PS 94-128
Promoting student sustainability
This paper is about strategies for promoting student sustainability. What are students doing to promote sustainability through their actions? Undergraduate students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical state University (NC A&T) collaborated with myActions network, a leading college platform that engages students to deliver real world sustainable impact and promote sustainability through networking and use of social media. Two hundred and ten undergraduate students participated in promoting sustainability on campus in Fall 2014. The participants include 22% freshmen, 25% sophomores, 34% juniors and 19% seniors. The students worked with friends and student organizations using networking and social media to promote sustainability. Throughout the 2014 fall semester, students shared tens of actions ranging from recycling of paper and plastic bottles, turning off lights, turning of water, picking up trash, monitoring carbon foot prints, car pooling, donating used items to the needy, etc. These actions are aimed at raising sustainability awareness among students, faculty and staff. In addition, a one credit hour sophomore level recycling course (WMI 236) was developed and implemented in Fall 2013 to teach students how to reduce solid wastes that may be disposed in landfills. WMI 236 which is open to all undergraduate majors. WMI 236 focuses on tools and convergence of physical sciences, engineering, technology, life sciences and social sciences to accelerate innovative and creative recycling solutions. Students collaborated on various aspects of recycling projects.
Results/Conclusions
Undergraduate students demonstrated that positive actions such as recycling of paper, plastic bottles and soda cans; walking on campus; reusing water bottles; showering briefly; unplugging unused electronics; turning of water while brushing teeth; carpooling and turning off lights and reporting leaky water faucets to plumbers by individuals, can add up quickly to have a meaningful impact on campus sustainability. NC A&T earned a Silver award for student sustainability in Fall 2014. Twenty four undergraduate students who enrolled in WMI 236 recycling in Fall 2014 were surveyed to ascertain what they thought about WMI 236 class. The recycling survey results are as follows: 63% of the students rated the class excellent, 20% of the students rated the class superior, 11% of the students rated the class satisfactory, 2% of the students rated the class unsatisfactory, and 4% of the students indicated that the class needs improvement. The survey results suggest that majority of the students (63%) who enrolled in the WMI 236 recycling class understand and appreciate recycling as a way to promote student sustainability at NC A&T.