Cal Poly Humboldt
EN-1: Student Educators Program

CCAT hosts several opportunities throughout the year where student co-directors and seasoned student employees train or teach other student staff and experienced volunteers about certain practices and protocols that are then disseminated to the broader campus community via classes and workshops. In this way, many student contributors and leaders of CCAT (including co-directors, paid CCAT student staff, for-credit course teachers who are students, and selected student volunteers) are peer educators for specific CCAT programming. That said, not every activity of CCAT can be considered a "train-the-trainer" peer education activity, though many are and these recur in an ongoing way throughout the year.

Specifically, during the reporting time frame of Academic Year 2018-2019, activities that meet criteria for this credit include those where more seasoned student team members taught newer student team members how to lead classes in natural paint making, how to repurpose oyster shells for wind chimes, how to make and utilize cobb as a natural building technique, how to process and sift compost, how to make seed bombs, and a variety of gardening techniques.

The target audience for these activities is the broader HSU student population. Classes and workshops are open and accessible to all students with no exclusions and are taught almost exclusively by students. (Occassionally, an expert community member may teach a one-off workshop at CCAT, but these sorts of activities are not included in this description).

During each year (including the 18-19 Academic Year), CCAT employs 3 live-in co-directors, 12 paid student employees, 4 student volunteer interns, 4 student teachers who facilitate classes for credit, and 2 community garden coordinators (also students). This is a total of 25 student peer educators who learn from more experienced student team members about how to lead and facilitate classes on subjects listed above.

Skills and peer education are offered each week of instruction during the semester, which is comprised of 16 weeks. There are two semesters in the academic year, for a sum of 32 weeks annually in which peer education activities are offered.

Co-directors are paid for 20 hours of work per week, of which roughly 10 may be considered peer education (30 hours total peer education per week); employees are paid on average 9.5 hours per week, of which 4 may be considered peer education (48 hours total peer education per week); interns commit 5 hours per week, of which 2.5 may be considered peer education (10 hours total peer education per week); course facilitators complete 2 hours of work per week, of which all may be considered peer education (8 hours total peer education per week); and garden coordinators spend 1 hour per week on peer education (2 hours total peer education per week). This amounts to 98 hours per week of peer education coming out of CCAT (3.92 hours per educator). Over the course of 32 weeks of instruction this adds to a total of 3,136 peer education hours worked per year at CCAT.

(25 peer educators) x (3.92 hours per educator per week) x (32 weeks instruction per year) = 3,136 hours peer education per year

Target audience is inclusive of the broader HSU student population. Classes and workshops are open and accessible to all students with no exclusions. Classes counted here are taught by students serving in the peer educator role.

The Resident Sustainability Advisor (RSA) holds environmental responsibility and sustainability training for Resident Advisors (RA’s), Student Advisors (SA), and Activities Student Assistants (ASA) each August to teach them about how to incorporate practices such as utilizing reusable plate-ware from the J and WRRAP, utilizing compost buckets for check out from Housing and from WRRAP for events, visiting locations of the Reusable Office Supply Exchange (ROSE) House and CCAT, and partnership opportunities with these groups, best practices for responsible waste sorting, bringing reusable bags, and how to properly fill out event forms, among others. This training activity has traditionally lasted an hour in which a total of 57 people (comprised of RA’s, SA’s, and ASA’s) attended to receive the information. Other sustainability activities in which these student advisors learn about sustainability (such that they may garner information to share with their resident peers) are sustainability waste sorting workshops, and a “Sustainability Back to Basics” training which held in November of 2018. The translation of this information to residents is then active for roughly 37 weeks per year. Each advisor or assistant incorporates this information and activity into workflow for roughly 2 hours per week, for about 74 hours of peer education on sustainability topics per person annually.

(2 hours per educator per week) x (37 weeks per year) = 74 hours per educator per year
(57 peer educators) x (74 hours per educator per year) = 4,218 hours peer education per year

The target audience for RSA peer education activities includes all Residents living in on-campus housing, which during the Academic Year 2018-2019 was 1924 people.

Green Campus is group comprised of students which serve in a variety of roles including paid employees, for-credit interns and volunteers. The primary mission of the group is to improve environmental sustainability at HSU by achieving measurable energy and water savings, educating the campus community about sustainability, encouraging daily behavioral changes that benefit the environment, preparing future professionals in environmental fields, and collaborating with other sustainability organizations on campus.

With typically eight paid employees, and between 3-8 for-credit interns each semester, the group works on the following projects and campaigns:
-Green Workplace Assessment- students consult with staff departments to recommend changes that will result in energy, water, waste, greenhouse gas, and other resources savings
-Energy & Water Competition- students engage with peers in the Residence Hall setting encouraging them to save energy and water, and to attend various sustainability workshops on campus
-Power Down- students deploy an outreach campaign during focused time periods (usually one day per month) in which they encourage campus stakeholders to achieve measurable energy savings
-Weigh the Waste- students engage with peers in the Residence Dining eatery teaching them about food waste and encouraging them to reduce their own food waste and contribute to brainstorming sessions for implementing institutional practices that will minimize food waste
-Green Speed Networking- students execute a matchmaking event whereby students are put in small groups and matched up to sustainability professionals from the community so that they may ask questions and get advice about how to successfully land careers in the green jobs sector
-Earth Week- students routinely contribute activities to Earth week programming, including but not limited to Trashion Show, energy business networking, film screenings, and organizer skill building/advocacy.
-Trashion Show- students host a competition whereby their peers submit fashion entries that must be made of "trash". Event has been held during Earth Week, and during the Fall Zero Wast Conference.
-General tabling & sustainability outreach- students employ best practices for translating awareness to action
-Other Dining Sustainability practices- students complete research and implementation exercises on a broad array of topics including but not limited to updating waste sorting signage, completing waste audits for Dining Services, and making recommendations for environmentally friendly food and beverage containers

All Green Campus students are trained on the skills needed to successfully host each program/activity listed below through a combination of activities, workshops, shadowing activities, and exercises from more experienced student team members and by the Supervisor filling in gaps as needed. Once trained up, peer educators offer their skills and services to the student population at large, though some programs serve targeted sectors of student populations (such as within the Energy & Water Competition where peer educators serve the Resident population only). Skills that students learn from their Green Campus peers and then begin deploying in real world situations for the larger studnet population include a diverse set of concepts, spanning general concepts like agenda planning, meeting facilitation, best practices for graphic design, to more specific sustainability concepts such as energy analysis (for Power Down), completion of waste audits (Dining support), and best practices for translating stakeholder interest and awareness into realized utility and resources savings.

Most programs of Green Campus seek to engage any and all students, though a few are organized to reach more targeted stakeholders. For example, the Energy & Water Competition seeks to engage students who live in Residence Halls only, and the Weigh the Waste Campaign seeks to engage students who eat the J Dining Eatery. However, Power Down, general tabling exercises, Green Speed Networking and Trashion Show are all campaigns that seek to engage 100% of the student population.

The Bicycle Learning Center and WRRAP are student programs funded by Associated Students that have a similar model to Green Campus, wherein students are hired and then trained by more experience employees to teach and train the general student population about how to maintain and fix their bikes and minimize waste and rethink the process of resources recovery in order to move the campus toward Zero Waste.

The answer 100% as the figure representing "percentage of students served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program" has been selected here because peer education activities implemented by CCAT and many implemented by Green Campus truly are offered and available to 100% of the student population at HSU.

This answer does not indicate that 100% of students actually receive or benefit from these peer education activities, but per the Technical Manual parameters for this credit, which state "a group of students may be served by a program even if not all of these students actively participate," we believe it is accurate to say that selected programming from CCAT and selected programming from Green Campus is available to all students and therefore 100% is the most accurate figure to report here.

In addition, readers may note that CCAT, Green Campus and WRRAP have been mentioned in other areas of the report, such as in selected responses to EN 3 Student Life but effort has been made within this credit (EN 1) to target specific descriptions of how these programs go beyond provision of resources that simply enrich student life to, in many cases, serve as robust peer-to-peer education programs.