Green Mountain College
EN-6: Employee Educators Program

The primary employees selected to become educators in this program are the 12 supervisors of the Green Job Corps students, though all employees from the College are welcomed to attend the training sessions. The diversity of staff who attend the training sessions enables broad communication and outreach through the majority of departments on campus. The director of sustainability reaches out to the 12 GJC supervisors annually to invite them to the fall training session with the students. Every other year, the sustainability office also hosts job training specifically designed for the supervisors.

Employees are trained in one of two session formats. Every year employees are invited to the student Green Job Corps training in order to participate with the students and learn the same content. Every two years, the employees are invited to a supervisor-specific training session. The larger session with students and supervisors lasts two and a half hours. Participants first listen to a presentation on “sustainability 101,” which familiarizes them with all of the College’s current major sustainability initiatives and gives them an opportunity to ask questions about these initiatives. This trains participants to be a first line of defense for spreading information about sustainability efforts on campus to their peers. Participants are then asked to list all the ways they’ve personally and professionally helped advance sustainability goals on campus. This list is used as an impetus for small groups to begin making lists of departmental goals for the year. Groups are then provided with poster paper and asked to develop a wheel-and-cogs model for creating inter-departmental goals. One representative for each department stays at each table, while the other participants walk around to different tables adding goals to other posters. The sessions designed specifically for supervisors last one hour. They begin with a "sustainability 101" orientation, so that employees can learn how to educate their colleagues about sustainability initiatives on campus. Then, they work on departmental goal setting and learn ways to work these goals into tangible tasks for their Green Job Corps students to carry out.

The sustainability office provides free food during both types of training sessions and free consultation throughout the year. The sustainability office also sends out reminders to employee participants about how to make the most of their Green Job Corps training and sends out copies of the goals that they developed. The same reminders are sent to the students in participating departments.

Employee headcount includes GMC, Chartwells and DTZ employees, to be consistent with other employee headcount numbers in this report.