Gives students a chance to do an environmental sustainability experiential learning project right on campus. This gives the students the experience of managing a project and gives them a chance to interact, hopefully positively, with the University administration and staff. This course is being considered as a candidate to be the capstone course for SNES.

Cornell University continues to address the many environmental needs of society and of its own campus. Many students are interested in improving Cornell’s environmental record. This course offers them a service-learning, experiential-learning opportunity to make a difference by working within the system. This is in keeping with President Skorton`s strong support of campus environmentalism.

This course is specifically tailored to encouraging students with environmental concerns to work through the Cornell administrative structure to encourage change. Students identify an issue they wish to work on, deal with the appropriate administrative structure, prepare a final report (written and oral) and then present their results publicly to faculty and administrative staff. Attendance by senior university staff has been impressive. The addition of a sustainability coordinator for the campus has been an additional plus in making this course a success.

Various projects have been undertaken that have changed the campus. In other cases, changes were explored and it became clear that the idea was not feasible. Two recent successful projects that students in the past have worked on are “Tree-Free Paper” which has led to more recycled paper with higher recycle content being offered on campus and “Greening the Computers,” which has led to more use of the PowerSaver feature on computers and special stickers that can be attached to the CPU and display screen pointing out what is happening. Other projects involve biodiesel, possibly for farm services, using oil from Cornell dinning. The other project is looking at alternative parking sites for students on West Campus. The separation of compostables in the dining halls (Trillium, Risley) is an outgrowth of a student project in this area.

Environmental Experiential Learning