Texas A&M University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

The ResLife Sustainability Challenge continues to evolve to meet the needs of students living on-campus. Each year, there are student engagement activities to promote education, outreach and service opportunities for students between Campus Sustainability Day and Texas Recycles Day. Annually, there is a Sustainability Dinner which hosts faculty, staff and students passionate about sustainability to learn from one another. Each residence hall's water bottle filling station numbers are collected by the Aggie Eco-Reps to illustrate diverted plastic water bottles saved, sustainable bulletin boards are created and posted in the residence halls, several sponsored events like "Chill and Charge" - using solar panel chargers to allow students to charge their devices while learning about sustainable practice in the residence halls & "Project Clean Plate" - Aggie Eco-Reps in partnership with Dining Services divert approximately 2,000 lbs. of plate scraps at the Dining Hall to compost efforts on campus to illustrate the importance of not overeating/placing uneaten food in the trash. The Challenge is a compilation of opportunities for individual habit development, education about global issues of sustainability sponsored by campus partners, and opportunities for service or experiential learning with stream clean, Howdy Farm and Replant to name a few. A primary focus for this year's challenge is to make students aware of what steps are being taken, how they might get involved, and how to advance the conversation or recommend action.

Overall, the utilities consumption for Residence Life managed facilities has gone steadily down from over $10M to just over $7M while square footage has been increased. These results have come with renovations, student engagement, close monitoring for maintenance (via usage trends), and economies of scale in utility pricing.

The Aggie Sustainability Alliance, open to all faculty and staff, engages participants in fostering a campus culture of sustainability. Individuals and offices are recognized for their contributions to sustainable energy and water use, transportation, food and purchasing, waste minimization, and social sustainability. The program builds off the previous Sustainable Office Certification (SOC) program, which helped make Texas A&M’s faculty and staff more aware of sustainable practices that can be easily incorporated into everyday life, while collectively reducing TAMU's footprint. Each office that participated in the SOC had the opportunity to fulfill qualifications ranging from easy tasks to more in depth responsibilities and were rewarded with a Sustainable Office plaque at the appropriate level. The Aggie Sustainability Alliance maintains the office-level certification while additionally providing an individual certification to encourage and recognize sustainable behavior change actions of individual faculty and staff.

To date, twenty offices have been officially certified in the historical SOC program and one has been re-certified at a higher level. Active SOC certification paused while the new ASA program was under development, and offices which were in progress under the SOC program are being transitioned over to the updated ASA program.

For the 2nd year, the Department of Residence Life has hosted the "U Challenge", wherein teams of students (graduate & undergraduate) studied utility and energy consumption for assigned residence hall communities as well as student engagement patterns. Through competitive rounds, student teams presented to professional judges and winners received cash prizes. All of the recommendations by each of the teams has been logged and is being reviewed by department leadership for implementation.