University of Utah
EN-3: Student Life

ASSOCIATED STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (ASUU) ASUU coordinates and supports over 600+ student groups on campus, including a number of groups focused on sustainability. ASUU Sustainability Board The mission of the Sustainability Board is to make our campus more sustainable through student involvement. URL: http://asuu.utah.edu/boards EnviroClub A student motivated group with the goal of improving awareness of both local and global environmental issues on the campus and in the community. We aim to do this through discussion, interaction with other environmentally motivated individuals or groups, and experiences that allow for students to learn, interact, and observe the changing world around us. URL: http://envst.utah.edu/other-opportunities/enviro-club.php Air and Waste Management Association: Student Chapter at the U of U Affiliated with Air & Waste Management Association Great Basin Chapter. The Mission of A&WMA is to assist in the professional development and critical environmental decision-making of our members to benefit society. URL: http://www.awma-gbc.org/ Food Recovery Network at U of U Affiliated with Food Recovery Network, a student movement against food waste and hunger in America. URL: http://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/utah/ Point B: Transportation Student Group at the U of U An interdisciplinary range of University of Utah students interested in transportation and mobility issues. They coordinate and sponsor guest lectures, Jane Jacob’s Walks, and other transportation-related activities. The group often works with Civil Engineering’s ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) to bring together students from a range of disciplines addressing how we move in the built environment. URL: https://www.facebook.com/Point-B-Transportation-Student-Group-at-the-U-of-U-485864474768752/ Real Food Challenge at the U of U Affiliated with Real Food Challenge. leverages the power of youth and universities to create a healthy, fair and green food system. Our primary campaign is to shift $1 billion of existing university food budgets away from industrial farms and junk food and towards local/community-based, fair, ecologically sound and humane food sources—what we call “real food”—by 2020. URL: http://www.realfoodchallenge.org/ University Student Clean Air Network (USCAN) A University of Utah student group that gets students involved in university and government policies that both directly and indirectly affect Utah’s air quality. URL: https://www.facebook.com/USCAN13/ Wildlife Society at the University of Utah Student chapter affiliated with National Wildlife Society URL: https://orgsync.com/135711/chapter ENVIRONMENTAL & SUSTAINABILITY STUDIES PROGRAM Environmental & Sustainability Studies Student Advisory Committee Student Advisory Committees (SACs) are student groups established within departments to promote communication and interaction among students, faculty, staff, and administrators. URL: http://asuu.utah.edu/sac Sustainability Leadership Committee The Sustainability Leadership Committee serve as student ambassadors for the ENVST Program, and as liaisons between the Program and ENVST majors and other students. URL: http://envst.utah.edu/students/sustainability-leadership-committee.php LOWELL BENNION COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER, STUDENT DIRECTED PROGRAMS URL: http://bennioncenter.org/students/student-directed-programs/index.php --Edible Campus Gardens --Environmental Action Team --Green Urban Lunchbox --Social Justice Gardens, Jackson, Mountain View --Feed U Food Pantry S.J. QUINNEY COLLEGE OF LAW Natural Resources Law Forum Natural Resources Law Forum (NRLF) student group is open to all S. J. Quinney students who share common interests in environmental law and responsible outdoor recreation. NRLF coordinates educational activities to serve the community and facilitate contact with leaders in the field of natural resources law. NRLF also sponsors social and volunteer activities such as tree planting, hikes, and cleanup of trails and rivers. URL: https://www.law.utah.edu/student-orgs/nrlf/

Edible Campus Gardens Managed by the Sustainability Office as outdoor living laboratories for a variety of academic courses. They also serve as demonstration gardens to showcase the beauty and diversity of edible landscaping in an urban setting. The gardens also provide service opportunities for student volunteers from the Bennion Community Service Center and others, as well as K12 youth education programs. Dr. Fred Montague, professor of biology (now retired), founded the first campus edible garden at the Sill Center in 1996 as an outdoor laboratory for his courses. In 2002, he established a second garden site east of Pioneer Memorial Theatre. Students’ efforts expanded the Pioneer Garden in 2011 and 2012. Four-Season Gardening The gardens are designed to maximize diversity and growing space using raised bed techniques. Dr. Montague describes this method in his beautiful, hand-lettered and illustrated book, “Gardening: An Ecological Approach.” Although summer and fall are the height of the growing season, the gardens project is active year-round. The winter months are times for garden planning, seed starting in the Biology Department greenhouses, composting, and even some outdoor gardening. Students have experimented with season extenders such as row covers and low hoops to protect cold-hardy vegetables such as spinach, kale, and fava beans, as well as cover crops for soil conditioning and erosion control. Summer brings a bounty of classic warm-weather crops such as beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and basil. Most varieties are heirlooms, and students experiment with different seeds to see which do best at each site. Produce grown in the gardens is sold seasonally at a student-run market stand at the University of Utah Farmers Market Thursdays at Tanner Plaza. Some items are also sold to University Dining Services. All proceeds directly support the gardens. Vegetables are also donated to local charities, the Social Soup Lecture Series, and enjoyed by students and volunteers.

Sustainable Campus Revolving Loan Fund (2011 - present) The Sustainable Campus Revolving Loan Fund (SCRLF) is a tool that the University of Utah is using to help make campus facilities more sustainable. The fund is made possible primarily by a $2.50 fee that is part of every students’ tuition. This structure allows University of Utah students to directly participate in bringing their campus one step closer to carbon neutrality. Within the projects financed through this fund, there will be opportunities for students to participate in either a research or project management capacity. The SCRLF is leveraging student fees to make a measurable difference on campus. Energy Management Fund (2008 - present) ince its creation, the Fund has grown to a value of 20 times the original investment. It is designed to either completely finance projects with paybacks of 5-7 years, including savings and incentive dollars, or to incentivize already existing projects to select more energy efficient equipment with the same payback criteria on the differential between convention and high-efficiency equipment.

Global Change & Sustainability Center: Seminar 2015-16 is the sixth year of the GCSC seminar series, which presents some of the best researchers--from around campus and across the country--whose work sheds light on global change and sustainability. Seminars are open to all, and students who are enrolled in the Seminar course, SUST 6800, have additional opportunities to engage with the speakers. Global Change & Sustainability Center: Research Symposium (annual) The annual research symposium highlights the exciting work undertaken by GCSC-affiliated students and postdoctoral scholars, and provides the University community another opportunity for the kind of cross-disciplinary engagement that leads to further innovation and collaboration. URL: http://environment.utah.edu/research-symposium/ Social Soup Lecture Series (2011- present) The Social Soup Series features distinctive speakers who reflect on local and national social, economic and environmental issues surrounding food. People from all over campus and the community come together to increase awareness, build knowledge and have conversations over a delicious, vegetarian bowl of soup. planning committee includes members from the Sustainability Office, College of Social Work, College of Social & Behavioral Science, College of Health, the Global Change and Sustainability Center and the Chief Wellness Officer. URL: http://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/social-soup/ Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources & the Environment: Green Bag Series a bi-weekly, noon-hour Green Bag Lecture Series, providing students with the opportunity to meet top scholars, policy makers, and community leaders working on the environmental challenges that define our times. Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources & the Environment: Symposium (annual, 1996-present) The Wallace Stegner Center annually holds a symposium during spring semester on an environmental or natural resources topic of regional, national, and international importance. The symposium is interdisciplinary in nature, and includes speakers from the sciences and social sciences, academia, government, industry, and the legal profession. The 21st Annual Stegner Center Symposium in March 2016 had the theme, “Green Infrastructure, Resilient Cities: New Challenges, New Solutions”; The Stegner Center’s 22nd Annual Symposium, to be held March 23 to 24, 2017, will focus on, “Water in the West: Untapped Solutions.” The symposium will address how the twin drivers of climate disruption and demographic change are likely to impact water availability in the West over the next 50 years. URL: https://www.law.utah.edu/projects/stegner-annual-symposium/ Future of the Environmental Humanities Symposium ( September 24-27, 2015) A partnership between the Environmental Humanities program at the University of Utah and the Humanities Center at Brigham Young University. URL: http://environmental-humanities.utah.edu/opportunities/2015-environmental-humanities-symposium.php

Earth Day (April 22) The annual Earth Fest event, organized by the ASUU Sustainability Board, connects students with campus and community organizations, businesses and initiatives that promote sustainability and environmental consciousness. Utah Museum of Fine Arts, ARTLandish: Land Art, Landscape and the Environment Lecture Series A series of talks, films, meet-ups, and more that explore our complex relationship with the world around us (The UMFA is closed for remodeling until August, 2017) Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Exploring Sustainability (exhibit September 13, 2013–July 27, 2014) An exhibition of new projects that explore how principles of ecological sustainability and affiliated design strategies are applied to creative thinking and to the design process. During Sustainable Design Practice, the University of Utah studio art course in which this work was created, students gained an overview of the environmental impacts of design and production practices as well as the processes and methods associated with more sustainable approaches. The projects created over the course of the spring 2013 semester are inspired examples of how students integrated sustainable design into their own creative process. The exhibition is intended to stimulate further dialogue among the university and local communities about issues related to sustainability. Museum is free for U of U students/staff/faculty. Living Wall (SCIF Project, 2014) Prominently on display in the lobby of our student Union buildingm the Living Wall grew out of the Fall 2014 Environmental and Sustainability Studies Capstone Course at the University of Utah. A group of students sharing the common interest of green infrastructure and air quality improvement got together to build a vertical garden on campus. URL: https://video.utah.edu/media/t/0_vfrer3ma Race and Gender in African American Theatre (THEA 4804) This class has a sustainability component integrated into the curriculum, where students “explore how ideas of sustainability factor into our understanding of the theories and ideas found in the literature.” A final project in this course includes a sustainability component, and these projects are open to the campus community to come watch and participate in.

Parks, Recreation, & Tourism: U-Explore Offered through the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism in the College of Health, these outdoor adventure courses offer an opportunity for University of Utah students to enjoy “wild Utah” through an exciting array of 60 course titles. National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) Partnership (1980- present) The Department of Parks, Recreation,& Tourism and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) have maintained a productive professional and collegial partnership spanning more than 30 years. Beginning in 1980, the two schools signed a memorandum of understanding through which NOLS students would receive University of Utah credits for participating in their NOLS expedition. As part of this agreement, the PRT faculty began yearly reviews of NOLS curriculum and instructor qualifications. Today, the relationship between the two organizations is characterized by high quality outcome and process-oriented research, educational exchange, and an annual scholarship provided to a PRT student to attend a NOLS course. URL: http://health.utah.edu/health-kinesiology-recreation/recreation/nols/

Lassonde Studios, Floor 2: Global Impact & Sustainability (2016- present) Opening fall 2016, Lassonde Studios will be the home for student entrepreneurs and innovators at the University of Utah where students from any major or background can "Live. Create. Launch." The building will combine approximately 400 residents with a 20,000-square-foot "garage", where students can connect, test ideas, build prototypes, launch companies and learn by doing. The building and diverse engagement opportunities will be managed by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Insitute, an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. URL: http://housing.old.utah.edu/options/living-learning-communities/ Sage Point 813 Green Sustainability Floor (2008-2016) The Green-Sustainability Floor moved to the new Lassonde Studios Fall 2016. The Green-Sustainability Floor intentionally places students into a community that is supportive of a greener student lifestyle, while maintaining opportunities to connect with other students in a community living environment. The Green-Sustainability Floor will support the University of Utah’s commitment to creating a more sustainable campus through programs offered to the residents by the Office of Sustainability. Students on this floor can expect communal dinners with floormates and professors, tours of local farms, green businesses or recycling facilities, and conservation themed programming. Students that take the BlockU- Sustainability class (UGS 2210) will have the opportunity to connect and learn about sustainable issues and be able to connect with a fantastic professor. The learning will not end after class though as you will live with others on the floor.

Sustainability Office: Student Interns The Sustainability Resource Center hosts several undergraduate and graduate student interns each year.Contact us to find out about current opportunities. Most internships last for one academic year.

Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program: Lunch With Leaders The Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program hosts monthly guests, allowing students the opportunity to interact with professionals in environmental and sustainability fields.