Pomona College
EN-3: Student Life

The Pomona Organic Farm:
Pomona's Organic Farm and student Farm Club promote sustainable food production and a greater understanding of food and agriculture through both academic and co-curricular spaces. The community garden space focuses on small-scale plots, perennial tree fruit production, and sustainable/land-integrated agriculture. The academic space emphasizes experimentation and larger-scale crop production for teaching and learning (though still small, biodynamic, Permaculture-based practice). Both spaces practice 100% organic agriculture methods. The mission of the Farm is twofold: first, to provide the students, faculty, staff and community members of Claremont with a means for education exploration in the fields of Permaculture, organic farming, alternative architecture and sustainability, and second, to provide a working model of ecologically-based crop production. The Farm hosts events year-round and is also home to chickens, bees, a solar oven, and other tools for sustainable living.

Green Bikes:
The Green Bike Program is Pomona's student-run bike shop aimed at promoting safe and informed cycling at the Claremont Colleges. Green Bikes maintains a fleet of up to 100 bicycles, salvaged from bikes abandoned on campus, which the program distributes to students free of charge on a semester basis. Green Bikes also maintains a shop and education/event space where members of the 5 College community can have their bicycles repaired, at only the cost of replacement parts. The program's emphasis is on bicycle education and works to teach everyone who comes into the Green Bikes shop how to repair their bicycle. Green Bikes aspires to a future where every cyclist understands their bicycle and everyone is a cyclist.

5C Environmental Justice (EJ):
5C EJ club is a student organization that helps students become more effective climate and evnironmental justice organizers. They work towards fossil-fuel divestment, reinvestment, and other climate justice projects.

Pomona's Organic Farm promotes sustainable food production and a greater understanding of food and agriculture through both academic and co-curricular spaces. The community garden space focuses on small-scale plots, perennial tree fruit production, and sustainable/land-integrated agriculture. The academic space emphasizes experimentation and larger-scale crop production for teaching and learning (though still small, biodynamic, Permaculture-based practice). Both spaces practice 100% organic agriculture methods. The mission of the Farm is twofold: first, to provide the students, faculty, staff and community members of Claremont with a means for education exploration in the fields of Permaculture, organic farming, alternative architecture and sustainability, and second, to provide a working model of ecologically-based crop production. The Farm hosts events yearround and is also home to chickens, bees, a solar oven, and other tools for sustainable living. During the summer months, the Farm makes CSA boxes available to faculty, staff and students for a weekly buy-in fee.

ReCoop
The ReCoop program redistributes unwanted reusable items (including furniture, appliances, clothing/shoes, and school/office supplies) by collected unwanted items and selling them back to the campus community or donating them to charitable organizations. ReCoop is responsible for generating its own operating costs through their sales and other events. This program reduces the purchase of new items and the disposable of reusable items across the campus community. This operation is managed and run by students, with assistance and advising from the Sustainability Integration Office. Students are responsible for logistical details, budgeting, pricing, marketing, and other elements of running the enterprise, as well as long-term strategic planning, investment in equipment and infrastrcture, and making enough money to sustain the program financially with several thousand dollars in additional earned revenue that is given back to sustainability programs at Pomona College.

Claremont Sustainability Consulting
Claremont Sustainability Consulting is a student-led consulting group that advises small and large companies on sustainability strategies to reduce their environmental impact and increase their social benefit while improving the financial bottom line in the process. CSC believes that business must lead our transition to a sustainable future for both people and the planet, and works with clients on a complimentary basis, creating value for both businesses and their aspiring consultants.

Carbon Removal Panel:
This panel included speakers from companies and researchers working in the carbon removal space. It explored the risks, benefits, and impacts of carbon removal technologies and the role they can play in acheiving sustainability.

Sustainability Annual Report Panel:
This annual event highlights Pomona College's sustainability achievements and shortcomings across all its operations throughout the last year. It is presented by the student interns who create our annual sustainability report, and attended by students seeking to learn more about on-campus sustainability efforts. 

Sustainability Careers Alumni Panel:
This webinar explored the intersection of liberal arts and sustainability careers. 5 Pomona alumni who have landed roles within sustainability-focused careers from policy and advocacy to corporate sustainability and nonprofit work shared their career paths and insights on how a liberal arts education prepared them to enter the sustainability sector.

Alternative Transportation Panel:
This panel held during alumni weekend included alumni and professors who work in or are passionate about alternative transportation. Attendees learned about city planning processes, the benefits and hazards of different modes of transit and types of infrastructure, and how to engage with their local decision-makers to improve alternative transit in their own communities. 

For the past two semesters, Pomona College's Free Room student employees have held Conscious Couture: Stories of Slow fashion. This event invites student designers to create runway pieces using only donated and discarded materials. Other students model these looks on the runway, and the resulting fashion show is attended by over 40 students. The event is eagerly anticipated by student designers and students passionate about sustainable fashion.

Pomona's Outdoor Education Center is one of the nation's premier outdoor education programs and provides a broad array of services, equipment, and other support for outdoor education. It's mission is to provide the Pomona College community with educational, recreational, and social opportunities that focus on local communities and global environments. Using the outdoors as a classroom, its programs strive to offer co-curricular outdoor experiences that develop leadership skills and promote responsibility, while maintaining balance between personal, professional, and academic pursuits. The OEC houses two of the College's long-standing outdoor programs - On the Loose, and Orientation Adventure. On the Loose is the outdoors club of the Claremont Colleges and dispatches student-led trips to destinations across California and the Southwestern states. OTLers backpack, climb, car-camp, surf, bike, and more. OTL offers advice to those who are lost, cars to those who need transportation, and a wide-ranging assortment of gear to all students – all for free. OTL also provides extensive subsidies for trips. OTL teaches "leave no trace" principles and instructs its leaders how to reduce the environmental impact of trips. Orientation Adventure is an education-based outdoor program for all incoming first-year students, taking new students into natural areas across the Southwest to learn about Leave No Trace, sustainability, outdoors skills, community-building, and more.

The Sustainability Office moves through each year with chosen themes for each month, with educational programming centered on the chosen month's theme. The monthly newsletter article, chosen events and EcoReps bulletin boards in residence halls work together to engage campus constituents on the month's chosen theme. Themes include: outdoor appreciation, food, waste, consumption, environmental justice, energy, and water.

The EcoReps program, managed by the Sustainability Integration Office, focuses on peer education of sustainable living behaviors, focusing on life at Pomona, and translating to life beyond graduation. The EcoReps program works within the Sustainability Office monthly themes to engage residents in life skill education through events such as the PowerDown/ Get WaterWise competition, No Impact Week, Food Day, the campus Waste Audit, and more. Students are taught tips on how to conserve in certain areas and reduce their environmental impact. The EcoReps also host workshops to teach skills on mending clothing and cooking healthy plant-based recipies.

The Sustainability program at Pomona College hires about 60 students each year, many as Work Study students, in the following capacities:
2 ReCoop managers
24 ReCoop staff
10 EcoReps
2 Green Bikes Managers
6 Green Bikes staff
8 Compost drivers
1 Sustainability Office reuse coordinator
3 Greenware/ Checkouts coordinators
3 full-time summer staff working on Annual Report metrics and reporting