Seneca Polytechnic
EN-3: Student Life

Seneca’s Environmental Association (SEA) purpose is to promote environmental awareness and foster a sustainable future through education and outreach. This club aims to bring people together who are passionate about environmental challenges to provide a platform for networking, collaboration and innovation regarding the role engineering plays in addressing these challenges.

THE RESEARCH FARM BEDS AND THE COMMUNITY GARDENS BEDS
The research farm beds were built during the summer of 2022 at Newnham Campus, as a site to support the development of the Urban Agriculture Enterprise Support Program’s (UAESP) urban agriculture training program while creating learning opportunities for students.

Students were involved in the implementation of the research farm. A handful of students from the School of Environmental and Civil Engineering Technology (SECET) surveyed the location and more than 20 student volunteers from various programs participated in building and filling the farm beds.

The site also serves as a space for the UAESP to test and showcase various growing practices. In collaboration with Crosby Gitigaan, two beds currently contain Indigenous methods – Three Sisters mound planting and clay pot irrigation. Other growing practices that the beds contain or contained include:
- Quantum dot growing film, courtesy of UbiGrow
- Cold frames during the winter
- Hugelkultur, with materials sourced from Newnham Campus and King Campus

In addition, as part of the project, some unused beds that were already at Newnham Campus were passed to UAESP, and in collaboration with Food Services, most of the crops being grown are chilli peppers to experiment with the development of a hyper local Seneca-branded hot sauce. Volunteer students have been involved in planting activities for this site.

The Boutique at Seneca is a one-of-a-kind fashion retail learning lab for students in Seneca Polytechnic’s Fashion Business and Fashion Business Management Programs in the School of Fashion. The on-campus and online stores serve the Seneca community and are built on the passion of our soon-to-be graduating fashion business students.

Each academic term, The Boutique is operated by a new team of second-year Fashion Business / Fashion Business Management students along with faculty, staff and student mentors. Students work as Sales Associate in The Boutique on campus as well as take on a role in a "department" within The Boutique's business operation.

The Boutique works with Canadian vendors to offer our customers quality casual and everyday workwear, including a pre-loved rack, at competitive prices. They curate multiple products from brands, offering variety, versatility and comfort. They aim to have timeless items in the boutique, as their main point is supporting sustainability in fashion, as this helps their customers create a capsule wardrobe and develop a minimalistic style.

In 2022 HELIX launched the HELIX Catalyst Fund. This fund can be used by students to develop socially, environmentally and fiscally responsible ventures.

HELIX CATALYST FUND
The HELIX Catalyst Fund aims to eliminate financial barriers faced by entrepreneurs by providing essential micro-grant funding to qualified and actively accelerating ventures within the HELIX community.

HELIX participants can apply for micro grants of up to $5,000 to support their business development at any stage, from idea validation to product launch or scaling. The funding can be used for various activities, including website development, product launches, raw material purchases and market testing.

In 2022, a total of $91,662 in Catalyst funding has been awarded to 21 ventures within HELIX, supporting their diverse goals and objectives. Here are some examples of Catalyst fund recipients and their funding goals:

Afro Women and Youth Foundation (AWYF): AWYF offers leadership development, mentorship and empowerment programs for immigrant women and youth of African origin. The funding goal is to develop a website and anti-racism training modules.

Beaut: Beaut partners with Water First to support water preservation in Indigenous communities while promoting water conservation with its rinse-free dry shampoo. The funding goal is to hire a social media content creator.

Progoti: Progoti focuses on clothing for social impact, providing life and pension policies for garment workers in Bangladesh funded through clothing sales. The funding goal is to conduct photo shoots for their fall and winter clothing line.

The HELIX Catalyst Fund is committed to supporting entrepreneurial success by providing critical financial support to HELIX participants, removing barriers and fostering innovation.

The Green Citizen Symposium 2022 was offered as a three-day virtual event from October 25 to 27 hosted by the Office of Sustainability at Seneca. The theme, “Be the Change”, conveys our belief that everyone shares the responsibility to contribute to creating our desired future for sustainability. When we all take positive actions urgently, our collective impact will help the world reach ambitious goals.

Twelve keynote sessions and complementary workshops were designed to focus on global sustainability issues with diverse topics, including decarbonization of heavy industries, plastic waste problems and solutions, sustainable business, ESG and responsible supply chains, the importance of repair, climate resilience strategies, climate justice, among others. All sessions were open to any students, employees and community members to join. Admission was free.

Professors teaching courses that covered topics and learning outcomes related to the symposium sessions were approached and invited to join with their classes. Program pamphlets were shared. Following a series of one-on-one meetings with the Office of Sustainability, a total of 10 courses from 12 academic programs participated. In eight of the courses, students were required to attend for course assessment. In two of the courses, the students who opted to attend received bonus marks.

There were a total of 2,564 registrants for all twelve sessions, of which a total of 1,355 attendees (or 53%) joined the live sessions. Recordings were made available to participating classes after the symposium, so students were able to access the presentations asynchronously and complete their worksheets.

Based on the feedback collected from the post event survey distributed at the end of the symposium, the participants generally had a high level of satisfaction with their experiences of the symposium. The average scale rates for questions on overall satisfaction reaching 4.3 and 4.5 out of 5. The theme of the symposium, choices and variety of topics and quality of speakers were well liked by attendees and faculty, which explained the high number of registrants. A high majority of attendees felt inspired by the content of the sessions, had an improved level of confidence to explore sustainability opportunities in their career, and would recommend the symposium to friends and/or colleagues. There was a 35.1% increase in respondents who felt their level of knowledge on the session topic reached knowledgeable and very knowledgeable levels after attending keynotes.

FIRST PEOPLES@SENECA EVENTS
First Peoples @ Seneca provides cultural events to bring awareness of the environment and its importance to our students and community. They host a variety of events throughout the semester such as the full moon teachings and Indigenous blessings for the lake at King Campus.

INDIGENOUS ART TOUR
In June 2023, to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day, a campus tour was organized showcasing Indigenous art at Newnham Campus.

Seneca’s Recreation Department offers a mountain bike share program at King Campus where students and staff can borrow a bike to ride the trails; as well, they have weekly wellness walks that walk through the trails. These programs follow the Leave No Trace Principles – for example, it ensures that no campfires and no snacks that result in waste are used.

The program runs through the summer and the bikes are available from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

ECO-WEAVING
In the academic year 2022-23 Enactus Seneca worked on the Seneca Eco Weaving Project.

Seneca Eco-weaving project aimed to tackle plastic waste by upcycling plastic milk bags and crocheting functional and merchandisable items like bags, key chains, selling self-crochet kits and hosting crochet workshops while partnering with sustainable organizations.

The project’s main goal is to provide a household solution to tackle plastic waste, that everyone can work on individually.

It is also a self-generating revenue project, where the students plan on selling the crocheted items through sales booth. Students completed the workshop, learned about building kits, developed partnerships with communities and used social media platforms to spread the teachings.

Enactus Seneca has successfully hosted 3 workshops, where a total of 63 individuals were educated. The main objective of these workshops was to raise awareness about Enactus and the issue of plastic waste and teach participants how to crochet.

The primary audience of the Enactus Seneca Eco-weaving project is students. This is based on our survey that 88% of Seneca students buy milk bags. In addition, crocheting is scientifically proven to help reduce stress, and based on our survey, 66% of students feel stressed, and 55% of them find crocheting a de-stressing activity.

Many participants were eager to continue their crochet journey beyond the workshops. They took home the crochet hooks and plarn (plastic yarn) provided during the event, demonstrating their enthusiasm for the concept and their willingness to incorporate it into their daily lives.

Enactus was able to successfully divert 2500 milk bags from landfills.

Seneca’s Office of Sustainability employs 1 student per semester to assist with the communications and engagement portfolio that includes creating content for social media, events and graphic design.

Other sustainability focused employment opportunities include:
- Student Ambassador: Dining Services hires students as student ambassadors to promote the reusable container program launched in the summer of 2023.
- Research Assistants: The Seneca Farm on campus hired two students to manage the operations of the farm and lead different research projects.

SDG TRAINING
Seneca Global Learning and Engagement has been delivering the United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development Goals Training in partnership with the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship (FES) since 2018. The training is organized and delivered in alignment with Canada’s International Development Week. The training informs participants of the history and structure of the SDGs, design and implementation thinking and informs participants on how to connect sustainability concepts to their academic disciplines.

In 2023, Global Learning and Engagement continued to offer the training by offering 2 versions of the training that could be embedded into existing courses at Seneca. The training allowed faculty at Seneca to be more hands-on with project deliverables and gained support from Seneca’s Office of Sustainability. More than 500 students across four Faculties participated in the virtual training.

Students from these academic areas completed an action planning workshop where they learned how to develop their ideas of advancing sustainability by learning about problem orientation, consensus-building, levers of change, impact analysis and more. Leading up to the workshop, students had the opportunity to participate in events sponsored by the Office of Sustainability and complete an asynchronous course revolving around the SDGs.

At the end of the training, students used what they learned in their workshops and event experiences to complete their course deliverables.

Each student who submitted the deliverable assigned by their professors received marks for their courses and a badge from FES to denote their action on sustainability.