Princeton University
EN-3: Student Life

Green Princeton:
By cooperating with all University departments, educating and engaging the campus community, and recommending and facilitating change, Green Princeton pursues this mission and advocates the University’s leadership in environmental responsibility.

Greening Dining:
This group has been collaborating with Campus Dining since 2002 in an effort to adopt more sustainable practices in the dining halls. Together they have worked to develop Campus Dining sustainable practices and policies, including increasing organic and local food options, implementing tray-free dining and ensuring that food waste is sent to local farms or composted.

Princeton Student Climate Initiative:
Formed in 2016, the Princeton Student Climate Initiative aims to provide an outlet for students to learn about, engage with, and have a positive impact on climate-related issues. They research climate change, inform the campus community about important climate issues, host discussions with experts, and advocate for effective technological and political solutions.

Princeton University Farmers’ Market:
The farmers' market was launched in 2007 by Greening Princeton, a student organization devoted to improving environmental sustainability, and is staffed by volunteers from the group. Members of the University and local communities are able to purchase fresh locally grown produce and other goods from area farmers and businesses that use sustainable practices.

Sustainable Engineering and Development Scholars (SEADS):
A sustainable education and outreach organization that is dedicated to providing a structured program for freshman and sophomore scholars to learn more about applied sustainability.

Sustainable Software Initiative:
Founded in 2016, the Sustainable Software Initiative is a project-focused student group - its mission is to leverage the power of software to address sustainability challenges both on Princeton's campus and beyond. SSI's core work is developing software applications, which have included a digital platform for the community solar organization Solstice Initiative, an interactive heatmap of Princeton's electricity use, and a mobile app for students to report wasteful happenings on campus. A key component of SSI's mission is to provide a platform for students to learn software development through hands-on collaborative projects.

The Princeton Garden project is a student-run initiative overseen by the Office of Sustainability. The group’s mission is to educate the campus about the American food system and its implications for the environment, health and nutrition, culture and the future.

The garden is maintained by paid student managers throughout the academic year, and by paid interns during the summer. The Project models a sustainable food production system on campus and offers opportunities for all students to engage with the garden through planting and harvesting and attending community-building events. There are two primary garden plots: a 1.5 acre plot north of Forbes College at 79 Alexander Street, and another near the South Patio outside of the Frist Student Center. The produce is regularly provided to dining halls, campus food cooperatives, and special campus events.

Princeton University hosts many conferences, speaker series, and related events throughout the academic year which are targeted to student audiences. A few recent examples that relate to sustainability include:

1. Princeton Studies Food Conference: Held since 2014, the conference is a one day event showcasing food and agricultural systems research and interest at Princeton.

2. PEI Faculty Seminar Series: In 2015, PEI created a new faculty seminar series to present the opportunity for PEI associated faculty to provide insights into their latest environmental research discoveries. Topics include: sea level rise, carbon dioxide sequestration, biodiversity, infectious disease, urban transformation, health and well-being, environmental history, environmental chemistry, and biogeochemistry of the oceans. Four faculty seminars are scheduled for each semester.

3. STEP Seminars: Princeton University's Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) is based in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with strong ties to the Princeton Environmental Institute. STEP offers a lunchtime seminar series during the academic year.

During the past three years, Princeton has hosted an assortment of cultural arts events that relate to sustainability and have students as the intended audience. The following are recent examples:

1. After the Spectacular Image: Art, Architecture, and the Media of Climate Change: Feb 11-12, 2017. Organized by the Princeton Environmental Institute. Over the past century, image making and visualization practices – in the arts, literature, and the sciences – have formed a cultural infrastructure focused on the relationship between humans, other species, and their environments. Images have, in numerous ways, impacted political and cultural debates about nature, environment, and climate. After the Spectacular Image brought together a group of prominent scholars to examine the rich history of representing climate and its effects. https://environment.princeton.edu/events/asi

2. Art of Environmental Justice in an Expanded Field: A Symposium on Creative Activism and Eco-Politics across Boundaries. This one-day event brought together leading international contemporary artists who engage problems of environmental justice in expansive ways. The purpose: to highlight the critical power of visual art to reimagine the politics of ecology across various boundaries—not just national borders but also socioeconomic classes, identities, disciplines, species, and media. Speakers discussed creative projects that demonstrate the far-reaching capacity of visual art to interpret urgent ecological issues and problems of environmental inequality for a broad public.
https://environment.princeton.edu/calendar/art-environmental-justice-expanded-field-symposium-creative-activism-and-eco-politics

3. Tiger Chef Challenge: Started in 2016, this annual event will includes an Iron Chef-like competition, during which seven teams representing each residential college plus the Graduate College compete to see who has the best plant-based entrée. The 2017 event had a Latin-American inspired themes as well as a sustainability area highlighting vertical gardening, composting, waste oil recycling and more.

4. Earth Day Celebration: For several years, students have organized an Earth Day Celebration featuring a wide assortment of student dancers, musicians, and improv comedy troupes. Some of the performers altered their usual set to include entertainment specifically related to sustainability.

The Outdoor Action (OA) Freshman Trip Program is Princeton's oldest and largest pre-orientation program for incoming freshmen. The OA Frosh Trip is a six-day outdoor trip held the week prior to Orientation Week. The trip follows Leave No Trace principles and has grown to include participation from over 50 percent of each incoming class. Each year, more than 100 new student leaders are trained in Leave No Trace Practices through the University’s partnership with the national Leave No Trace Organization. Student leaders then provide instruction to over 700 students annually in the practices.
Additionally, in 2016, the Community Action Frosh Trip program expanded to incorporate a partnership with the Poconos Environmental Education Center (PEEC) which incorporated Leave No Practices principles into a week-long sustainability themed orientation for 144 students.

Princeton offers students many sustainability-focused student employment opportunities.

For example, the Office of Sustainability hires paid student interns to supplement and develop a variety of Office activities and initiatives. Current internships focus in art, communications, peer-to-peer education, sustainable food education and production, green tours, performance tracking, and videography. (http://sustain.princeton.edu/jobs)

Additionally, the Princeton Environmental Institute offers undergraduate internships designed to complement their academic interests with independent research and project experiences in the summer. (https://environment.princeton.edu/undergrads/internships) The Institute also provides extensive research opportunities to graduate students. (https://environment.princeton.edu/grads/research-opportunities)