Stanford University
EN-1: Student Educators Program

Freshmen involved in the student organization Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) host waste trainings during dorm meetings. SSS freshmen go to other freshman dorm meetings, where they take 10 minutes to lead the residents in an educational waste sorting activity. The SSS facilitators hold up a variety of items (like water bottles, toilet paper rolls, juice containers, pizza boxes, etc.) and ask the dorm to guess where each item should be sorted. After each answer, they explain whether the residents were right or not, and why the item goes where it does. This program serves all students living in on-campus undergraduate student residences.

The students educators are all volunteer SSS members (mostly freshman).

The Food Waste project group leadership team in SSS prepared the training information and activity. The team first practiced in front of SSS leadership and received feedback. Then, they gave the same training and materials directly to the volunteer student educators, who also practiced in front of SSS leadership before leading the trainings for other students.

SSS receives a combination of financial and coordination support from the Office of Sustainability, Student Housing, and Stanford Dining.

All graduate students have peer community advisors who manage day-to-day affairs in their residences or assigned community groups. All community advisors receive sustainability training as part of their general training program, with a focus on raising awareness for sustainability among their peers. Community advisors are provided with materials to send out to their peers with sustainability tips, and are trained specifically on hosting green events that would spark conversations about sustainability throughout the community and among the entire graduate student population. Examples of recent events were an “Earth Day Happy Hour” in the graduate residence Quillen to raise awareness for Earth Day and a make-your-own parfait event that focused on the use of compostable materials and training residents to compost correctly. Community advisors are available in all on- and off-campus graduate student residences, and non-residence-based community advisors are assigned to all graduate students who do not live in Stanford-provided housing. Thus, graduate student community advisors serve the entire graduate student population.

Stanford’s Community Associates (CAs) go through an application and interview process to be selected for their positions on campus. To be considered for this role, they must be registered graduate students, eligible for housing, and must have completed 1 year of graduate school at Stanford. It is a requirement that all community advisors attend training before the start of fall quarter, which includes sustainability as a core component.

CAs participate in a week of training at the beginning of the year where they are briefed on the following topics: orientation, interpersonal skills, Title IX topics, fire and earthquake safety training, suicide assessment and prevention, community building and sustainability. During the sustainability training, Office of Sustainability speaks to CAs about its seasonal conservation campaigns which can be adapted as themes for events that CAs are required to host throughout the year. Office of Sustainability also provides CAs with resources on the Cardinal Green Event program, which helps CAs make their own community events sustainable, which they can then use as a learning tool for their peers. Finally, CAs receive sustainability tips via the CA newsletter throughout the year that provide them with content to share with their peers and inform future sustainability events that they organize for their peers.

Staff in the Office of Sustainability work with staff in the Graduate Life Office to offer the sustainability trainings to all community advisors.

One of the core groups within Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) is the Sustainability Education group. The Education Group's goal is to improve student awareness of and engagement with issues related to sustainability. One way the group accomplishes this goal is by offering a student-led course titled Environmental Justice in the Bay Area (URBANST16SI). The student leaders have developed expertise in environmental justice through leadership of the environmental justice sub-group within SSS. They share their expertise with their peers through this hands-on course that discusses the intersectionality of social justice and environmental issues. Through student-led talks and fieldtrips around the region, the course allows students to train their peers to fully consider the connections between issues of privilege, race, health, gender equality, and class in environmental issues. The SSS Education Group also offers guest lectures and supports content development in other courses that include sustainability. For example, the group has worked with faculty for the course Computers, Ethics, and Policy (CS181) to incorporate "tech and sustainability" as a topic for one of the lectures. Student leaders in the SSS Education Group led that class, training their peers in topics such as the impact of the cloud on sustainability, electronic waste, and questions on how the technology industry impacts the environment and also presents sustainability opportunities. These courses are available to all Stanford students (both undergraduates and graduates), so all students at Stanford are considered to be served by this program.

SSS members select groups to participate in based on their interests. The SSS Leadership Team appoints leaders for each group, and the leaders of the Education Group directly oversee the class offerings and support provided throughout the year.

There is a full syllabus and teaching plan for the course Environmental Justice in the Bay Area that is passed down through the Education Group from year to year. Faculty supervisors consult on the course content and advise student leaders to make sure the content stays up to date and that the student leaders are well-versed in all necessary topics.

SSS receives a combination of financial and coordination support from the Office of Sustainability, Student Housing, and Stanford Dining.

Beginning in winter 2017, one week before Winter Closure dozens of student volunteers canvas Stanford dorms with key energy-saving actions to take before the holidays. The goal is to see if personal reminders to over 3,000 students would have an impact on reducing energy use in select buildings over the three week closure. The results spoke for themselves: buildings that were included saw a 15% reduction in electricity use and 12% reduction in heat use in 2017 compared to the same period the previous year. Finally, each spring, coordinators from individual dorms/residence halls provide environmental education and outreach to dorm members through the Water Wars campaign. Coordinators use signage, shower timers, dorm announcements, tabling, and social media as vehicles for educating their peers on water conservation.