Tufts University
EN-2: Student Orientation

Sustainability is included prominently in the new student orientations for many of the university’s schools and programs and varies slightly from year to year. The Tufts Eco-Reps organize a wide variety of orientation events for undergraduate students. Their efforts include some training of the freshman orientation leaders and residential advisers on campus sustainability, and overseeing composting at the matriculation lunch and dinner. The Green House also organizes a re-used item Back to School sale, which is open to all undergraduates. The Office of Sustainability also does outreach to undergraduates during orientation, including speaking to the freshmen at two of the pre-orientation programs. We also table at the Academic Fair for all new freshmen, and we spoke with over 250 new freshmen there in August 2018. Sustainability is also a fundamental tenet of the optional pre-orientations that Tufts offers, specifically TWO (a backpacking program), FIT (a healthy living program) and FOCUS (a community service program). In TWO (http://www.tuftswildernessorientation.com/#Info), students spend 5 days in the woods and have to live completely without waste, so everything that goes into the woods must come out. Multiple FOCUS trips (http://tuftsfocus.org/trips/) are dedicated to helping the environment. In FIT (https://students.tufts.edu/orientation/pre-orientation/fit-fitness-and-individual-development-tufts), one of the leaders runs an activity on one of the days to educate students on the opportunities at Tufts to be involved in environmental organizations and how to be more sustainable on campus in general. The Office of Sustainability provides training and information to all incoming graduate students at Tufts, including those at the School of Medicine, School of Dental Medicine, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Friedman School of Nutrition and Agriculture. Sometimes this is a presentation, other times it is tabling at their orientation lunch and providing resources. In limited cases, the graduate students just receive a brochure about sustainability/commuting in their orientation packets. We turned twelve orientation meals at Fletcher into low or zero-waste events, with the help of student staff. We also made the Freshmen Food Fair and matriculation lunch and dinner into zero-waste events collecting 280 bags of compost and 71 bags of recycling in the process. At the start of each school year, the Office of Sustainability co-hosts an environmental brunch/open house with the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) and the Environmental Studies department so that students can visit with the various environmental student groups, departments, etc.