In addition to a green living guide for freshman, we have found that face-to-face interaction is effective for relationship building with new freshman. On move-in day this year, we met each new family outside the building where they picked up their keys, etc. with a personal recycling bin and re-usable shopping bag. Since students have to collect a variety of materials that day, the bin served as a carry all. Several parents commented on how helpful it was to have the bin for that reason. It was nice to see a sea of families carrying blue bins all over campus. With only 1200 members of the freshman class, we can have this personalized interaction. It set the stage for a sustainability theme for the first semester for this entire class. We followed up with an orientation speaker on sustainability. Each new student attended the orientation speaker event with their advising group and discussed the speech over dinner.

Our Community College Sustainability Alliance just made a facebook page.  We'll let you know how that works out.

The Campus Rec Department at Sonoma State University is trying to create some momentum for this.  We incorporate sustainability into our "Rec Center tour and fun time" during Summer Orientation (required for all orientation participants), so we hit them before they even come to campus.  We have student staff giving the tours in small groups, so there is a lot of student-to-student contact.  We tell them about the totally cool sustainability features of our Rec Center and tell them we want them to incorporate sustainability into their everyday lives when they come to Sonoma.  So, we feel we are trying to create an expectation.

Throughout the year, when students come into the Rec Center, they read "sustainability markers" around our building, educational signs about green features in our building.  During many times of the year we also have green living tips or other campaigns the Campus Rec student staff spearhead.  One of the most exciting programs we are planning for this spring is a 30-Day Challenge to Live Green.  We saw the event on Georgia Southern's Recreation and Wellness website and just loved it.  Our primary target will be on-campus residents, of which 80% are freshmen.  We hope it will be a good event with lots of exposure and visibility.

Hi Niles,

At Estrella Mountain Community College we have the following so far:

External Website, Recycling Program Flyer, LEED Certified Building Info Flyer, Sustainability Announcements (mini-newsletters).

We are also working on the following: Buidling signage, food service area signage, student bookmarks w/ seedlings.

Nadine Johnson

Our First Year Programs Coordinators have been working closely with operations, curriculum and community sustainability leaders to integrate sustainability into the Welcome Week events - not just provide presentations or materials- but to make it part of the events:  zero waste lunches to learn about our composting and recycling, take the bus between campuses to get freshmen over the initial hurdle of getting on the bus, and working with our vendor/sponsors to provide less waste intensive "giveaways."   Presentations, open house at our Institute on the Environment and booths during the week provide opportunity to obtain specific info about bus passes, bike safety, student groups energy conservation on campus and info about the sustainability minor offered to all majors.   The 200+ Welcome Week leaders were provided campus Sustainability training to support the efforts and awareness messages.

With a big campus and so much "data" hitting the 5000+ first year students at once - our First Year programs group is working to reduce give outs and provides reminders during the first semester via a e-newsletter.  There is on Q&A fun drawing/lottery - students answer questions posed by various depts on campus - including sustainabilty.  Prizes are provided by campus depts and local business/restaurants. 
- We had one postcard with the energy pledge and energy conservation information.
- Our Residential Life website and orientation information provides suggestions for greener products to bring on campus. There are also in-room recycling bins provided.
- The student's Welcome Week brochure has tips on sustainability and energy scattered throughout.
-One of the most popular pieces of information students requested was a list of appx 20 student groups on campus that are closely aligned with environmental and sustainability issues - from every type interest. This was part of a presentation provided on our campus sustainability programs.

Amy Short, University of Minnesota

Thanks, Amy.  This is very helpful; we're considering doing something similar at Ohio State.

Rick Livingston, OSU

 Any good outreach materials specifically about Student Sustainability Funds? Trying to come up with a catchy way to both get people to apply but also to appreciate the efforts. 

 Hi Janna,

I am with Green Tower Sustainability, a free consulting group for environmentally and socially progressive student organizations at the college level.  I could put you in touch with some people who have successfully pushed through referendums at the student government level to create student sustainability funds.  If there is anything else your organization would need help with, I would be glad to assist you.  

My email is ian.bevan@presidiomba.org.  My phone is (949) 208-1566 and i'll put you in touch with people at one or two schools who successfully created such funds in this poor economic period.  

Take Care,

Ian Bevan

Founder and Director 

Green Tower Sustainability

If any other students are reading this forum and need help in any area, Green Tower Sustainability would love to help.  See contact info above or visit www.greentowercampus.com.  

 Hi Janna,

I am with Green Tower Sustainability, a free consulting group for environmentally and socially progressive student organizations at the college level.  I could put you in touch with some people who have successfully pushed through referendums at the student government level to create student sustainability funds.  If there is anything else your organization would need help with, I would be glad to assist you.  

My email is ian.bevan@presidiomba.org.  My phone is (949) 208-1566 and i'll put you in touch with people at one or two schools who successfully created such funds in this poor economic period.  

Take Care,

Ian Bevan

Founder and Director 

Green Tower Sustainability

If any other students are reading this forum and need help in any area, Green Tower Sustainability would love to help.  See contact info above or visit www.greentowercampus.com.  

 Hi Janna,

I also found this resource on the AASHE website that could help: http://www.aashe.org/resources/student-research.  Scroll down to resource 38. 

Ian

Sustainability advertisement should be resourceful in order to reach out to different layers of the campus with a smaller footprint. Having been an active student environmentalist, I understand the importance of outreach materials. While it is essential to get the message across, I have always had a feeling that sustainability will shoot itself in the foot by choosing 'standard' outreach methods. It should be intuitive to campus sustainability organizations that printing pamphlets, booklets, or leafers, or flyers has to be done sustainably, and be resorted to only if it NEEDS to be done. Our student group (at U T Arlington) used paper and cardboard (with one side used and the other side blank) straight from the recycle canisters to print posters and flyers. A couple of artists on the team helped us design display material for student activity fairs and other educational events using discarded (half full, half used) tins of paint, old brushes and a plethora of reusables. Of course, when they NEED to be printed, double sided options and 100% recycled paper are ways to 'green' your outreach materials. Some people insist that even with all the "added" sustainability, one has to be frugal with outreach materials- in the sense - not printed by the thousands and strewn across the campus, only to end up in the recycle canisters later on. No piece of paper can reach out as effectively as the voice of a friend, and acquaintance, or a professor! Green news can especially travel fast by word of mouth - give it a serious shot! How about having professors volunteer to make announcements of upcoming sustainability events once a week in their classes, or 5-minute "bulletins" of campus sustainability news at the cafeteria, or canteen, or the pool/ billiards/ bowling place on campus, or leaving chalk graffiti on the ground (highlighting facts about the campus - say, Did you know that A Hall consumes 45% less electricity than the average dorm?) A green fund might seem like a big deal in some places, but then again, right eco-advertisement can be as commonplace as bake sales...

 Hi Vinodh,

You are absolutely right to point out that "green" student orgs should be using sustainable marketing methods.   Given your top marketing priority is to attract people who care about the environment or to educate people about important issues, using unsustainable marketing materials will turn off target demographic.   Long established green orgs have already learned this lesson but many organizations that are just "going green" or who are just forming their organizations are likely to fall into the pitfalls of conventional marketing.  

Luckily, Green Tower Sustainability is here to help advise student orgs in this area.  Please email ian (ian.bevan@presidiomba.org) for any assistance in this or any other area.  

Lastly, we have recently created a resource which highlights what is sustainable grass roots marketing and what isn't.  The amazing thing is that when you are forced to look to alternatives to conventional marketing, one finds many more interesting marketing options to utilize and they tend to really turn heads.  To download this resource go to our Student Resources Center:  http://greentowercampus.com/student-resources-center/student-resources-center/ .   Scroll down to resource 4 called "Green Marketing on Campus".   

Vinodh, you should consider becoming a student consultant for Green Tower Sustainability.   Based off of your unique skill set, we can refer student orgs in need to you.   This does not typically require much time at all but you can really help student orgs out a great deal.  Either way, thank you for your contribution.  

Ian 

College students have a lot of power to shift culture. A few called MTV and got them to run two initiatives - the Reduce your Impact iniitiative and the Breaking the Addiction to Oil initiative.  Wouldn't it be great if college students pushed MTV-U to include messages on sustainability behaviors?  We have gathered some information on messages that change behavior. Check out the notes for Cialdini and his research on how to communicate to change sustainability behaviors at our Media Strategies for Sustainabilty site  - http://sites.google.com/site/campussustainmedia/resources .  Also see the resources from the Psychology Section of the DANS resources page - http://www2.aashe.org/dans/resources.php

 Debra Rowe on behalf of the HIgher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (www.aashe.org/heasc) and the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability - DANS (www.aashe.org/dans )

 Hi Debra,

The notes from Dr. Cialdini were incredibly revealing about human behavior and how to effectively convince others to become more sustainable.  Thanks for sharing this amazing resource and for those of you who have not checked it out, you ought to.   As sustainable change agents, we all come across people in society that need convincing to do something sustainable but often times, with the best of intentions, we take the wrong approach.  

We see this all the time in environmental advertising.  It is very interesting that many of the commercials today aimed at changing unsustainable behavior often point out the sheer number of people taking part in it.  Commercials often point out the problem as such: "The average American generates 6 lbs of trash every day, so we need to recycle much more".   While that fact may be true, unfortunately, in that message is an acknowledgement that there are many people contributing to the problem (or that most people are contributing to the problem).  However, for many of the skeptics you are trying to convince, the message that is perceived is that the problem is actually the norm behavior and thus it must not be that big of a deal.  Anyone using this type of logic will also ask themselves, "why do I have to stop if everyone else is doing it?"  

If you are a teacher, a student leader, an ecological advertiser, or simply have an environmental skeptic in the family, this resource is worth the read.  

Ian

Some of my staff got creative last year and began using hand-made advertisements for some events. We have a campus re-use room, and the volunteers cut old red folders into hearts for our Spring Community Carnival. They hand-wrote invitations, and we shared them face-to-face around campus. I was not sure how many would be finished, or how it would work, but the results were awesome! They were a big hit and drew lots of people to our event. We also had an intern who had access to the screen printing department, and printed on old folders, too. I hope we can try this again next year. It was worth it to "walk the talk", and it generates a buzz on campus.

Hi Niles,
If the goal is specifically to reach new students, you might be interested in a blog post that I wrote about initial education for new students:

The moment of contact

In addition, with any education program, I think you have to figure out what your goals are and who your target audience is. Are you trying to recruit environment-minded new students to join a club or other group on campus or are you trying to get a specific message to a wider audience. I wrote several blog posts on these subjects that might be of interest:

Targeting your message

The Bell Curve

Hope this helps.