About Green Campus | Green Campus

What is Green Campus?

Green Campus is a group of students who are directed by the Sustainablity Office at Cal Poly Humboldt to implement energy, water, and waste reductions within the campus footprint, while also providing green jobs training to students via applied campus projects, and supporting a vision for intersectional environmentalism and climate justice.

The group does their work primarily through three main modes: education/outreach, special consultation and guidance to campus partners, and research/analysis.

Common partners of the group are Campus Dining, Housing & Residence Life, the Center for Community Based Learning, all branches and arms of Facilities Management, Native American Studies, ENST, ESM, HEIF, CCAT, WRRAP, Associated Students, and others. The group strives to infuse sustainability into all areas of campus life and culture by assisting Sustainablity Office staff in completing work.

Our Vision

Green Campus seeks to minimize harm to environmental and social systems at Cal Poly Humboldt, while saving money and/or elevating economic opportunity.

The group has a self-declared focus on amplifying issues of justice while simultaneously advancing environmental, sustainability, and climate goals.

Team Structure

Employee positions

Green Campus is funded to provide five ongoing student employee positions, which include:

Team lead- works as a leader, coach, and administrator to keep the group on track and successful in all their endeavors

Green Workplace Coordinator- supports staff and faculty in achieving sustainability goals

EcoReps Coordinator- supports and leads students from campus Residence Halls in spreading information and resources throughout Housing

Transportation Coordinator- works to promote sustainable transportation programs at Cal Poly Humboldt (re: works to provide education, resources, incentives to get people out of single occupant vehicles as a primary commuter mode to and from campus)

Outreach Coordinator- engages in on-campus canvassing and education, promotes transparency and storytelling about Green Campus success and challenges, endeavors to engage more people in the work of Green Campus at large

Intern Positions

Green Campus recruits and advises student interns each semester to support their work. Interns are students who apply to the group to earn course credit for their service to the campus.

To apply, students should submit a letter of interest and resume to greencampus@humboldt.edu, then expect to schedule a meeting to discuss their interests. If accepted and matched to a project, they will enroll in ESM 482, a course for which the faculty of record is a Sustainability Office staff member. Interns may earn 2 units of course credit in these positions and will be assigned deliverables due at the end of the semester.

Volunteers

Any student, staff, or faculty is cordially invited to support and contribute to the work of Green Campus without any longterm commitment!

Funding

Green Campus is funded by the following entities:

Primary: Facilities Management

base operational funding is provided as a line item in the Facilities Management Sustainability budget
wages for the team lead, EcoReps, and Green Workplace Coordinator are also provided as regular line item from Facilities Management

Advancement & Donor Funding

wages for two other ongoing student positions come from the Go Green Fund, a finance mechanism compiled and supported by the Advancement Foundation from donors

Resident Housing Association (RHA)

additional operational and programmatic support for the work of the EcoReps team is provided by a combination of Housing & Res Life and the Resident Housing Association (RHA)

One-off Project Focused Grants & Funding

in the past, one-off projects have been funded by Chancellor's office funding or HEIF

History

PowerSave (pre- 2015)

Green Campus is an outgrowth of a program called PowerSave that was funded and administered as a program of the Alliance to Save Energy. During this time, the Alliance to Save Energy was a third party agency that received funding from the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in order to achieve energy savings at college campuses and train students throughout higher education in green jobs focused on energy. During this time, Powersave was supervised and managed by the Alliance to Save Energy but maintained strong relationships with the University in order to collect energy data, recommend efficiency projects, and access sites and spaces for audits and evaluation.

Green Campus as a Program of Facilities Management

In 2015, the Alliance to Save Energy stopped receiving funding from the CPUC. At that time, Facilities Management (FM) at what was then called Humboldt State decided the work students had been doing with PowerSave was important enough to fund the group internally and continue supporting their work, while expanding the charge and scope of their duties to water savings. At that time, three student positions were created to accomplish this work and supervisory duties were moved to the Sustainability Director within FM. The name was formally changed to Green Campus.

Greater Institutional Support & Expansion of Campus Partnerships

In the forthcoming years, the group would gain greater support and funding from areas like Dining, Housing, and an Advancement fund called the Go Green Fund. The group was able to hire on two additional student positions. In/around 2018, the team also expanded the scope of their lens to include environmental justice issues and education.