Auburn University
EN-3: Student Life

Active Minds seeks to change the conversation about mental health and destigmatize seeking mental health on campus. Alabama’s Water Environment Association (AWEA) Auburn Chapter is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization that leverages knowledge to support clean and safe water worldwide. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) encourages the advancement of agricultural, biological, food, environmental, and ecological engineering. Auburn Engineers Without Borders work with communities in developing countries to promote sustainable solutions to practical problems. The Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Club educates and informs students about opportunities and careers in Agronomy, Environmental Sciences, and Crop Sciences. The Environmental Design Student Org encourages conservation and community with Environmental Design students and other design majors through monthly meetings, socials, and fundraisers. Feminists at Auburn empower women and address gender issues on our campus in order to make the Auburn family accessible to all members. For the Bees raises awareness and funds in response to the bee crisis and supports local beekeepers in Auburn. Geography Student Organization introduces and promotes the knowledge of geographical issues and our ability to alter the relationship between human societies and the environment in a positive way. Membership is not restricted to Geography students. The Horticulture Club promotes horticultural activities including promoting the profession of horticulture, sponsoring horticultural activities, encouraging fellowship among membership with kindred interests, and improving and promoting horticultural plant production via research, teaching, extension, and service activities. International Justice Mission seeks to free victims of human trafficking, slavery, and domestic violence. As a campus chapter, they raise money to support IJM internationally and raise awareness for these issues. The Marine Biology club brings people together who have a common love for our world’s oceans. Monthly meetings and field trips help expose members to a variety of topics and career paths in the marine biology field. While many members are marine biology majors, anyone interested may join! Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences promotes academic and professional advancement by empowering minorities in agriculture, natural resources and related sciences. National Society of Black Engineers seeks to increase the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community. One Campaign Auburn fights against extreme poverty. The Organic Garden Club provides hands-on education about natural growing methods for edible and medicinal plants as well as search out and brings together different natural growing methods to maximize the efficiency of farming techniques. Permaculture Tigers brings together like-minded individuals who want to bring the permaculture movement to Auburn University. Permaculture is an approach to land and land management that provides people with food and shelter while also returning the surplus and regenerating the land used. Plant-Based Plainsman seeks to open minds to the idea of a plant-based vegan diet at Auburn, to educate people of the multiple existing reasons to go vegan (morals, health, and environment, etc); and create a welcoming environment for existing vegan students at Auburn. You aren’t required to be vegan, vegetarian or have any specific lifestyle in order to be a member of this club. Society for Natural Sciences seeks to positively impact our community on a local and global scale by bringing together undergraduate, graduate, and faculty who are interested in the discussion, experience, and practice of natural resource management. Society for Conservation Biology promotes the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity. Spectrum, Auburn University’s Gay-Straight Alliance, promotes mutually supportive relationships among all students in the interest of advancing campus and community diversity. Spectrum serves as a safe place for students who are part of gender, sexual, and romantic minorities (GSRMs), those who are still discovering themselves, and their allies to gather and discuss topics that relate to them, as well as establish an environment free from discrimination based on sexual orientation as well as gender identity and expression. All are welcome, and all meetings are confidential! The Student Government Association serves all students by gathering meaningful feedback, enacting positive change, and establishing genuine human connections. Students for Clean Water seeks to eradicate the global water crisis through education, awareness, and fundraising. The Sustainable Biomaterials and Packaging Society promotes the Sustainable Biomaterials and Packaging Major to all students and faculty at Auburn. The Campus Kitchen at Auburn University helps fight hunger in the Auburn community, repackage unserved food in the dining halls to turn these donations into nourishing meals and deliver meals to those in need. The US Green Building Council Auburn Chapter provides students a forum for education and discussion of sustainable building practices, open to all majors because the subject affects everyone. Universities Fighting World Hunger – Auburn fights hunger both locally and globally through awareness-raising initiatives, fundraising initiatives, and service initiatives.
Website: http://wp.auburn.edu/sustainability/engage/student-groups/

The Community Garden at Auburn University is overseen by campus Dining Services and a seven-member Advisory Committee. Comprised of faculty, student, administrator, and community representatives, the Advisory Committee has worked to update policies to improve the garden and benefit the Auburn community. Individual plots of varying size are available to rent for a nominal fee each year. All Auburn/Opelika residents are eligible to rent a plot, including students, faculty, and community members. Our gardeners grow everything from herbs, fruits, and vegetables, to pollinator host plants, flowers, and other ornamental plants. School groups, university classes, and other groups also use the garden as an educational resource. The community garden has a variety of plot sizes and types including raised garden bends and traditional plots. The broader purpose of the garden is to get people actively involved in growing their own food and foster a better understanding of where our food comes from and how it makes its way to the plate. Gardening at the Community Garden is described as an activity that builds a clear linkage and direct appreciation for the earth as the source of our food, growing and utilizing food in a responsible manner, and in managing in such a way as to nurture and improve the garden itself in the process. The garden launched a CSA program the summer of 2021.
http://campusdining.auburn.edu/about-the-garden/

Auburn University hosts the annual Alabama Water Resources Conference (ALWRC). This conference was held September 2021 and is the premier water conference in the state. Since 1986, the ALWRC has provided a forum for all participants of our water resources community, providing opportunities for conversation about the many multidisciplinary aspects of water resources, and making connections that will improve how we understand the complex water issues that are of importance to this state, the region, and the nation. Water resource professionals and students from water-related fields are invited to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations. ALWRC presenters represent a wide range of disciplines related to water resources. https://aaes.auburn.edu/wrc/extension-outreach2/annual-alabama-water-resources-conference/

The Office of Sustainability hosts a yearly Sustainability Speaker Series on campus whose purpose is to engage the community in exploring issue related to sustainability. Topics in 2019 and 2020 addressed climate change and sustainability through a social justice lense. http://sustain.auburn.edu/learn/sustainability-speaker-series/

The Office of Inclusion and Diversity hosts Critical Conversations with guest speakers who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and fields. Speakers have covered the Equal Justice Initiative, Diversity and Inclusion Education, Diversifying Tomorrow’s Workforce, and more. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/provost/speaker-series/index.php

In the performing arts, at the Telfair B. Peet and Black Box Theatres, numerous sustainability themed plays have been produced by students, faculty, and staff including Big Fish (spring 2019), a musical about coming to terms with one’s own impact on their community and environment, Alabama Love Stories (spring 2019), a devised piece celebrating diverse understandings of love and kinship crafted from materials from the Alabama State Archives, Eurydice (fall 2019) a play dealing with resource allocation and grief, and Bring it On (spring 2020), a musical grappling with race and gender relations. The 2020/2021 season, as a result of Covid-19, required a change in venues and shift to different forms of performance. These processes wrestled with issues of sustainability in a variety of ways as processes were reconsidered and streamlined. Particular highlights of the season included Together Apart: A Socially Distanced Collaboration (fall 2020) was a devised play with music that students created directly in response to the dual pandemics of Covid and racial reckoning, New Day Dawning: Finding Hope at the Theatre (spring 2021) found students, faculty and staff collaborating with the Gogue Performing Arts Center and creating a film of musical performance focused on the endurance of the human spirit, and The Future is Here: A Student One-Act and Performance Festival (spring 2021), a student-directed festival that was performed outside on the ground of the Gogue Performing Arts Center that incorporated sustainable staging techniques and practices.
http://www.auburn.edu/main/welcome/visitorsguide/peet_theatre.php

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University had numerous presentations and also address sustainability goals for buildings and grounds.

Presenting experiential co-learning opportunities for students, faculty and the community, The Jule at Auburn remains committed to supporting sustainability goals for wellbeing, society and nature through cultural arts events, installations and performances.

RaMell Ross: Down South, AL, Photographs from the Do Good Fund: Ross addresses the ideas and imagery that exist within Hale County, particularly those of the rural Black experience. Narrative in nature, his work invites interpretation, intentionally obscuring meaning, making space for varied perspectives and reflections and deconstructing preconceptions.

HALE COUNTY, THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, Film screening with 2019 Academy Award™-nominee, RaMell Ross

Mary Virginia Hall: Dwellings: In her work, Hall explores feelings of isolation and cultural displacement in the remote surroundings of Utqiaġvik, renamed Barrow in 1825 by British explorers. More than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, Hall notes that the indigenous Iñupiat people consider Barrow their home, though she senses the modern wooden structures from her culture are foreign and out of place.

Fire and Water: Prints by Florence Neal: “Fire and Water” features a selection of Neal’s striking works, which reflect the interplay of elemental materials with manufactured and natural phenomena.

ARTIST RESIDENCY, Printmaking demonstrations by Florence Neal

Please Play Again: The Art of Janet Nolan: Janet Nolan ’76 incorporated everything from squashed aluminum cans to colorful plastic bottle caps to broken umbrellas and transformed them into sculptural works that turn “depleted debris into vibrant art.” Influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages and the structural patterns and spreading frameworks found in nature, Nolan creates playful, colorful and thought-provoking art—expressing themes of redemption and elevation through the rectification of consumer waste.

Out of the Box: A Juried Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, Juried by Patrick Dougherty

Down Where Paradise Lay: This fourth in the series of yearlong exhibitions featured 15 impressive outdoor sculptures on the museum grounds and the Gogue Performing Arts Center. The selected artists presented concurrently with Patrick Dougherty, who created a fantastic, site-specific environmental work, “Down Where Paradise Lay.” Museum administration extended the run of Out of the Box through March 2021, allowing visitors to enjoy the grounds while maintaining physical distance and wearing face coverings in compliance with “A Healthier U.”

Mother Earth as Art: Environmental satellites have captured the aesthetic beauty of Earth, its geological diversity and humankind’s impact. From orbital vantage points, regional and global perspectives reveal color-filled artistic views ranging from Cubism to “sloppy paint.” These images of our home in the universe offer points of reflection and wonder on mother earth’s origins, her continual evolution and our interactions with her.

Earth Day Facebook Live: With Dr. Chandana Mitra and her graduate students, Megha Shrestha, Elijah Johnson, and Eshita Akter Eva, Department of Geosciences

Nurture: Audubon’s Nesting Imagery: Curated in response to the pandemic, “Nurture” brings together 12 striking large-scale works on paper from the elephant folios of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. Each work-on-paper depicts nature’s family unit, playing out the natural life cycle and quest for survival.

Outside In: This collaborative exhibition pairs selections from the university’s impressive Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection with seasonally-changing specimens from Auburn’s Museum of Natural History. Each of the North American specimens is featured alongside its artwork representation, drawing out environmental elements from Audubon’s nineteenth-century compositions into a contemporary scientific context.

Crafting America: Organized by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: Featuring 90 works in ceramics, fiber, wood, metal, glass and more unexpected materials, Crafting America presents a diverse and inclusive story of American craft from the 1940s to today. Esteemed artists include Sonya Clark, Beatrice Wood, Shan Goshorn, Nick Cave and Maria Martinez.

ARTIST CONVERSATION: with Nick Cave, sculptor and educator

The Weight of Black, Works by Anila Quayyum Agha: An internationally exhibited, award-winning mixed media artist, Anila Quayyum Agha creates intricately conceived light-based installations that touch on politics, culture, and gender issues. Her visually provocative works inspire a deeper understanding of our contemporary global experience, covering gallery walls in a complex lattice of light and dark.


ARTIST TALK, With Anila Quayyum Agha

Museum administration also addressed sustainability goals for the buildings and grounds.

Museum Pond: The museum and the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences partnered in 2020-21 to explore the best ways to control harmful algal blooms in the museum pond, negatively affecting aquatic ecosystems and organisms by producing poisonous toxins. The graduate student team, led by Professor Alan Wilson, applied several chemical and biological methods to floating greenhouse plastic enclosures to determine which one was most effective. The results are being used to identify the right ongoing treatment to manage the blooms in our pond and other water bodies to ensure they remain safe for all to enjoy.

Stewarding the Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection: With more than 100 prints, the Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection is a cornerstone of the museum's holdings and one of the southeast's finest. Many are hand-colored, and as works on paper, they are, by definition, fragile and especially susceptible to light, whether from the sun or artificial sources. To provide the utmost care and extend the pieces' life for as long as possible, museum administration undertook gallery improvements while closed to the public in Spring 2020. Now, a new motion-activated light sensor system leaves the gallery dark until someone walks in, and modified gallery doors limit further exposure. Preparators are also using an even higher value UV protective glazing in the framing process. Though these measures cannot completely protect the art, they reflect the university's stewardship responsibilities and allow us to exhibit these and other Audubon prints on a more regular basis.

Sustainable Working Environments for Museum Professionals and Student Workers: The museum has replaced approximately 90 percent of the interior lighting with low-wattage LEDs. University Facilities also installed light-blocking blinds and light filtering window film to reduce sunlight entering the Grand Gallery, allowing for lower air conditioning usage and better conditions for preserving artwork on view. All museum staff offices have had carbon-neutral Interface carpet tiles installed. The museum has also acquired new furnishings for all staff offices with “Indoor Advantage Gold” emissions certification. The Aeron desk chairs are made from 94 percent recycled materials, and all other furnishings are recyclable.
http://jcsm.auburn.edu/

Auburn Outdoors organize a variety of overnight trips and clinics for students such as hiking, backpacking, kayaking, rafting, climbing, biking, camping and backpacking that follow the Leave No Trace principles. In addition Auburn University is an official Leave No Trace educational partner.
http://www.campusrec.auburn.edu/outdoors

The following learning communities (LC) and themed first-year seminars (FYS) have connections to health and wellness, leadership, global perspectives, inclusion and diversity, community and civic engagement, and other sustainability-related topics: Be Well (LC), Citizenship and Democracy (FYS), Conservation Biology (LC), Cultivating Diversity in STEM (LC), Engaging in a Diverse World (FYS), Global Perspectives (LC), Leadership (FYS), Live Green-Save Green (LC), Marine and Natural Sciences (FYS), PLUS scholars (FYS), Pop Culture and Social Justice (FYS), Women in Science & Engineering (LC), and Women Thriving in Science and Math Careers (FYS).

http://fye.auburn.edu/2019-2020-first-year-seminar-themes/

Students can bring their bike by Auburn Outdoors Rental Center and work one-on-one with bike techs to perform a general overview inspection of bike safety. Tools, resources, and staff expertise are all available to Auburn University students, and allow students to learn more about bicycle safety, maintenance, and care. Members to the Recreation and Wellness Center can learn how to change a flat tire, clean the drive train, provide general maintenance, as well as learn proper bike safety procedures and bike terminology. Students are encouraged to come regardless of if they own a personal bicycle or not. Events at Auburn Outdoors focus on helping students learn about sustainable transportation around Auburn as well as getting them involved in the local biking community.

The Fundamentals of Climbing Workshop introduces students to climbing skills needed to successfully climb and belay safely at the climbing wall. The workshop covers knot tying basics, proper equipment usage, safety procedures, communication methods, and belaying techniques associated with top rope climbing.

In addition, the Live Green, Save Green Learning Community students learn that it is possible to be “green” and save “green” – both in the monetary AND environmental senses. Students explore issues through discussion, activities, reading, writing, teamwork, and community service - all of which are centered on the theme of sustainable living and decision-making. Topics include current events, trends, and social/economic issues; emerging green technologies; economic and environmental impacts of actions; and the economic advantages and disadvantages to adopting sustainability-related practices.
http://www.campusrec.auburn.edu/outdoors

Sustainability internships exist with Academic Sustainability Programs, the Waste Reduction and Recycling Department, and the Office of Sustainability. For positions with all offices students must apply and go through an interview process.

The Academic Sustainability Program has had 1-2 paid students (grad and/or undergrad) each year to assist the director.

The Waste Reduction and Recycling Department has had 1-2 paid student internships each academic year. Interns help with the marketing and operations of recycling efforts on campus.

The Office of Sustainability has had 4-8 undergraduate student paid internships a year. Students are given an opportunity to make a difference by applying their talents, training, and skills in ways that support Auburn University in its move toward sustainability.

http://sustain.auburn.edu/engage/internships/