Virginia Tech
EN-1: Student Educators Program

The Office of Sustainability Internship Program blends real-world projects with practical skills-based professional development courses to prepare students for a career in the sustainability field.

By encouraging creativity, ownership, and collaboration, students will learn what it is like to enter a constantly changing world and work in a constantly changing field.

The primary goals of the program are to:

1. Cultivate the skills needed by young sustainability professionals.
2. Advance Virginia Tech’s sustainability goals through creative engagement.
3. Encourage peer-to-peer learning through communications, campaigns, events, and projects.

The Office of Sustainability is committed to providing a valuable experience by offering students the opportunity for rapid personal and professional growth. The projects the students take on, paired with professional development classes and other trainings, will allow students to both sharpen and expand their environmental professional skill sets.

The Student Sustainability Internship Program consists of 20 student interns serving on 4 different teams. Teams include:

1. Energy Outreach Team: The energy team works to reduce energy use on and off campus and decrease Virginia Tech's carbon footprint. The team will complete projects in partnership with the Office of Energy Management, Alternative Transportation, University Planning, as well as other campus departments and organizations. Members will also engage students, faculty, and staff to educate individuals on energy saving practices.

2. Waste Outreach Team: The waste team works to reduce the amount of waste that is produced at Virginia Tech, and to dispose, recycle, or reuse where appropriate. Waste is inclusive of trash, recycling, and compost material. The team will work with Sustainable Dining, the Office of University Planning, Waste Management and other campus departments and organizations. Members will also engage the campus community to promote proper waste sorting and reuse of items to decrease Virginia Tech's environmental footprint.

3. Water Outreach Team: The water team works to improve a variety of site, infrastructure, and water issues on campus; including stormwater management, grounds maintenance & development, and water conservation practices. The team will work with the Office of University Planning, Site & Infrastructure Development, and other campus departments and organizations. Members will also engage the campus community to promote water conservation practices that can be applied in everyday life.

4. Food Outreach Team: The food team works to critically assess the sourcing, consumption, and disposal or food on Virginia Tech's campus and within the dining halls. The team will work with Sustainable Dining as well as other campus departments and organizations. Members will also promote locally sourced food and work to decrease food waste on campus through campaigns marketed toward the university community. The team works with VT Engage and The Market at Virginia Tech to assist in providing food to those in need.

Each intern team has a communications representative. The communications representative team is responsible for supporting their team in their design, social media, and marketing needs. The main goal of the communications representative is to elevate the internship program’s work to all university and broader community audiences, and to promote student events on campus. The communications representatives also coordinate with sustainability student groups from other colleges and universities to share ideas and collaborate on events.

Programs include:
Clothing and Thrift Swaps
Ytoss support and programming
OZZI Reusable To-Go Campaigns
Waste Audits & food waste audits
Earth Week programming
World Water Day event planning and execution
Sustainably-focused outreach to local elementary and middle school children
Partnerships with town organizations (e.g. Wonder Universe Children's Museum)
Writing master plans for sustainable growth of VT
Hosting events to raise awareness and get the community involved in practicing sustainability

The student intern program was featured in the following article: https://news.vt.edu/articles/2021/06/sustainability-interns-2021.html

The student interns with the VT Office of Sustainability aim to reach fellow students, faculty, staff, and members of the Blacksburg and Christiansburg communities.

Football games bring thousands of fans onto campus, which means that tons of additional waste is created, especially during tailgates. As part of Virginia Tech’s commitment to sustainability, the Office of Sustainability's student Game Day Green Team game day recycling initiative encourages tailgaters to recycle their bottles and cans. The Game Day Green Team is led and managed by students, where they manage supplies, recruit volunteers, work with the Facilities department on waste collection, and execute the program on each home game day. The volunteers then complete the following:

- Gather at the YMCA at Virginia Tech's Lancaster House and spend one to two hours volunteering, which will end about a half an hour before game time
- Split into groups of five to ten people and assigned a parking lot
- Walk around the assigned lot and hand out blue recycling bags to tailgaters
- Educate tailgates on what to recycle and what to throw away and answer any questions tailgaters may have about recycling
- Receive a Game Day Green Team t-shirt to wear and keep
(Volunteering at every game is not required. Individuals can pick which game(s) they would like to volunteer for during sign up)

Volunteers follow this script when talking to tailgaters:
"It is now easier than ever to recycle as a tailgater! There are recycling flags posted in the Coliseum, Stadium, Track/Field House, Chicken Hill, and Litton Reeves parking lots where you can obtain additional free blue recycling bags. Plastic bottles, glass bottles, aluminum cans, plastic cups (such as Solo cups), and clean cardboard can all be recycled. Filled recycling bags should be left at a recycling flag. Paper plates, napkins, styrofoam, and food waste are not recyclable and should not be included in the bag."

The program has continued to evolve over the past few years as we are trialing methods to reduce plastic bag consumption and encourage tailgaters not to bag their recyclables. We have also expanded the program during the 2023 basketball season to play a role in encouraging recycling at our Cassell Coliseum during home basketball games.

The target audience for the Game Day Green Team volunteers are the people tailgating at Virginia Tech football games and attending Virginia Tech basketball games. This includes VT students, family members, employees, alumni, fans, and members of opposing teams' communities as well.

Since 1992, the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) has provided encouragement and support to engineering students, focusing on the under-represented population. The CEED office recognizes that Virginia Tech students are among the best and brightest, and assists them in achieving excellence.

CEED Objectives and Goals:
- To increase the diversity of students who apply to, enroll, and graduate from the College of Engineering
- To increase the awareness of engineering and other technical fields as an exciting and rewarding career path to a diverse population
- To provide academic, professional, and personal support programs
- To provide support to student organizations that support our mission, including the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and Council for the Advancement of Minority Engineering Organizations
- To foster collaboration between CEED, the University, industry, and the local community

How the program works: This program is only possible because of the engineering students who participate in it. Engineering students are trained and assigned to groups of incoming freshman engineering students to provide support in all areas touched on in the above objectives and goals list. The trained students become experts on the above objectives and goals and use their expertise to educate their peers and promote success of underrepresented and underserved groups in the field of engineering, thus resulting in a more equitable, diverse, and socially just and sustainable environment for all students within the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.

This program supports goals of enhanced social sustainability by encouraging and supporting diverse groups to pursue education and career paths that they have traditionally had limited access to or have been discouraged from pursuing either intentionally or unintentionally due to systemic faults such as economic divides.

This is a peer-to-peer program. Engineering students (sophomore and above) serve as mentors and educators to freshmen and transfer engineering students (of all academic levels). It is a common practice that the students who enter this program as mentees go on to serve as mentors in this program in their later years at Virginia Tech, resulting in a continued cycle of peer-to-peer education.

Incoming engineering students who are members of under-represented populations (both freshmen and transfer).

The Virginia Tech Honors College provides honors students with the opportunity to teach reading seminars on books and topics chosen by those students to their peers. Honors Reading Seminars are small, active, collaborative, discussion-based classes in which students meet to read about and explore topics of common interest. Peer educators propose the topics for their individual reading seminars, create the reading lists and schedules, and facilitate the group's class meetings. Reading seminar participants earn one honors credit.

Honors College reading seminars help students explore topics they care about in a small, supportive community that fosters creativity, critical thinking, and the sharing of diverse perspectives. These courses allow honors students to examine these topics in great depth with a group of engaged colleagues. Moreover, these classes help students develop confidence in their ideas, interpretations, and public speaking abilities. Finally, reading seminars help students meet and learn about other honors students they might not otherwise get to know and gain a larger sense of what it means to be an honors student at Virginia Tech.

Each readings seminar takes the form of a 1 hour class, once a week, throughout the entire semester. The student educators teach classes of their peers ranging from 3 to 20 students. The student educators spend an average of two hours per week planning their course discussions and one hour meeting with their advisor, Paul Heilker.

The students who serve as student educators to their peers are trained by Paul Heilker, the Honors College Director of the Honors Laureate Program. Paul Heilker teaches the students educators on how to have inclusive and encouraging discussions in their classrooms and covers topics like how to address bias and create a safe space for their students. The student educators then share and teach their own peers in their classes about how to have productive and inclusive discussions on their topics.

In 2023, a reading seminar was taught on the subject of Eating Between the Lines with the following course description: "This reading seminar will focus on the complexity of the agriculture industry and the culture of the food we eat in the 21st century. Topics for our discussion will include society’s eating choices, health in our environment and bodies, and the politics and pleasure in what we consume." (1 student educator)

In 2022, a reading seminar was taught on the subject of Life on the Farm with the following course description: "With the American farming industry declining, it is vital to take understand just how important farms are to American culture and examine what they can teach us about who we are and what we do. In this reading seminar, we will delve into the beautiful and hard world of the American farm through the lens of a children's book, an allegorical novel, and a classic of American literature." (1 student educator)

In 2021, 2022, and 2023, reading seminars were taught on the subject of Dystopia with the following course description: "In this seminar, we will look at how different societies adapt in the midst of a crisis. We will compare how societies deal with problems such as censorship, overpopulation, climate change, class division, and misuse of advancing technology. Then, we will compare these dystopias to real-life societies to see how far we are from reaching extreme standards. This seminar will help prepare students for the future by discussing how to maintain a stable society in a rapidly changing world." (6 student educators, 2 per semester over 3 years)

In 2021, there was another reading seminar on the topic of A Look into the Future through Dystopian Novels with the course description of "This reading seminar will use essential dystopian fiction to examine the philosophy, politics, and science behind totalitarian regimes, environmental destruction, technological control, and government resistance, and the extent to which these concepts are already present in our society." (1 student educator)

In 2021, reading seminars were taught on the topic of Into the Woods: Finding a Balance between Society and Nature with the following course description: "This seminar will explore our human need for companionship and our equally important need for time alone to grow as an individual. We will consider ideas such as the outdoors being a home, a safe place to be at ease, seeking one's identity through solitude in nature, and the profound effects of changing economic status." (1 student leader)

https://honorscollege.vt.edu/Current/HonorsCourses/HonorsReadingSeminars.html

We are reporting 10 student educators, working 16 weeks, and putting in four hours of work per week.

Calculations:

20 Student interns x 10 hours per week x 32 weeks per school year x 3 years in reporting period = 19,200
91 tailgate volunteers x 2 hours per shift x 7 home games = 1,274
54 CEED mentors x 5 hours per week x 32 weeks per school year = 8,640
10 reading seminar student educators x 4 hours per week x 16 weeks per semester = 640

TOTAL = 29,754