University of Wisconsin-Madison
EN-3: Student Life

The Office of Sustainability maintains a listing of sustainability-focused student groups organized by topic. Currently UW-Madison has 29 sustainability focused student groups: Business - Ethical and Responsible Business Network - Net Impact Chapter at WSB (Grad and Professional Students) - Wisconsin Without Borders Marketplace Climate Change - Climate Action 350, UW Chapter - Climate Reality Project Campus Corps at UW-Madison Food and Agriculture - Agricultural Business Management Club - Campus Kitchen Project - Challah for Hunger - F.H. King Students for Sustainable Agriculture - Food Recovery Network, UW-Madison Chapter - Free Salad UW - Leopold Greenhouse Learning Community - Patio Tomato Projects - Slow Food UW - Rock and Wrap it Up! College Wrap! UW-Madison Chapter Conservation - Badgers for Conservation - Sierra Student Coalition, UW-Madison Energy and Engineering - American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers - Energy Hub (EHUB) - Engineers for a Sustainable World, UW-Madison Chapter - Helios - Wiscwind General Environment and Sustainability - ASM Sustainability Committee - Environmental Sciences Organization - Environmental Studies Organization - Geography Club Health and Wellness - Students for a Sustainable Healthcare Waste and Recycling - Cleaning up Campus - Rethink Wisconsin

The Edible Landscapes Project is a program by students, for students, in an effort to educate people and raise awareness about environmental issues centered around food. Most importantly the project serves as a resource for students who face food insecurity (http://ediblelandscapes.wixsite.com/edible). The Eagle Heights Gardens are for growing food for the University and Madison communities. They are recognized as one of the oldest and largest community gardens in the United States. As a garden of faculty, staff, students, and at large community members, they have growing techniques and food culture from several countries (http://eagleheightsgardens.org/).

Slow Food UW's mission is to promote and model an alternative food system where food is good, clean, and fair for all by supporting sustainable food production, creating an inviting community around food, and advancing food justice in the Madison area. Each semester, over 40 student interns and a team of nine student directors devote their time to furthering Slow Food UW’s mission. One of the programs Slow Food UW runs is a weekly cafe, where they prepare and sell meals.

The Green Fund at the Office of Sustainability supports student-initiated projects that reduce the environmental footprint and operating costs of on-campus facilities in the areas of 1) solid waste, 2) energy, and 3) water conservation. The Green Fund is not a revolving fund; however, cost savings and return on investment are important considerations in the proposal evaluation process. Equally important to the mission of the Green Fund is that students gain practical experience translating their ideas into operational realities, including the financial components of project planning and implementation.

Each year the Office of Sustainability coordinates a series of student focused events around Earth Day. In 2018 events included workshops and discussions addressing issues of Race and Class in Environmentalism, Going Zero Waste, Budgeting, and Composting as well as an environmental racism film screening and panel discussion (https://sustainability.wisc.edu/earth-week-2018/). Also, each year University Housing puts on "Sustain-a-bash" which is a resource fair that provides meaningful and tangible ways for students to practice sustainability in their daily lives (https://sustainability.wisc.edu/the-fourth-annual-sustain-a-bash-better-living-through-milkshakes-activities-and-holistic-sustainability/). There are number of on-going speaker series focused on sustainability issues and targeted at students, including: - Weston Roundtable (https://nelson.wisc.edu/sage/weston-roundtable/) - Sustainable Energy Seminar Series (https://energy.wisc.edu/events/seminar-series) - Climate, People and the Environment Program (https://nelson.wisc.edu/ccr/events/seminars.php) Finally, the Wisconsin Union Directorate puts on a number of events throughout the year, many of which address sustainability topics. Past examples include: - A Discussion with Will Allen: Urban Farming and Youth in Policy Making at the Community Level (https://union.wisc.edu/get-involved/wud/society-and-politics/past-events/) - Social Cinema: Screening of films addressing social just topics (for example: https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/social-cinema-a-plastic-ocean-2016/)

Including one-off as well as on-going series, UW-Madison has a number of sustainability themed culture events and installations, including: - Displaced Horizons: A multimedia project focusing on water infrastructures’ socio-cultural and historical complexities (https://humanities.wisc.edu/events/entry/displaced-horizons) - Extreme Weather: A screening of Cooked: Survival by Zip Code followed by a panel discussion (https://humanities.wisc.edu/events/entry/extreme-weather) - Interrogating the Plantationocene: A seminar series that will draw together anthropologists, artists, economists, environmental scientists, geographers, historians, lawyers, literary scholars, and sociologists, among others, to explore and deepen the concept of the Plantationocene (https://humanities.wisc.edu/research/plantationocene) - Tera Incognita Art Series: Artist-led workshop and event series showcasing a range of expressions that explore the relationships between humans and the world they inhabit (https://humanities.wisc.edu/research/workshops/terra-incognita) - Environmental Justice in a Multispecies World: Essay contest and discussion series that will result in a jointly authored manuscript and a cross-institutional funding proposal that focuses on enacting the type of grounded research that can emerge from this productive theoretical intersection (https://humanities.wisc.edu/research/workshops/multispecies) - Humanities without Walls: Creating new avenues for collaborative research, teaching, and the production of scholarship in the humanities, 2017 and 2018 theme of "The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate" (https://humanities.wisc.edu/research/humanities-without-walls) - Beneath the Canopy Exhibition by Katherine Steichen Rosing: Phases of life and interdependence of species within the forest community are explored in large scale paintings and soaring ethereal sculptures. Towering grandmother trees nurture slender saplings while surrounded by rhythmic tree trunks dotted with lichens that signal clean air. Relief surfaces of Rosing’s forest paintings enhance the play of light and color like nature’s textures (https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/beneath-the-canopy-exhabition-by-katherine-steichen-rosing/2019-04-13/)

We have many outdoor programs (led primarily by Hoofers: https://www.hoofers.org/) and while they offer Leave No Trace focused events they do not consistently follow Leave No Trace principles.

UW-Madison's First-Year Interest Groups are clusters of (usually) three courses, linked together to explore a common theme, and offered to incoming freshmen who attend these classes together as a cohort (https://www.figs.wisc.edu/catalog?dep=72&g=All&e=All&b=All&l=All&h=All&fl=All). There are a number of themes available to students covering sustainability related topics, including: - Global Biodiversity and the Sixth Mass Extinction - Native American Perspectives on Ecology and Stewardship - Sustainability and Engineering - Weather Hazards and Society - Wolves, Dogs, and People In addition, UW-Madison has a common reading program called "Go Big Read", while not consistently focused on Sustainability the 2018-2019 book is "The Death and Life of the Great Lakes" (https://gobigread.wisc.edu/).

UW-Madison offers a Sustainability-focused living experience called GreenHouse. Joining GreenHouse gives students an opportunity to go beyond a conventional residence hall experience and is designed for the type of person who is interested in being active in their environment and community, the GreenHouse can provide them with the network, tools and knowledge to get involved. As member of this learning community, residents will also have exclusive access to numerous unique programs like seminars, field trips, shared meals, volunteering opportunities, and discussions that focus on the theme of sustainability. It’s hard not to be inspired here, as the community is literally surrounded by sustainability, located in the LEED gold certified Leopold Residence Hall, which includes an on-site rooftop greenhouse for residents.

The Office of Sustainability offers a year-long internship program in which student teams work to raise awareness of sustainable practices, influence consumer behavior, and train partners across campus in individualized strategies for implementation. Interns work closely with campus offices, departments, and auxiliary units like University Housing or the Wisconsin Union Directorate. Students gain concrete knowledge of sustainability solutions as well as professional development training in an upbeat, collaborative environment.

The UW Campus Food Shed is a project thought up by undergraduate student Hannah DePorter. Funded by a grant from the Kemper Knapp Bequest written by Irwin Goldman and Hannah, the Campus Food Shed is designed to collect produce from research farms and from the F.H. King Student Farm and make it freely available to all UW Madison students, staff, and faculty.