Guilford College
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Students are working with dining services on individual projects, Examples include studying the decrease in nutrition as of fruits and vegetables after harvest, the nutritional benefits of using food from the Guilford College campus farm in the dining halls, and creating ways to use leftover food from the cafeteria for meals in lower income communities in Greensboro.

Students living in the North Apartments participate in the Energy Allowance Program. Residences must manage their use of electricity to remain within use guidelines determined by a three year running average or they pay fines. Residences who fall under the use guidelines are rewarded.

Students in Environmental Studies, either interns or independent study, have worked to better understand how our use of compost and compost tea are impacting our grounds maintenance efforts.

At the Guilford College bike shop right on campus, students, faculty and staff can drop by and get a quick, free safety check-up at our location in the basement of Shore Hall. There are also fantastic discounts on tune-ups, bike rentals, parts and other services to keep the wheels rolling. Rental bikes are available to the Guilford community for a day, a week or the whole semester. The bike shop, which is mostly run by students, fosters and supports a biking culture and community on campus. More people biking and fewer driving cars means a smaller carbon footprint.

Each year Guilford College participates in RecyleMania, a friendly competition that helps colleges and universities benchmark their recycling efforts. During the eight-week competition, schools report recycling and trash amounts each week, then use those numbers to rally students, faculty and staff on their individual campuses to do even better the next week. As everyone on campus becomes more and more involved over the eight weeks, we not only raise awareness of our recycling program, but significantly lower the amount of waste we generate. Because the competition is two months long, during each year, student, faculty and staff behavior is positively modified for the long term.

The Cape Fear River Basin program both requires and encourages students to connect with the watershed on and off campus. First year students are assigned creative projects that require them to get out into the woods, by the creek, and other parts of campus. The seminar students are all required to walk to Target via the campus creek, in an effort to give them a watershed-eye view. Art students all get at least one day by the creek, in an effort to encourage them to incorporate our campus into their work. Positive outcomes include students becoming more engaged in their watershed and understanding the impact they can make. They make a physical connection by being outside and actually seeing their nearby waterways, and the intellectual connection is made in the classroom.

The Bonner Center for Community Service and Learning provides resources, opportunities, connections and direction that encourage the integration of academics and experience, campus and community, self and service, passion and purpose. Each year, 60 Bonner Scholars at Guilford perform more than 24,000 hours of community service as part of their commitment to the scholarship program. One of the first Bonner Scholar’s Programs in the country, Guilford prides itself on making sustained commitments to smaller groups of core partners, community groups and neighborhoods.

Students and faculty in various Biology Department courses have conducted such assessments for years on institution-owned land. These courses include Field Botany (BIOL 234), Vertebrate Field Zoology (BIOL 235), Ornithology (BIOL 336), and Ecology (BIOL 438). Every two years, the Vertebrate Field Zoology class (BIOL 235) has surveyed reptiles and amphibians in the College Woods. Both aquatic and terrestrial habitats are surveyed. Every year, the Ornithology class (BIOL 336) conducts a bird census in the College Woods and the main campus. The Guilford Woods is a teaching lab for the Field Botany classes where students have learned to use dichotomous keys to identify woody species and herbs, identify natural communities, conduct vegetation sampling and monitoring, write NC Natural Heritage Program Site Survey Reports, and identify invasive species and learn how they impact natural communities.