Do you care about environmental issues? Are you curious and think you might want to care about environmental issues? There are tons of organizations on campus that are looking for people like you! So join them. Check out the blurbs below, and remember, you can always contact your Eco-Rep for more details and/or some great personal advice. Explore your on-campus resources!!!
Green Umbrella: Each environmental club on campus has representatives in Green Umbrella; GU brings groups together to collaborate on campaigns and forms committees of students to meet with the administration. This year it will be working on creating a Campus Sustainability Initiative to join all members of the university community in expressing support for campus sustainable solutions, serving as a forum for different clubs to network and communicate, and meeting regularly with Nilda Mesa who was recently hired by Columbia as the Environmental Stewardship Coordinator.
Contact: cugreenumbrella@gmail.com
Web: http://www.cugreenumbrella.com/
Earth Co: A Columbia/Barnard student coalition working to improve the local environment by promoting recycling on campus, organizing gardening and clean-ups in local parks, sponsoring environmental forums, and coordinating Earth Week activities on the Columbia campus. Earth Coalition also gets involved with local and national environmental issues with other environmental organizations, letter writing campaigns, and trips to environmental impact sites in the area. EarthCo promotes environmental consciousness through outreach and service to the community. Campaigns this year include Earth Tutors (teaching environmental education in a South Bronx elementary school), community gardening, and peer education about recycling.
Contact: Talia Arbit [ta2188@barnard.edu]; Prospero Herrera [pjh2111@columbia.edu]
Web: http://earthcoblog.blogspot.com/
Barnard EcoReps: The Barnard EcoReps Program aims to create a more environmentally responsible and accountable living culture on Barnard’s campus. Barnard EcoReps will be developing and implementing creative educational programming that will help build ecological literacy among Barnard’s incoming class. EcoReps have the unique opportunity and support to educate the Barnard community and themselves through fieldtrips, workshops with the Environmental Science department, film screenings and other venues. Each month of the school year is assigned a theme, such as Energy, Food, or Green Living. EcoReps put on programming and post information focused on this theme. The Barnard EcoReps Program consists of 10 EcoReps. Each EcoRep is assigned to two RAs in the First-year focus program area (Quad). The EcoReps program also maintains close ties with administrative departments, including Facilities and Dining Services. Barnard EcoReps will be working closely and on similar projects with the Columbia EcoReps. This multi-limbed structure is meant to provide a wide infrastructural support network for Barnard EcoReps, while also allowing the students to implement their own ideas and be creative in their projects.
Contact: barnardecoreps@gmail.com
Web: http://www.barnardecoreps.com
Columbia Eco-Reps: A group of students working in partnership with Columbia’s department of Housing and Dining in order to make Columbia’s campus more environmentally sustainable. Their work entails publicizing available environmental services, serving as a bridge of communication between students and the administration, facilitating campus projects for a reduced university ecological footprint. This year Eco-Reps will be working on a Green Licensing Program for dorms/campus buildings as well as continuing work with campus recycling, energy consumption, and purchasing of organic/local foods.
Contact: Prospero Herrera [pjh2111@columbia.edu]; Channa Bao [cb2537@columbia.edu]
Web: http://www.environment.columbia.edu/ecoreps/ecoreps-index.htm
SEEJ (Students for Environmental and Economic Justice): A Barnard and Columbia student group dedicated to advancing ecological sustainability, workplace democracy, and human freedom, and to ensuring that university policies and practices reflect these goals. They have watchdogged university investments, supported workplace struggles worldwide and on our campus, and helped bring trillion-dollar ecological criminals to the bargaining table. Last year SEEJ will ran a campaign to persuade Columbia to purchase Green Energy as well as cut energy consumption, ran a peer awareness campaign about energy consumption, firmed up a Designated Suppliers Program for Columbia apparel, and launched an anti-bottled water campaign.
Contact: Laura Seidman [lgs2112@columbia.edu]
Web: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/seej/test/
Food Sustainability Project: CUFSP works to promote sustainable agriculture and a healthy, just food system at Columbia, Barnard and in the wider community. We are dedicated to constructing a campus garden open to all that serves both as a source of “real” food and an example of the potential for urban agriculture and community development through the act of growing food. We strive to improve our current food supply through introducing local food products from small, regional farms and educating the public about the importance of a sustainable food system both for the health of the individual consumer and for the health of the environment in which we live.
Contact: Kristina Gsell
Web: http://gosustainable.blogspot.com/
Columbia University Environmental Biology Society: CUEBS approaches the biosphere from an academic point of view and aims to to encourage environmental appreciation and education at all levels within the Columbia community. Their goals are to: network with other students, alumni, graduate students, and faculty interested in Environmental Biology; enrich the existing E3B and Environmental Science programs with events and trips that allow students to explore Environmental Biology outside of the classroom; and foster interest, education, and awareness in the Columbia community for Environmental Biology and, generally, the environment and its importance in our daily lives and our world. Their activities include film screenings, behind-the-scenes tours of the Aquarium, hikes, etc.
Contact: Eiren Jacobson [ekj2103@columbia.edu]
Web: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cuebs/index.html
CoreFoods: Core Foods is Columbia’s Student-Run Organic Food Co-op. Currently located in JJ’s Place, they focus on providing a wide selection of local and organic food right on Columbia’s campus.
Contact: Corefoods@gmail.com
Web: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/corefoods/
Columbia CSA: This program through Roxbury Farm (Kinderhook, NY) allows students and community members to purchase a share of the farm. Shareholders support this small, local NY farm and receive a delivery each week of a share of the harvest from that week at the farm. Columbia student coordinators take find shareholders, organize pick-up locations, etc.
Contact: Gelseigh Karl-Cannon; Alice Orman
Web: http://www.roxburyfarm.com/site_pages/nyc_csa.htm
Columbia Students for Animal Protection: Animal rights group; last semester had a cage-free egg campaign for the dining halls.
Contact: Emma Lowrey [el2345@barnard.edu]
Web: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/csap/
Roosevelt Institute: The Roosevelt Institution at Columbia University is a student-run progressive think tank. As the only student think tank on campus, Roosevelt provides an opportunity for progressive-minded students to work on exciting projects, which are then eligible for publication in various campus, local, state, and national media. This past year, Roosevelt published pieces in the Spectator, supervised research and preparation of College Democrats debaters, sent a letter on LED lighting to NYC Mayor Bloomberg, among many other long- and short-term projects.
Contact: roosevelteboard@columbia.edu
Web: http://columbia.rooseveltinstitution.org
Medical Students For Environmental Action (Public Health): Medical SEA is established to promote environmental awareness at the medical campus. We want to be the voice of students for environmental concerns. This organization is dedicated to reforming inadequate recycling policies, devising strategies to decrease waste and energy consumption, improving energy efficiency, educating students and faculty on environmental issues, and decreasing the ecological footprint at the Columbia University Medical Center.
Contact: Nidha Mubdi [nzm2103@columbia.edu]; Melda Uzun [msu2103@columbia.edu]
Web: http://sklad.cumc.columbia.edu/sph/studentlife/org-sea.php
JTS EcoReps: An environmental advocacy and action student group dedicated to changing the attitude and ways of the JTS community and infrastructure. While the administrative Green Committee will serve as the institutional support for greening JTS, the EcoReps will develop the agenda and implement the change. Goals include: working with Facilities to create an improved recycling system and to make the JTS buildings more energy efficient; collaborating with Dining Services to bring more sustainable food options and to reduce the amount of waste produced daily; and raising community awareness about the reduction of energy and water use, recycling practices, green purchasing, and ways to make Jewish living more sustainable.
Contact: ecoreps@jtsa.edu
Web: jtsecoreps.com
Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development: A global online publication dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary dialogue on sustainable development. By providing a public platform for discussion, we hope to encourage a global community to think more broadly, thoroughly and analytically about sustainable development. This publication aims to bring students, researchers, professors, and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions in direct conversation with each other through an online, academically rigorous medium. We aim to encourage students to become involved in research: an invaluable problem-solving tool that has the power to transform unfocused passion into focused solutions. Consilience is designed to allow different disciplines to converse with each other in the high hopes that this cross-pollination of methodologies will spark ideas that ultimately lead to a higher quality of life for all people.
Contact: contact@consiliencejournal.org
Submissions: submissions@consiliencejournal.org
Web: http://consiliencejournal.readux.org/?page_id=128
