow up with the tour attendees to answer any additional questions, set up any subsequent visits, and to request evaluation of the program. These students become leaders on campus and the face of the facility to other students, faculty and staff. They welcome multiple classes of fellow Emory students each semester, as well as many individually-interested students; staff and faculty groups; local, national and international businesses; universities and colleges; government agencies and science education groups like the Girl Scouts. Annually, these 8 total students lead tours in the Fall, Spring and Summer for 45 weeks for 3 hours on average (1,080 hours total).

* Sustainable Food Fair Class: Each fall, students in a 1-credit anthropology course put on a Sustainable Food Fair, in collaboration with the Office of Sustainability Initiatives and Emory Dining. This lively midday event features music and roughly 40 stands of locally grown fresh food for sale, chefs offering delectable samples, stores featuring sustainably grown foods and other products, and nonprofits in the Emory area that are part of the sustainable food movement. Interested students enroll in this class, until it reaches the maximum of 40 students. They learn in classes three times a week leading up the the Food Fair about the food system. During the Fair, they then become the educators of other students, faculty and staff on the importance of sustainable and local food production. These 40 students interact with the estimated 1,000 students, faculty and staff that pass through the Fair during the two and half hour event. We are unable to isolate the number of students from this event, though we know undergraduates and graduates from across campus attend. These 40 students learn, plan and work for 8 weeks for about 5 hours per week (1600 total hours).

* Orientation Leaders Program: Through the Orientation Leaders program, the Office for New Student Programs trains Emory undergraduate students to help welcome over 1,500 new first-year and transfer students to campus, to assist them with move in, to guide them through facilitated small group discussions during designated Orientation days, and then to be a general resource during their first year at Emory. During their training, Orientation Leaders spend 1.5 hours with the Office of Sustainability Initiatives staff and interns to learn how to advise first-year students on how to reduce and divert waste on campus, how to get engaged with the sustainability ecosystem on campus and how to talk about the award-winning on-site Water Hub water reclamation facility. These 110 students work for about 4 weeks of the year (a Spring retreat and Fall training, Move-In and Orientation weeks) working on average 17 hours during those weeks (7480 total hours). They are led by Student Coordinators who are in the program for closer to 40 weeks (a Spring class and Summer of planning meetings in addition to the Spring retreat and Fall activities), but these hours are not included because these students receive their sustainability training during the Orientation Leaders training referenced above and not separately.

Data entered for AY 2018-2019 unless otherwise noted.