Sustainability Student Employees: A Year in Review Part 1

2023-2024 was a big year for the Sustainability Student Employee (SSE) program. Made up of 19 students across six teams, the SSEs serve as the primary connection between the Office for Sustainability and students at UVA, and help oversee a wide variety of sustainability initiatives that engage directly with the UVA community. Over the past year, we’ve maintained our engagement with students, professors, and community members both on- and off-Grounds, continued to offer numerous volunteering and educational opportunities, and expanded our composting network. Furthermore, in addition to our Outreach, Green Living, Service Learning, Waste Minimization, and Green Athletics teams, we’ve expanded the program to include the Equity & Environment team, which focuses on addressing issues of environmental justice and systemic environmental inequities. Check out Part 1 of our SSE Recap below, and we'll be back next week to share Part 2.

Outreach team

The Outreach team’s primary focus is to lead the Sustainability Advocates, a student leadership group in which students can learn more about a wide variety of topics in sustainability and develop their own sustainability projects. This year, the Sustainability Advocates developed projects with an environmental justice theme in mind. In the fall, they invited six different speakers: two UVA professors, and representatives from the Morven Kitchen Garden, the Women’s Center, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Community Climate Collaborative. These guest speakers discussed a wide variety of topics, ranging from food accessibility to representation, providing inspiration for projects to be implemented in the spring.

In the spring semester, the Sustainability Advocates put what they learned in the fall to action. Their projects included planting grasses on a barren stretch of land along Engineers Way, promoting the anti-food waste service “Too Good to Go” to local Charlottesville restaurants, suggesting improvements to Charlottesville’s recycling services at a City Council meeting, and analyzing efficiency opportunities in UVA’s irrigation water usage. 

In addition to supporting these projects, the Outreach team hosted three Sustainability Alumni Panels of three to four young professionals involved in sustainability, maintained an active social media presence on Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and accumulated over 250 hours of volunteering through the Sustainability Advocates.

Green Living team

While Outreach engages both the UVA and broader Charlottesville communities, the Green Living team directs their attention towards sustainable living on -Grounds. Throughout the past year, the Green Living team hosted a total of 32 engagement programs. 15 of these programs were Succulent Saturdays, where participants answered sustainability trivia questions and earned succulents for their dorm rooms. 10 were Recycled Arts and Crafts programs, where students turned recycled materials into friendship bracelets and lanyards. The Green Living team also held three vegetarian cookouts in partnership with the Nitrogen Working Group, held collaborative events with both the Women’s Center and Professor Sweeney’s engagements class, and even led a hike up Observatory Hill.

Aside from the plethora of engagement programs that they host, the Green Living team also leads the Eco-Leaders program in partnership with the Career Center. The Eco-Leaders are a student leadership group that focuses on sustainability in professional development. Through this program, students learned about careers in sustainability and heard from guest speakers about sustainability in engineering, policy, and commerce. They also attended resume workshops, mock interviews, and volunteering events, and found opportunities to promote sustainability in the UVA community while also learning about how they can build sustainability into their own professional careers.

The Green Living team also held three Green Your Dorm events over the past year. At Green Your Dorm, sustainability-related clubs and organizations tabled alongside the Office for Sustainability to promote sustainable practices and happenings on Grounds, incentivizing attendees with succulents, water bottles, pumpkins, popsicles, and tote bags. They partnered with UVA Green Dining, Swap at UVA, Hereford Residential College, UVA’s the Extinction Club, and the UVA Student Council. All combined, over 370 students attended a Green Your Dorm event this past year.

Service Learning team

The Outreach and Green Living teams are both centered around sustainability education, but environmental stewardship is also a core tenet of environmental awareness. To this end, the Service Learning team organizes opportunities for UVA and Charlottesville community members to engage directly with sustainability initiatives through volunteer work. The Service Learning team provides a wide variety of opportunities, including recurring Corner Cleanups, Student Garden Workdays, Green Games, and other various one-time volunteering opportunities.

This past year, the Service Learning team partnered with 12 different organizations throughout nine Corner Cleanups, including Theta Tau, Brown Residential College, and Defend Our Future, recruiting over 200 volunteers in total. Corner Cleanups are typically hosted on Sunday mornings, when volunteers meet in front of Madison Hall for free bagels. Afterwards, they are divided into groups and pick up trash along the Corner, Rugby Road, Madison Lane, and Chancellor Street.

Alongside Corner Cleanups, the Service Learning team also supports waste reduction efforts at fall football games and spring basketball games. Through events known as Green Games, the Service Learning team recruited over 100 volunteers across 10 games. These volunteers worked to compost and recycling material from Scott Stadium and John Paul Jones, successfully diverting nearly 63,000 pounds of material during the fall season alone!

In addition to supporting these large volunteering events, the Service Learning team also manages the Student Garden, located alongside the intersection between Alderman and McCormick. Throughout the entire year, they hosted two Garden Workdays every week, where they trained 10 student volunteers in sustainable community agriculture and general garden maintenance. The Student Garden also partnered with students from Professor Stephenson’s food justice writing class, Morven Kitchen Garden, UVA Sawmilling, Black Bear Composting, and various community members.

Each semester with a Sustainability Service Series, a series of engaging events to introduce people to ways they can get involved with sustainability both at UVA and in the greater Charlottesville area. These events included a student garden welcome event, Corner Cleanups, Green Games, Thankful Thoughts letter-writing events, an annual cleanup of the Rivanna River watershed with the Rivanna Conservation Alliance, a hike up Observatory Hill with the Outdoors Club, and a work day at the Morven Kitchen Garden, altogether engaging more than 130 volunteers.

Read updates about Waste Minimization, Equity & Environment, and Green Athletics in part 2!