The recent articles published in this column have highlighted the many strides made by Rensselaer in the area of sustainability, from research and academic courses to campus conservation and green initiatives. Student clubs have been essential in driving this initiative and making sustainability a priority on campus. With RPI Earth Week —a joint effort between various groups on campus, centered around Earth Day on April 22—quickly approaching, it is a good time for a short review of RPI’s sustainability-related clubs and current projects.
Ecologic is the oldest of these groups at Rensselaer, and focuses on projects to educate, raise awareness, and involve the community in environmental issues and ecological endeavors. Ecologic maintains the Environmental Education Center in the Union Games Room, which serves as a common space and resource for students. One of its main events is the annual EcoHall Challenge, hosted with the Residence Hall Association, which began last week and will continue through Earth Week. The Challenge is a competition among the freshman residence halls focusing on energy reduction.
Engineers for a Sustainable World, a much newer campus club, mainly focuses its energy on off-campus projects. Although projects center around engineering solutions to environmental problems, the group is not limited to engineers, and it encourages membership from all fields—as the club recognizes the importance of interdisciplinary input for truly sustainable solutions. Current projects include the design of a solar panel system to provide electricity for a school in Haiti and the prototyping of a biodigester.
Terra Café is a full-service, sit-down restaurant open every Wednesday from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm on the second floor of Russell Sage Dining Hall. Food served is local and organic; the menu, available on the Terra Café website, features both meat and vegetarian options as well as a dessert each week. The student-run group has recently expanded its scope and begun work on developing campus greenhouses, which will not only provide food for its restaurant but bring focus to the potential of locally grown food on campus.
Vasudha is a living and learning community of freshmen students with a focus on society and the environment. It brings together students interested in developing their knowledge about sustainability and provides them with an early introduction to academic courses and other campus opportunities around this focal point. The group participates in a number of activities throughout the year and also holds events open to the rest of the RPI community, such as movie nights and barbecues.
The Student Sustainability Task Force was created with the intention of creating a forum of communication and coordination between the above groups and initiatives. In its short life span of less than two years, the SSTF has not only been successful at bridging these student groups, but it has also been working with the Rensselaer administration, faculty, and staff to further incorporate sustainability into the fabric of RPI.
Each of these groups works hard to encourage a sustainable culture within the RPI community, provide a diverse range of opportunities for involvement and learning, and help us become aware of the impact our ecological footprint has on the world. For more information on all of these clubs and projects, visit RPI’s Sustainability Blog at http://blogger.rpi.edu/sustainability/.
Editor’s Note: “Sustainability: Inside Scoop” and “Sustainability: Outside Scoop” are columns granted to the Student Sustainability Task Force by the Editorial Board to discuss issues of sustainability on the Rensselaer campus and around the nation.
