Carnegie Mellon University
EN-2: Student Orientation

Prior to move-in day, Housing & Dining and Student Affairs includes information, sent to incoming students, about minimizing their waste during move-in and recommend environmental or energy saving items to bring to campus. Our fall 2013 orientation programming included a Zero Waste Dinner for all incoming first year students. Sustainability staff use the Zero Waste dinner as an educational opportunity to share with new students (in a fun and inviting fashion) Carnegie Mellon’s commitment to campus sustainability. In addition to the Zero Waste Dinner, orientation week also features the annual Eco-Fabulous Gathering held at the Electric Garage featuring a “zero waste” style spread for students, faculty and staff. During this event, new students are able to mix and engage with representatives of environmentally focused student and staff organizations and receive additional information on campus greening efforts and how they can become involved in campus sustainability. Some of the student and staff groups represented at this event are from Sustainable Earth, Engineers Without Borders, Green Practices and the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research. This past year, the event was a part of a community event, The Craig Street Crawl, where the street was closed down for a festival for our first year students to meet the local business owners and vendors. Campus sustainability efforts are also shared with graduate students during the annual Graduate Resource Fair, a fixture of graduate orientation week. Green Practices and the Steinbrenner Institute collaborate on this effort to bring information on campus greening, educational and research opportunities in campus sustainability to hundreds of graduate students during this event.

Additional information for new students relating to campus sustainability can be found at the Environment at CMU website: http://www.cmu.edu/environment/