University of Dayton
EN-3: Student Life

River Stewards The River Stewards program is the flagship program of the Rivers Institute administered by the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community at the University of Dayton. The three-year interdisciplinary program focused on leadership development and civic engagement is based on the model of learn, lead, and serve. River Stewards participate in weekly mini-courses, provide service to the community, and work together to develop a project their senior year. Interested students can apply to become a River Steward in the second semester of their freshman year. Currently there are over 45 River Stewards within three cohorts. The River Stewards come from over 25 different majors and represent all undergraduate academic units at the University of Dayton. https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/fitz/student-servant-leadership/river-stewards/index.php Sustainability Club Sustainability Club is a service and social action club with an emphasis on food, water, and waste on campus, and in the Dayton community. We have several waste collection programs in place that not only deter waste from landfills, but raise money for projects and feed the less fortunate. Social events include, local hiking trips, TED Talk nights, and organic and vegan cookouts. In addition to facilitating Sustainability Week and GreenSweep events, we educate ourselves and others about important environmental and sustainability issues as well as develop a collective language and vision among the students. We are also a resource to facilitate collaboration and help get project ideas off the ground. Other projects include: coordinating an annual energy competition within our 5 residence halls and promoting recycling awareness, a laptop drive for a local charity, and educational film screenings. Student-governed. https://udayton.edu/studev/leadership/involvement/student-life/org-sustainability.php RE-volv, a national nonprofit in San Francisco, was founded in 2011 to finance solar energy projects for other nonprofits. Through crowdfunding they raise the money for solar projects, and get paid back over time to pay for additional projects. RE-volv launched their Solar Ambassador Program in 2015 at 5 Universities across the country (UD was one of the five) where students now plan and lead one solar energy project a year. Students at each school plan a 6 week crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds needed for the solar energy project. In 2018 the UD Solar Ambassadors will be installing a 12 kW rooftop solar PV system at a community partner location, Mission of Mary Farm Cooperative. https://re-volv.org

Lincoln Hill Gardens The University of Dayton’s Hanley Sustainability Institute has partnered with East End Community Services and Mission of Mary Cooperative to initiate change within East Dayton through the development of a community green space and urban agriculture center. The Lincoln Hill Urban Agriculture Project will transform five acres of vacant land within the Twin Towers Neighborhood into a sustainable multipurpose site, featuring urban agriculture-based educational and recreational elements to serve both the UD and Greater Dayton communities. Student supported. https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/lincoln-hill/index.php Mission of Mary Cooperative Mission of Mary Cooperative is an urban farming non-profit organization that works in east Dayton. They focus on the issues of food and economic social justice especially the issues of healthy food affordability and access. The work done at Mission of Mary aims to provide tangible benefits for the people of the community as well as the vacant and forgotten land of the neighborhood. http://udquickly.udayton.edu/scribblings/2015/12/taking-the-plunge/

Flyer Enterprises, a student-run business enterprise operating primarily cafes and a moving service, has added a sustainability position to their executive team. The mission of FE is to create a competitive advantage for their employees by providing experiential education through the operation of profitable, ethically-focused businesses that serve the needs of our stakeholders. By including the sustainability position on their executive team, FE is promoting an ethically-focused direction and providing student employees with the ability to gain a competitive advantage through getting experience making a positive difference in a company's operations. Mission: As an organization powered by the energy of a driven student workforce, Flyer Enterprises aims to shift our company-wide thought and operational action away from linear processes, and towards sustainable cycles of business and life. We are striving to support and implement the energy and resource saving natural practices of composting and recycling in order to reduce our overall consumption as an entity in order to further the healthy progress of our company, our Dayton community, and our planet for generations to come. Initiatives: At the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year, the Flyer Enterprises executive leadership created a leadership position to head sustainable initiatives for the company moving forward. In this role, the sustainability executive works closely to try and implement thorough recycling and composting efforts across the company. As of now, they have three divisions composting pre-consumer food waste (excluding meat and cheese) and have hopes of getting all divisions composting their coffee grounds before the end of the school year. We are also in the process of designing visuals to aid our recycling efforts at all divisions. At Art Street Café, we have begun to shift suppliers of certain dry goods to compostable or eco-friendly plastics along with more options to eat-in. We hope to extend this effort to more divisions in the near future. Lastly, starting this week, we will be sending out bi-monthly newsletters about living a more sustainable lifestyle and how we as a company can begin to reduce our footprint in the future. My hope is that these newsletters, along with some educational workshops, will help to further inform our employee base on what sustainability means, how each of us fit into the problem and solution, and what we as individuals, as a company, and as a community can do to help ensure a healthy Earth for all.

Green Revolving Fund. A student-led research project suggesting the University establish a green revolving fund is promising a big payoff to the University in cost savings, innovation, learning opportunities and creating a greener campus. The University invested $1 million to seed the new Green Revolving Fund, designed to encourage the community to look at the entire campus as a laboratory, classroom and testing ground for energy-saving ideas. The University started the fund with $1 million — primarily from rebates the University received from the Dayton Power and Light Co. and other organizations for already-implemented measures to save electricity. Ideas for projects can come from anyone on campus — students, faculty, staff, researchers — who work with facilities management to identify opportunities and develop the projects. Projects are given the green light based on projected savings in operational costs and are encouraged to include an educational component. Energy savings are tracked and those savings are credited back to the Green Revolving Fund to build the fund's balance to fund the next project. The Hanley Sustainability Fund (HSF) is a student managed equity portfolio. HSF’s goal is to outperform the overall stock market while investing in companies that are embracing an environmentally conscious or resource efficient business model. Through investing in these companies we can do our part to empower companies that are moving away from the usage of fossil fuels and/or discovering and facilitating the use of more sustainable methods of producing power and energy. HSF also provides students with a unique hands-on learning opportunity allowing members to apply concepts learnt inside the classroom in a real world experience.

Student Sustainability Leaders Conference https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/events/conferences/student-leader-conference/index.php Sponsored by the Hanley Sustainability Institute, Student Sustainability Leaders: Networking Our Future is a student-run, student-centric conference celebrating undergraduate and graduate contributions to the interdisciplinary field of sustainability. This event is in partnership with the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) and their Ohio member colleges and universities: University of Toledo, Ohio State University, University of Findlay, and Oberlin College. This event supports student sustainability leaders in both research and career development. Students have the opportunity to showcase their research and to learn about different career options in various sustainability fields. The day is split into two sections: a poster session and sustainability organization booths in the morning, followed by small panel-lead breakout sessions in the afternoon. A keynote speaker presents at lunch. The breakout sessions feature professionals in a variety of different sustainability themed careers including the public sector, the private sector, and nonprofit organizations. Panelists share their career stories in sustainability with students and offer career advice. Additionally, experts on applying to graduate school and internships present their advice to interested students. Non-student attendees are also invited to gain a better understanding of current student sustainability research, and leave with opportunities for collaboration between higher education, public and private sector organizations, and NCSE at the state and national levels. UD Speaker Series The 2017-2018 UD Speaker Series hosted the Minimalists; in 2016-2017 hosted James Balog and Paul Loeb; and in 2015-2016 hosted Michael Pollan (sustainable food advocate). https://www.udayton.edu/provost/speaker_series/archive.php Divest/Invest Conference This conference engaged Pope Francis’ call to action in his compelling encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Conference panels addressed theological and ethical underpinnings of divest/invest initiatives, strategies for engaging senior institutional leadership, financial mechanics of fossil fuel divestment and investment, the student divestment movement, communication and media strategies, and ecumenical coalitions for institutional responses to climate change. https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/events/conferences/divest-invest-conference/welcome/index.php Human Rights Week The 2016 focus: Climate Change and Human Rights Human Rights Week is a weeklong series of events that students design to expose, educate, and create discussion opportunities for the UD community regarding human rights issues. The 2016 speaker series included: Patty Gillis, From the Garden of Eden to Pope Francis: Catholics and Ecology; Susan Kinne, Curing the Earth - Closing the Power Gap; Robert Brecha, Climate Change and Justice; Jacqui Patterson, Climate Change and Race: A Civil Rights Issue. Student-governed. https://www.udayton.edu/artssciences/learn/undergraduate/human-rights-ba.php Everything is Connected: Teaching Pope Francis' "Integral Ecology" Internationally recognized theologians, ethicists, economists and scientists discussed the vision of environmental interconnection in Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si and his call to action to the world during a Spring 2016 University of Dayton conference. The conference began with a free, public talk by Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In addition to Pope Francis' encyclical, Edenhofer discussed the recent United Nations Conference on Climate Change and the future of climate policy. https://www.udayton.edu/news/articles/2016/02/laudato_si_encyclical_conference.php Rivers Summit The River Summit is a regional endeavor to link cities, farmland, communities, and individuals, to develop a regional strategy which leverages Dayton’s most unique asset, the Great Miami and Mad Rivers. Recognizing the need to bring communities together around the river and the watershed, the Rivers Institute at the University of Dayton and the Ohio's Great Corridor Association (OGCA) collaborate to help communities realize the untapped potential the River Corridors have for the region, both economically and socially. https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/fitz/student-servant-leadership/rivers_inst/summit/index.php Social Practice of Human Rights Every two years, the University of Dayton Human Rights Center presents the conference "The Social Practice of Human Rights: Charting the Frontiers of Research and Advocacy." Through its research panels, roundtables, keynote addresses, and plenary sessions focused on the conflict and coexistence of rights and intolerance, this conference provides a unique space for scholars, practitioners, and advocates to engage in collaboration, dialogue, and critical analysis of human rights advocacy, both locally and globally. UD students are frequently presenters and discussants at the conference. Classess attend the conference as part of their semester curriculum. [http://ecommons.udayton.edu/human_rights/2017/] [https://udayton.edu/news/articles/2017/10/social_practice_human_rights_conference.php]

Paddle to the Sea (Feb. 7, 2018) The program in the Kennedy Union Boll Theatre is part of the University’s ArtsLIVE series. It will include both video and live music inspired by the classic children’s book and film, Paddle to the Sea. The tale follows the journey of a carved wooden figure in a canoe, called Paddle-to-the-Sea, which is set into Lake Superior. After many months, Paddle-to-the-Sea arrives at the Atlantic Ocean, having seen how water sustains and connects communities across thousands of miles. https://www.udayton.edu/blogs/artssciences/2018-stories/18-01-09-paddle-to-sea.php First-Year Art's Immersion 2016: Garden of Cosmic Speculation Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Scotland uses landscape and design to explore fundamental aspects of the universe in stunning fashion, with sculptures and artificial landforms serving as metaphors for concepts such as subatomic particles, the diversity of DNA, and the birth and expansion of the cosmos. https://udayton.edu/blogs/artssciences/2016-stories/16-10-06-first-year-arts-immersion.php It’s Your Nature, Sustainability Artist-in-Residence (Year long: 2015-2016) How do you convince 11,368 students that sustainability is a personal as well as global issue? Turn to an artist with a reputation for thinking out-of-the-box, for working across disciplines, and for bringing people together. Michael Bashaw, well known in the Dayton community, is an award-winning musician, sound-sculptor, arts educator and environmental activist. He serves this year as an artist-at-large, collaborating with students and faculty on special projects. Bashaw starts by working with the Rivers Institute in August during their orientation for their new River Stewards. Work this academic year includes installations, theater, music, and classroom sessions. https://udayton.edu/news/articles/2015/08/sustainability_artist_in_residence.php Sustenance (Theater Production, Feb 19-21, 2016) In this choose-your-own-adventure performance installation experience, your team will have a mission — will you accept the challenge and survive? An interactive original play that will have the audience moving through the performance spaces and grappling with how to sustain ourselves and our planet. Sustenance features kinetic sound sculptures from University Artist-in-Residence Michael Bashaw. https://www.udayton.edu/artssciences/academics/theatre/images_and_files/2015-16/2015-16-season.pdf Living Glass installation Celebrating the history of stained glass and the power of light, this exhibition demonstrates the power of place and memory to serve as touchstones for communal and personal identity. Showcasing artworks created by UD faculty and student artists that reflect the distinctive Marianist charisms of the University of Dayton, the artworks each use the reclaimed stained glass windows removed from the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception as source material. The stunning two and three-dimensional artworks displayed highlight the intersections of theology, sustainability, and art. https://udayton.edu/news/articles/2016/04/living_glass_exhibit_april.php

Outdoor Adventure Club (https://orgsync.com/91491/chapter) The purpose of the Outdoor Adventure club is to offer a unique outdoor experience to University of Dayton Students, to educate students about different outdoor activities, to promote a love of the outdoors and the environment, to offer a relaxed and memorable experience, and to inspire a passion for an outdoor lifestyle and land stewardship. Students on OAC excursions, such as backpacking, hiking, camping, canoeing, rock climbing, are required to follow Leave No Trace principles. This group is student-governed. River Stewards (https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/fitz/student-servant-leadership/river-stewards/index.php) Students in this leadership program follow Leave No Trace principles on their kayaking trips in the Great Miami River watershed. This group is not student-governed. Campus Recreation’s Outdoor Engagement Center (OEC) https://udayton.edu/studev/health_wellness/campusrec/outdoor/index.php Campus Recreation’s Outdoor Engagement Center (OEC) provides the University of Dayton and the surrounding community with opportunities and resources to engage the natural world in a sustained, collaborative, and meaningful way that promotes a lifelong appreciation for the outdoors and personal health and wellness. The OEC embodies UD’s principles of community living by offering outdoor experiences and equipment that lead to outcomes connected to the holistic development of individuals and groups, while welcoming all individuals regardless their experience or skill level. These efforts are dedicated to sharing knowledge and providing direct experiences that educate on the common good in one’s commitment to enjoying the outdoors responsibly.

SEE Integrated Learning Living Community The Sustainability, Energy & the Environment ILLC is for students of any major. Students are invited to think critically about the myriad approaches to sustainability, energy, and the environment by integrating material from several different disciplines throughout two semesters. Humanities Commons courses will share readings and attend events together, and students and faculty in all of the courses will interact and integrate activities. The first-year seminar features guest lecturers from across the University and also includes community leaders, giving students the opportunity to explore sustainability, energy, and environmental themes from different points of view and to contribute their own ideas through projects and student-initiated events. The SEE ILLC is part of UD’s Sustainability, Energy & the Environment Initiative.

Rivers Stewards. The River Stewards learn the sustainable life skill of experiencing the interconnectedness of the water cycle, the watershed’s land-water connections, and sustainable water usage. This group is not student-governed. A project that the River Stewards lead that is directly related to sustainable life skills for housing is the Take Back the Tap program. All in-coming students receive water bottles, information, and encouragement to use the water bottle to drink from the tap, saving plastic from going to landfills and using imported water from other locations. SEE Integrated Learning Living Community. As part of the LLC, the students learn about sustainable living. This includes visiting low energy residences in a nearby community (strawbale home tours; solar powered home tours). In the first year community students participate in a pilot composting program by residence hall floor and help guide the dining hall composting program. All students can participate in the "How to Be Green" residence hall education program instructing on daily water conservation, energy conservation, composting, recycling, and being an ethical consumer.

Hanley Sustainability Institute: Student Leaders The Hanley Sustainability Institute offers graduate assistantships, post-doc opportunities, student assistantships, and internships, supporting students gaining experience promoting sustainability initiatives, green building design, food justice partnerships, and sustainability planning on campus. https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/student-opportunities/udsrl/sustlead.php Fitz Center of Community Engagement The Fitz Center offers student internships. In 2016, Fitz offered a paid student intern position to develop and support the University of Dayton’s partnership with Mission of Mary Farm. The intern works with staff and volunteers at Mission of Mary Farm to develop and implement projects which help Mission of Mary Farm work toward its mission while incorporating the involvement of UD student volunteers. The intern will monitor the need for student volunteer placements at Mission of Mary Farm. The intern commits to necessary learning and training to become knowledgeable about Mission of Mary Farm – its mission, organization, and purpose - in order to serve as a resource to both the organization and the students serving at the site. The Fitz Center encourages student interns to contribute to the Fitz’s Center of Community Engagement by growing each partnership initiative using creative problem solving ideas for better partnership outcomes. Rivers Institute. The Rivers Institute employs graduate assistants, interns, and students in Summer Leadership positions. Students may engage in social media, communications, event planning, outreach and education, and maintaining the RiverMobile. School of Engineering: Graduate assistants, student assistants, internships with the following programs: Industrial Assessment Center; Ohio Lean Buildings; Building Assessment Center; Algae Lab; ETHOS (unpaid) https://udayton.edu/engineering/centers/industrial_assessment/index.php https://www.udayton.edu/engineering/centers/building_energy/index.php Hanley Sustainability Institute The Hanley Sustainability Institute offers graduate assistantships, post-doc opportunities, student assistantships, and internships, supporting students gaining experience promoting sustainability initiatives, green building design, food justice partnerships, and sustainability planning on campus.

The Graduation Pledge Do you want to continue to learn, lead, and serve beyond UD? Then the Grad Pledge is for you! The Graduation Pledge Alliance intends to "build a global community of graduates whose commitment to social and environmental responsibility in the workplace and in the rest of their lives is helping to build a healthy, sustainable, and just world."

Campus Plunge: Center for Social Concern, Campus Ministry Plunges are day long immersion experiences raising awareness of a social justice issue and making learning a form of service. Plungers visit places where social injustices are seen clearly and talk to people affected by them. Although participants may see injustice that can lead to hopelessness and apathy, they also are shown opportunities to live out one’s Christian faith through service and advocacy. Current year plunges include: River Plunge (water sustainability); Urban Farming/Local Food Plunge; and the MLK Social Justice Plunge. https://www.udayton.edu/ministry/csc/plunges.php