Emory University
EN-1: Student Educators Program

Emory’s Resident and Sophomore Advisors (RA/SA) are live-in student staff members who work collaboratively to create and maintain a safe, inclusive, and flourishing community of care for the academic and personal growth of the students within an assigned living unit. RA/SAs assist in developing community, engage students with various programs, and support residents as they navigate personal and academic transitions while living on campus. RA/SAs are to uphold the ORSFL educational priority, preparing students to be responsible global citizens.  

All Resident Advisors (RAs) and Sophomore Advisors (SAs) receive sustainability training during RA/SA Training 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.

Behind Closed Doors training is the name of Emory University Residential Hall Association’s role-playing, scenario-based training opportunity for student staff. During this part of training, students (in groups of 8-13) rotate through scenarios they may encounter in their residential staff positions. Behind Closed Doors is created to be a memorable learning experience in which students are encouraged to put their knowledge, awareness, and skills to the test; allowing them to get a sense of how prepared they are to handle possible situations. They typically invite Emory’s Office of Sustainability Initiatives to facilitate specific sustainability scenarios the RAs and SAs will go through. In August 2023, this RA/SA training incorporated staff from OSI, as well as members of the student organization Plastic Free Emory. This collaboration provided a useful sustainability tips document as well as quiz questions for our staff members’ pre-training assignments. 

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 4,387 student residents living in these halls, who are ultimately the target of this program.

The Zero Waste Ambassador (ZWA) program is a vital part of Emory’s initiative to reduce and divert landfill waste. Emory’s 2025 Sustainability Vision sets the goal of diverting 95% of our waste from municipal landfills, and in 2021, President Fenves additionally committed to reducing unnecessary single-use plastics by 2026. The Zero Waste Ambassadors program advances these goals, training students and staff from across Emory to educate the community about proper materials management. Ambassadors champion the zero-waste lifestyle and help to engage others on campus to do the same. ZWAs are a group of student, faculty, and staff volunteers, who are actively willing to champion waste management and reduction in all areas of the Emory experience. They are Emory community members who are committed to promoting a post-landfill future that takes into account the health and well-being of surrounding communities and future generations. ZWAs empower students, faculty, and staff with the knowledge and resources to actualize the Sustainability Vision goals about 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. 

The Zero Waste Ambassador team:

• Completes an initial training session with the Office of Sustainability Initiatives
• Reviews the latest ZWA updates posted on the OSI website and circulated through the OSI newsletter
• Listens to community questions regarding waste and reports back to OSI when they need more information
• Leads at least one outreach campaign or (virtual) event with members of the Emory community. Outreach ideas include, but are not limited to:
  • leads a virtual or in-person “trash talk” pop-in meeting to answer waste reduction and sorting questions
  • leads a virtual or in-person zero waste training for their student group, department, residence hall, lab, etc. with the support of the OSI staff as requested
  • Provides waste sorting advice to attendees at on-campus events
  • Contributes to a blog post on the OSI website
  • Contributes to social media posts about zero waste through OSI Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter accounts
  • Integrates zero waste information into existing communications channels from their network
  • Shares waste management strategies for students living off-campus
  • Creates campaigns that OSI can support.

All students, faculty, and staff of Emory University and Emory Healthcare are the audience for this program. OSI recruits 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 33 students involved in FY 22 and 23, 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 residence hall has its own RHA Sustainability Chair, whose job it is to develop his or her 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 efficiently 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 the fall and 8 in the 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.

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-a-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).

All data reported in this section are from September 2022-August 2023