Raritan Valley Community College
EN-3: Student Life

The Environmental Club seeks to positively affect the community and to create environmental awareness and eco-friendly living by making the campus more “green” through education and community projects. Environmental Club meetings are all about taking action – both to benefit and learn from our campus and local environments. We raise organic fruits and vegetables, help restore local forests and other habitats, sell organic/fair-trade coffee and chocolate, participate in beach and stream clean-ups, support campus sustainability events, make maple syrup and natural soap, and go on hikes and camping/canoeing trips. We also sponsor campus-wide trips to such places the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx Zoo, the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil, the Lakota Wolf Preserve, People’s Climate March in NYC, and more. The Environmental Club is student-governed.

Enactus is a community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better more sustainable world. Enactus explores modern business practices and provides networking opportunities to its members, including a national exposition event. Our meetings involve a number of teams that help to run individual projects. Members work collaboratively to meet objectives, inspire new ideas, and to use their classroom experience in a real world situation. Enactus can be thought of as a unique mix of entrepreneurial practice and philanthropy. The student organization works to ensure sustainable projects in order to better serve people in need locally, state-wide, and even internationally. Enactus offers an opportunity to apply everything you have learned in the classroom to real projects that deal with real businesses. The experience you will gain, as well as the benefit it will have on your resume, makes this student organization a valuable life-long credential.

Students are involved in growing plants and vegetable's in the new greenhouse. The greenhouse includes a hydroponic system. The plants are being sold to the community and the vegetables have been donated to the campus food pantry. See https://sway.office.com/s6pEB45WEAHoAtvW?ref=Link

The RVCC Organic Garden, located behind the baseball field, is .4 acres in size. Previously it operated as a CSA, but it is in transition to an organic orchard now. The garden is run by the Environmental Club, which is student-governed.

Enactus has a My Neighbor's Garden project. They built a 40 plot, 22,000 square foot organic garden. They provide food from this garden to food insecure families. They also donate up to 50% of their produce to the Community Food Bank of NJ.

The Environmental Club makes maple syrup from the sap of invasive Norway Maple trees and sells it as a fundraiser for a student internship.

The Environmental Sustainability Committee hosts a series of student-focused events every April in celebration of Earth Day. This year the events were a documentary screening and panel about a 600 year old tree in a nearby town center, followed by a visit to the 350 year old oaks on campus; a lecture by a bat expert followed by a visit to campus bat-houses; and an electric car show. Also in April, the faculty sustainability SIG hosted a scavenger hunt to find/photograph sustainability-related locations on campus based on a set of clues.

In April 2022, the Arts department sponsored a documentary screening and panel about a 600 year old tree in a nearby town center. The documentary was directed by RVCC adjunct Michael Reynolds. The event and panel was geared toward students interested in documentary and film work as well as environmental sustainability. See https://ccabedminster.org/under-the-great-oak/ for more information.

Video students made a fun and creative educational video about how to properly sort waste on campus. It is available online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO0ZN607FyY

Environmental Club outings, class trips, and school trips such as the Clean Ocean Action beach sweeps, follow Leave No Trace principles.

The Facilities and Environmental Science departments offers internships with an operational and campus sustainability focus. The Center for Environmental Studies offers several internships.

RVCC has a service learning program, in which students spend 15 hours doing community service and this is noted on their transcript. Some student projects involve sustainability projects in the local community.

The College also has an annual essay contest called Nota Bene, and the winners are often sustainability-related. In 2022, the winners include "Willow" and "You know I've never seen a sunrise?" works of fiction and papers on war, gender norms, and many other topics. See https://rvcclibrary.omeka.net/exhibits/show/notabene22/fiction for more information.

The Enactus Club often has sustainable entrepreneurship activities but had nothing to report this year (according to Tracy Rimple).