Vanderbilt University
EN-3: Student Life

• Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Responsibility (SPEAR) - SPEAR’s mission is to increase environmental awareness and promote more environmentally sustainable habits and infrastructure within the Vanderbilt and Nashville community. Various projects sponsored by this organization include: cardboard crew, compost discovery area, house energy competitions, Climate Change Solutions Week, pollinator garden, Rites of Spring recycling, and a First-Year Sustainability Representatives Program
• Vanderbilt Student Government’s Environmental Affairs & Facilities Committee - This committee works to make Vanderbilt a more sustainable university by collaborating with students, faculty, and administrators on a host of environmental issues with hopes of making Vanderbilt a leader in developing practical and effective solutions. Recent projects have included collaboration and feedback on institutional renewable energy projects, fossil fuel divestment, a sustainability-themed thrift shop, and charity events for Australian wildlife.
• Owen Graduate School of Management Net Impact - Owen Net Impact is a member of the larger Net Impact community with over 150 student and professional chapters worldwide. Net Impact aims to positively contribute to a community of new leaders in fields such as corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, nonprofit management, international development, and environmental sustainability who will use business to improve the world. Net Impact has in the past hosted events such as a Green Career Symposium, “Green Week” and the Net Impact National Conference. This group has also partnered with the Sustainability and Environmental Management Office to devise business plans and programming for various environmental projects and efforts on campus.
• Vanderbilt Initiative for Vegetarian Awareness (VIVA) - VIVA aims to advocate a healthy lifestyle that has a positive effect on humans, animals, and the planet.
• Environmental Law Society - The Environmental Law Society is an organization for students interested in learning more about environmental law and environmental legal careers. This group has sponsored numerous speakers, panels, and activities since its inception and aims to strengthen relationships between Vanderbilt Law students and local environmental groups.
• Vanderbilt Fusion Project - The Vanderbilt Fusion Project is a transformative, cross-disciplinary engineering project team and research initiative. By building a functional miniature nuclear fusion reactor, the group hopes to spark innovation and inspire others within the campus, community, and nation. Once completed, the reactor platform will open up new research paradigms with applications ranging from nanotechnology to renewable energy.
• National Arboreal Project - The Nashville Arboreal Project's mission is to educate Nashville's youth about the environment while reinvigorating our community's connection to nature by planting the seeds for a greener future.
• Wildlife Conservation Club - The Wildlife Conservation Club’s mission is to promote animal welfare in the contexts of zoos, entertainment industries, research facilities, and the wild (i.e. anti-poaching and habitat preservation) via education, fundraising, and volunteering.
• Wilderness Skills (WilSkills) - Wilskills, Vanderbilt’s outdoor experience club, incorporates a focus on environmental protection as part of their curriculum. This includes holding lectures on environmental protection of surrounding ecosystems, campaigning to spread awareness about animal conservation, and requiring every member to participate in at least two volunteer recycling events per year.
• Project Outdoors - Vanderbilt undergraduate and graduate students will work together to bring outdoor education lessons to students in Nashville. Lessons at the University School of Nashville are bi-weekly in accordance with the USN afterschool program and lessons at Coleman Park occur once a month. Both programs include topics such as Leave No Trace, setting up tents, wilderness first aid, survival techniques, edible plants, science experiments, planting plants, nature walks, bugs, climate change, and more.
• Additional sustainability focused student groups can be found here https://anchorlink.vanderbilt.edu/organizations?categories=4894

• Vanderbilt Community Garden- The Vanderbilt Community Garden continues to use the efforts of the Vanderbilt Community Garden student group with support from the Campus Dining and Facilities groups. The garden includes more than just plants and produce, it acts as a testing ground for sustainable gardening methods. The garden is available for use by the broader Vanderbilt community, as well as creating strong ties to the Vanderbilt Children and Family Center who will use the garden as part of their curriculum. https://anchorlink.vanderbilt.edu/organization/vandygardeninitiative/about
• Latin American Ethnobotanical Garden – Latin American ethnobotanical garden features 49 of the most culturally significant plants from the region. The garden was opened in 2017 and is sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). The species selected reflect CLAS’ particular research strengths in Mexico, Central America, Brazil, the Andes, and the Black Atlantic regions. The garden contains a sage section, an agave section and an annual section, which features important food crops like amaranth, corn, squash and beans. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/arboretum/community-gardens/
• Menus of Change Advisory Group – The Menus of Change Advisory Group works to advance the Menus of Change principles at Vanderbilt. Co-founded and jointly led by Stanford University and The Culinary Institute of America, the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative is a working group of leading scholars, food service business leaders and executive chefs from invited colleges and universities who are accelerating efforts to move Americans toward healthier, more sustainable plant-forward diets.
• Community Garden Advisory Group – This group was formed in 2018 to recommend a new community garden on Vanderbilt’s campus. The group consisted of faculty, administration, staff, and community members from across the University and Nashville. The group is working to develop plans for a new community garden to be installed in 2020 that integrates student participation, community involvement, educational opportunities, and food provision for both VU and the community.
• Food Waste Working Group - The Food Waste Working Group is a subset of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative Advisory Committee. The Food Waste Working Group is focused on helping Vanderbilt achieve food waste reductions. The working group includes a variety of staff, faculty, and students from across the university. The working group liaisons to the Zero Waste Advisory Committee and will help them devise a strategy to meet their Food Waste reduction goal that will be set at the conclusion of the Zero Waste Plan.

Hydrodore - Hydrodore is a student run business that supplies water dispensers to campus clients, increasing water accessibility and reducing plastic waste on Vanderbilt’s campus and in the greater Nashville area. https://hydrodore.org/

VanderBIKES - VanderBIKES is a 2016 Vanderbilt student run organization offering bicycle rentals by the day, semester or year. The program gives the students the ease of bicycle transportation without having to worry about storage and maintenance and encourages students to explore Nashville beyond Vanderbilt’s borders. http://studentorgs.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbikes/

Leaves Plates - Leaves Plates is a 2018 company which produces various types of fully biodegradable flatware and helps alleviate some of the rampant pollution on a global level. The flatware produced by Leaves Plates aids its customers lead a more sustainable lifestyle posing zero threat to the environment and leaving no ecological footprint. The company is run by Vanderbilt students.

Ofo - In spring of 2018, Vanderbilt students participated in bringing ofo to campus for a pilot program and acted as representatives for the company. Ofo was the world’s first and largest station-free bike sharing platform.

• Vanderbilt Green Fund - The Vanderbilt Green Fund (VGF) is a fund of $150,000 set aside for sustainability projects proposed by students. Members of SPEAR and VSG established the Green Fund in the spring of 2011. The VGF looks for innovative and educational ideas that improve sustainability on campus. The VGF was designed to systematically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and improve the sustainability of Vanderbilt University by funding student-initiated projects with both environmental and economic benefits, and by enabling students, faculty, and administration to engage in the process of transitioning to a clean and sustainable energy future. Any student, faculty, or group associated with Vanderbilt University can propose a project for consideration. https://studentorg.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltgreenfund/
• Eos Project - The Eos Project is a microfinance internal grant initiative that supports innovative initiatives at Vanderbilt University to promote understanding of urgent environmental issues and social action-pathways to respond to the challenges of climate change. The goal is to energize attention to environment/society concerns in diverse disciplines and campus constituencies. The project organizes programming and offers small grants and fellowships to support faculty and students to develop the vision, knowledge, leadership skills, and networks needed to address pressing problems at the intersections of ecology and social justice, where the well-being of human communities is inseparable from the well-being of more-than-human life-worlds. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/tag/eos-project/

• Nearly 700 higher education students representing 92 nations and 42 U.S. states gained expertise and inspiration from influential leaders during the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2023 annual meeting, hosted by Vanderbilt University in March 2023. The CGI U annual meeting was led by former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton. Vanderbilt participants included Jonathan Gilligan, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences. The working session titled “The Race Towards Climate Justice” addressed the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on people across the globe.
• The Wond’ry, Vanderbilt’s Innovation Center, launched the Climate Innovation Accelerator program in 2023, adding to the depth of its climate-focused programming. The accelerator was co-created and led by Jaclyn Mothupi, director of social innovation at the Wond’ry. This 10-week program engaged minority-led/owned nonprofits and small businesses to identify innovative sustainability opportunities within their mission to equip entities to be more future-fit and climate-ready for those they serve. The inaugural cohort included five local small businesses and six nonprofits with a diverse set of missions, products and services to illustrate how innovation can work in different sectors to advance climate solutions, from reimagining packaging, services, stakeholder education, reporting frameworks and greening supply chains. To help small businesses and nonprofits with limited resources prioritize sustainability and innovation, the accelerator provided in-depth sessions on the topics and strategic frameworks to bring both to life.
Additionally, the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and the Environment, the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, the Energy, Environment & Land Use (EELU) Program in the Vanderbilt Law School, and the Earth and Environmental Sciences department all have regular sustainability symposia and speaker series that are open to the public with students as the intended audience.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/americanstudies/sustainability/events.php
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/earth-environmental-sciences/events/

Other lectures and events:

2022/2023
Lecture: Dorecta Taylor, Yale University, “Martin Luther King Jr: The Intersection of Civil Rights and Environmental Justice.”
Lecture: Ömür Harmanşah, The University of Illinois at Chicago, “The Archaeology of Landscapes and Architectural Heritage in a Changing Climate: Fieldwork in/for the Anthropocene.”
Event: Smart Jobs Summit
Lecture: John Vick, Director of the Office of Primary Prevention at the Tennessee Department of Health and alumnus of Peabody College, “Resilience, Extreme Events, Climate Change, and Human Health
Lecture: David Hondula, Department of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University and the director of the City of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Planning, “Resilience in the city of Phoenix.”
Lecture: Neil Ahuja, U. Maryland, and Aimee Bahng, Pomona College, “Critical Environmental Studies Across Asian America and the Pacific”
Event: Clean Economy and Smart Jobs Summit
Event: Climate Global Initiative University Meeting at Vanderbilt University
Event: Earth Week with Campus Dining and Menus of Change
Event: Farm to campus events with Campus Dining
Event: Campus Famers Markets featuring local produce and goods
Event: USC Climate Summit watch party with the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy
Lecture: Cal Flyn, award winning author and journalist, “Islands of Abandonment” as 2023 Harry C. Howard Jr. Lecture
Event: Earth Hour
Lecture: Dr. John Vick, “Building healthy communities: defining public health’s role in shaping the built environment”
Conference: EELU State of the Environment Conference
Lecture: Wil Burns, visiting professor of environmental policy at Northwestern University, “The Oceans and Geoengineering Policy: Marine-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal Options and International/Domestic Law”

2021/2022
Event: PARKing Day
Event: Green-a-Thon
Lecture: Former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, “Climate Change Governance”
Event, Vandy Cooks: “plant-based foods using a plant-forward approach” with Chef Marlanea Wheaton
Event: Graduate and Professional Student Housing Topping Out Ceremony
Event: Rand Farmer’s Market
Event: Earth Hour
Virtual Event: “Climate Change and Sustainability, focusing on the solutions” with Michael Vandenbergh and Benji Backer
Event: Vanderbilt I Solar Farm Groundbreaking
Lecture: “Benefit of Grid Edge Synchronized Measurements” with Yilu Liu
Cooking Demonstration: Waste Not Cooking Demo with the James Beard Foundation, Nashville Food Waste Initiative, Mayor’s Food Saver Challenge, and Vanderbilt University Campus Dining
Tour: DofA In-Focus Session: Arboretum Tour with James Moore
Event: DofA In-Focus Session: “Transportation 101: The Transit Crisis and MoveVU”
Event: DofA In-Focus Session: “FutureVU”
Tour: DofA In-Focus Session: Campus Dining Tour
Lecture: Climate Justice Speaker Panel
Lecture: “Sustainable Fashion” with Lacie Thorne
Event: VU Community Garden Spring Planting
Event: VU Community Garden Paint the Garden Beds
Event: VU Community Garden Adopt-a-Houseplant

2020/2021
Lecture: Chancellor’s Lecture, Amanda Little, Steven Pinker, and Carl Zimmer with moderator Jon Meacham “2020 and Beyond: Tackling Global Issues in the Decades to Come”
Public Listening Session: WeGo Public Transit System
Event: “The Future of Climate Change” virtual event by Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Vice Chancellor for Administration Eric Kopstain with Climate Vault
Lecture: Carlos A. Nobre, “The Amazon Near a Tipping Point”
Webinar: School of Nursing, “Green Recovery, Climate Solutions, and a Just Transition”
National Academy of Medicine Annual Meeting: Jeff Balser, “Confronting Urgent Threats to Human Health and Society: COVID-19 and Climate Change”
Cooking Demonstration: Waste Not Cooking Demo with the James Beard Foundation, Nashville Food Waste Initiative, Mayor’s Food Saver Challenge, and Vanderbilt University Campus Dining
Event: PARKing Day
Event: Vanderbilt Green-a-Thon
Art Exhibition: Emily Kopec senior exhibition, “Merely” features a series of works created from recycled clothing and wearable materials
Virtual Event: Eric Kopstain and Linda Breggin, “Planning for a Changing Climate in Nashville”
Conference: Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review Conference
Virtual Event: LEED Project Showcase – Vanderbilt University
Webinar: School of Medicine, “Anesthesia and Environmental Impact”
Virtual Conference: Owen Forward, “The Future of Sustainability”
Event: Dr. Patrick Greiner, “Environmental Justice in Nashville”
Event: Elizabeth Yeampierre, “Environmental and Climate Justice”
Webinar: Angie Schmitt and Dr. Destiny Thomas, “Race, Class, and the Pedestrian Safety Crisis”
Workshop: Michael Vandenbergh and panelists, “Draft Nashville Carbon Competitiveness Report”

• A new podcast, Art of Interference, dives deep into the intersection of art, climate change, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The four-season podcast, spearheaded by a team of College of Arts and Science faculty and students, seeks to broaden our perspectives on climate change and our role in it by engaging with the arts. Art of Interference features inspiring conversations between artists, scientists, academics, and the public about one of the most pressing issues of our time. It explores how the creative world can contribute to ongoing climate conversations and generate unexpected insights. Each season of the podcast is dedicated to one element: water, air, earth, or fire. Each episode features diverse artists from around the world whose work is deeply intertwined with that season’s elemental focus, investigating how the element influences their artistic practice. https://as.vanderbilt.edu/news/2023/10/20/innovative-podcast-explores-creative-interdisciplinary-responses-to-climate-change/
• The Curb Center announced the Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative in 2024, a yearlong collaborative project that will use art as a tool to investigate the complex set of emotions—sorrow, guilt, terror, complicity and a range of others—that come to mind as we contemplate our changing climate and witness its effects on earthly life. By engaging artists working in a range of disciplines—theater, creative writing and the visual arts—the Curb Center aims to highlight creative work that confronts the emotional dimensions of climate change with the hope that true emotional reckoning might serve as an avenue to candid dialogue, innovation and lasting impact. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2024/01/26/curb-center-launches-vanderbilt-eco-grief-initiative/
• Vanderbilt SPEAR hosted a sustainable art gallery in 2023 which hosted art produced by Vanderbilt community members that was open to the public.
• The art of six Vanderbilt University students was featured in Trash Talk, a exhibition on display in the gallery space at Turnip Green Creative Reuse April 2023. The works were developed in the Mixed Media and Textiles class taught by Vadis Turner, the 2023 Hamblet Artist in Residence in the Department of Art. The class engaged students in abstract problem solving using upcycled and found materials. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2023/03/30/vanderbilt-student-art-exhibition-featuring-upcycled-materials-opens-april-1/
• FutureVU Pop-Up Events: Vanderbilt launched a series of “pop- up” projects aimed at activating outdoor spaces around campus in a sustainable way. Projects transform underutilized spaces with the goal to green and beautify campus spaces for the enjoyment of all, promote a sustainable and walkable campus, encourage community building and social interaction and celebrate creativity and artistic expression. Events included programming like yoga classes and collaborative interactive art creation that used re-purposed materials. In addition, many of the events highlighted ongoing sustainability efforts and projects.

Wilderness Skills is Vanderbilt University’s premier outdoor experience. The entirely student-run course is designed to integrate academic study with practical experience in the wilderness. It utilizes both the classroom and the environment, combining lectures, films, and discussions with trips to the surrounding areas. The trips are designed to teach students the basic techniques of backpacking, caving, rock climbing, and whitewater paddling. As man is not only an explorer, but the product of the natural world, students are taught the proper methods of coexistence with the environment without harmfully altering it. http://studentorgs.vanderbilt.edu/wilskills/?page_id=56

All first-year students are required to participate in the “Vanderbilt Visions” program, which is a small-group orientation program that meets weekly during their first year on campus. The Visions program includes discussion sessions on topics relevant to sustainability and the environment that all students must complete. Additionally, first-year students are required to complete “Commons Reading”, which often includes sustainability themed books (Earth – Bill McKibben and Half the Sky - Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn).

In 2016, Vanderbilt focused on the Eos Project. The Eos Project supports innovative sustainability initiatives at Vanderbilt University to promote understanding of urgent environmental issues and social action-pathways to respond to the challenges of climate change. The goal is to energize attention to environment/society concerns in diverse disciplines and campus constituencies. The project organizes programming and offers small grants and fellowships to support faculty and students to develop the vision, knowledge, leadership skills, and networks needed to address pressing problems at the intersections of ecology and social justice, where the well-being of human communities is inseparable from the well-being of more-than-human life-worlds.
http://eosprojectvu.org/ http://as.vanderbilt.edu/academics/experientiallearning/vanderbiltvisions/

Vanderbilt regularly hosts “Vandy Cooks” events which support healthy eating through cooking presentations featuring the many aspects of food preparation. Sustainable cooking demonstrations include topics like “Plant based foods in a plant forward approach” and “CSA boxes brig local produce to you”.
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2022/08/22/vandy-cooks-plant-based-foods-in-a-plant-forward-approach-sept-14/

The FutureVU Sustainability Leaders Program, launched in 2020, uses community engagement and peer mentoring to foster a sustainable campus culture, improve sustainability literacy, improve interaction with sustainability initiatives such as net zero energy and zero waste, and encourage and enable positive behavior change within campus, student, departmental, administrative, professional, residential, and other VU communities. Sustainability leaders support Vanderbilt’s carbon neutrality goal through culture change, education, peer mentoring, and facilitation of actionable goals.

Volunteer membership in the sustainability leaders program includes:
• Monthly meeting throughout the academic year
• Leaders will also facilitate sustainable office/department/residence certifications in their areas, provide education and guidance at departmental and organizational meetings and events, plan outreach events and competitions, and lead by personal example
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/sustainability/what-you-can-do-2/

FutureVU Sustainability regularly employs undergraduate students as student-workers for the year. FutureVU Sustainability also hires an annual summer intern who focuses primarily on the recycling program at Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt students also regularly intern at companies with ties to VU. This includes 3 students who intern with Climate Vault, VU’s carbon offset partner, and over 20 graduates who work at Silicon Ranch, the developer of the Vanderbilt I Solar Farm.

The Vanderbilt Walk Bike Coalition includes parties from across the campus to address issues facing bikers and pedestrians at Vanderbilt. They are focused on sustainability, health, and fun and tackle issues of safety and accessibility. The group acts to leverage resources and make connections for partnerships within Vanderbilt and in the Nashville Community.