Hope College
EN-3: Student Life

The Hope Advocates for Sustainability is a subgroup made up of paid interns of Hope College's Sustainability Green Team and works hand-in-hand with the Green Hope Student Club. Hope Advocates for Sustainability is comprised of 14 student interns who focus on educating students about sustainability and what they can do to lessen their environmental impact. When the students are hired they are assigned a specific focus area: Residential Halls, Cottages/Apartments, Conservation, Waste, Events, Marketing/Communications, Environmental Justice, Transportation, and two student presidents.

Both Hope Advocates for Sustainability and Green Hope organize multiple events throughout the year with the objective of engaging students in sustainability efforts - such as observing and planning events during National Recycling Day and Earth Week in October, RecycleMania, Earth Month in April, Earth Day, Arbor Day, campus films, hosting informational tables/displays/presentations, etc...

We've had multiple iterations of students gardens on campus. The most recent is the creation of the Hope College Garden Club which has multiple raised beds where they are growing vegetables. In 2022 they also added a couple of fruit trees in the area.

In the spring of 2022 Hope College also added three honey bee hives to the campus and multiple students have been involved in getting that launched as well as bottling the honey. https://magazine.hope.edu/winter-2022/a-honey-of-a-project/attachment/beehive/

In the past Dining Services has also maintained two small herb and tomato gardens on-campus. Students have been able to contact the Dining Services office for information regarding growing their own produce.

We have also offered students the opportunity to learn about container gardening (although participation was low due to a lower number of students around during the summer).

During the summer of 2016 the Hope Green Team hired four students to conduct research on campus about sustainability. There was a student for each of the topics which include: energy, water, a campus garden, and the history of sustainability at Hope. The campus garden was a larger campus garden model and was not as successful as we had hoped, so it is no longer operational. However, students still have the opportunity to participate in the herb garden, container gardens, or we encourage students who really have an interest in larger gardening experiences to work with our partners in town.

Every year we've had a number of students particpate in an internship program with Eighth Day Farms a local CSA. http://www.eighthdayfarm.org/
http://www.eighthdayfarm.org/internship-program/ or with
Benjamin's Hope https://www.benjaminshope.net/

Hope College students have the opportunity to work with our Center for Leadership (CFL)Team.
CFL, creates interdisciplinary student teams led by an experienced practitioner coach in solving real world problems for a wide variety of clients. The experiential learning and mentoring helps students to develop their critical-thinking, problem-solving and team-building skills.
Three of the projects from the fall of 2022 focused on sustainability
-community carbon footprint fund
-solar at a local business
-understanding county wide future EV charger demand

Below is a press release from the EV project:
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIOTTAWA/bulletins/32f3c5d

Thanks to a generous donation from Hope College Alumni we have recently launched a newly created Revolving Fund for students to participate in. The alumni pledged to donate kickstarter funds if the college agreed to match the funds. During the summer of 2022 we had a student conduct research on the different types of revolving funds at other colleges and universities and then create a proposal as to what a program could look like at Hope College. The student and their two faculty mentors (engineering and economics) then made a formal presentation to our CFO and business department for the project. This was approved in the fall of 2022. Student interns were selected in December 2022 and work began in January 2023. A website will be developed on our sustainability page to share details about the work.

Hope presents various speakers discussing sustainability topics throughout the year, with the presentations offered by different departments, as well as through grants provided by the GLCA sustainability program. Hope also organizes Campus Sustainability Month events (October) and Earth Month events (April), as well as events throughout the year for our campus and greater Holland community.
These events include speakers, film screenings, awareness activities, and waste/energy reduction competitions, among other things.
https://hope.edu/offices/sustainability/holland-hope-college-sustainability-institute/events.html
They are also shared on our social media accounts:
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hollandhopesustainability/
Twitter https://twitter.com/HC_Green
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hopeadvocatesforsustainability/

The Office of Sustainability has also worked with our campus Kruizenga Art Museum (KAM) to highlight different topics of sustainability. The most recent was an exhibit titled "No Planet B" which ran September-December 2022. https://hope.edu/arts/kam/exhibitions/past/no-planet-b.html
As part of that exhibit, local environmental artist Sandra Hansen hosted an event and discussed her own work and the work of other artists who address environmental issues.
Other exhibits at KAM have included:
-2020 NEA Big Read virtual exhibition, Dominion Over the Earth
-2021 NEA Big Read focus exhibition, Native American Art
-Women's History Month, Hope College's Women of Color United (WOCU) hosted “Resilience: Women Through the Ages"
-Annual Black Lives Matter Exhibits
-SAY IT LOUD-Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride
A full list can be found at: https://hope.edu/arts/kam/exhibitions/past/

During our annual Earth Jam the Hope Advocates for Sustainability (HAS) work with our weekly "CoffeeHouse" student group and help organize an event to bring students up on stage to perform (singing, instruments, and readings).

HAS has also hosted contests and upcycling crafting events such as making art and new items from re-purposed materials.

In September 2017 we also hosted an event utilizing the film "A Plastic Ocean." There was a short talk on pollution and art by a local and international artist. She displayed some of her recent work focused on the environmental problem of plastic in aquatic environments. Then a Hope College professor shared information about his microplastic beach pollution research.

The student-led Outdoor Adventure Club at Hope College offers various outings for students throughout the year. These include hiking, backpacing, rafting, etc. The Outdoor Adventure Club places an emphasis on environmental responsibility education and abides by Leave No Trace principles.

Hope offered first-year seminar courses every year.
These courses are designed solely for first year students as they begin their college career - focused on sustainability. These courses included topics such as water conservation, eating sustainably, the benefits and sustainability of bicycling, environmental sustainability, etc... The courses are open to all first year students, and incorporated many sustainability-related texts as part of the course requirements.

Students are also able to participate in our Day 1 programs which offer sustainability related research opportunities. "Gain new skills, work alongside engaged professors and upperclassmen, and tackle real-world problems through research that begins on day one of your college career!"
https://hope.edu/academics/day1/

The Facilities Team has worked with some of the students living in the campus cottages (off-campus, but college owned housing) in the creation of events that focus on real-world life skills.

Our dining services team have sustainability focused events during their "Chef Series." They've promoted sustainable sourcing of foods and plant based meals and demonstrating how students can prepare these different types of foods.

The Facilities Team and the Hope College Sustainability Institute also brought an energy auditing contractor to campus during the fall of 2015 to assess the efficiency of the campus cottages using the Department of Energy Home Score Tool. Students were encouraged to participate in the assessments of their cottages. As a follow up to that, beginning in 2022 a Senior Engineering Design Team has begun studying one of our campus houses and has been analzying/researching ways to make it more efficient. The goal is for them to use this as a model and make recommendations for other houses owned by the college.

Our Hope Advocates for Sustainability interns also pride themselves on hosting events for our students to gain life-long skills and knowledge on sustainability throughout the academic year.

-The Hope Green Team hires 14 interns for the school year.
-Four students are also hired to work on our newly created Revolving Fund Project.
-Students are hired to work with our physical plant and grounds team and often work on conservation projects.

This is something our Green Team has talked about in the past, but we have not been able to implement it as of yet.

Sustainability In Sports
An article was written for the local paper the "Holland Sentinel" about our women's basketball team and the sustainability iniatives they have implemented as a team. This is a great reminder for our students, and student athletes but it is also a great story to for our greater Holland community as well. https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/news/columns/2022/11/28/misustainable-holland-basketball-team-saves-energy-while-exercising/69657113007/

Hope College students have the opportunity to work with our Center for Leadership (CFL)Team.
CFL, creates interdisciplinary student teams led by an experienced practitioner coach in solving real world problems for a wide variety of clients. The experiential learning and mentoring helps students to develop their critical-thinking, problem-solving and team-building skills.
Three of the projects from the fall of 2022 focused on sustainability
-community carbon footprint fund
-solar at a local business
-understanding county wide future EV charger demand

Below is a press release from the EV project:
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIOTTAWA/bulletins/32f3c5d