University of Pennsylvania
EN-1: Student Educators Program

Student Eco-Reps is Penn's environmental leadership program that focuses on raising awareness of environmental issues and impacting the behavior of individuals across campus. Select undergrad students develop educational events, activities, and campaigns aimed at supporting the University’s "Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0." Ten to twenty-two students are paid through the Penn Sustainability team to work four to ten hours per week during the school year. Students select a project to work on over the course of the year. Previous projects include waste audits, energy conservation, recycling, sustainable dining and consumer habits, community service projects for environmental organizations, and more. Projects vary year to year, depending on student interest and University needs.
Penn's Sustainability Office organizes an orientation to review roles and responsibilities. Further training is coordinated at the beginning of the academic year focusing on themes related to Penn's "Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0" and selected projects. Training sessions are run by the University’s sustainability staff, and include get-to-know-you activities, environmental games, discussions on topics related to environmental issues, presentations from experts in the sustainability field, and guidance on how to create connections among their peers.

Some Student Eco-Reps projects are specifically focused on peer-to-peer education and outreach activities. Such projects include outreach about pilot composting programs and waste awareness campaigns. Only students reached by these kinds of projects have been included in the calculations for this credit.

For the Student Eco-Reps Meyerson Composting project, all Weitzman School of Design students were targeted. For the Student Eco-Reps School of Social Policy and Practice (SP2) Waste Awareness Project, all SP2 students were included.

The individual decisions residents living on campus make on a daily basis, even if seemingly small, play a critical role in the University’s sustainability initiatives. The Penn Sustainability Office seeks to recognize these choices and provide on- and off-campus residents with an opportunity to reflect on their environmental impact by offering the "Green Living Certification" environmental certification program.

Establishing greener lifestyles creates a tangible, positive impact on our campus. By offering ""Green Living Certification"", residents will be inspired to take further steps towards improving the health of our environment and to provide a model for others to do the same.

Certification is awarded upon completion of two sections: Required and Optional Actions. The 5 Required Actions are habits that are relatively easy to accomplish and provide the foundation for implementing more difficult sustainable practices. The Optional Actions are organized into 5 categories: Waste Minimization & Recycling; Energy & Water; Transportation; Purchasing; Involvement at Penn. All Optional Actions are assigned points based on a combination of environmental impact, difficulty of implementation, and cost. Based on the number of points achieved, participating students can earn one of three levels for completing the program, bronze, silver or gold. There are 90 possible points.

All students on campus interested in adopting more sustainable behaviors.

This training for Resident and Graduate Assistants is available at the start of each academic year. The training is discussion-oriented, with an emphasis on how to engage with residential undergraduate students and ways to provide students with opportunities to participate in environmental activities at Penn. The program is held prior to New Student Orientation, a three-day period in August just before classes begin the fall semester. There are over 250 RAs and GAs on campus, and this program is available to all, although typically between 25 and 35 sign up.

The target audience is all students living in on-campus housing.

Climate Leaders @ Penn (CL@P):
CL@P is a graduate student organization representing students across various programs and departments at Penn. This group serves as the connective tissue for various sustainability-related initiatives at Penn. This student-led, faculty-advised group consists of a board of 9 students from inter-disciplinary backgrounds and 20 student fellows. The target audience is all graduate students at Penn.
https://www.climateleadersatpenn.com/

The University of Pennsylvania is a major research institution, with over 3,000 degrees granted annually from twelve professional and academic schools at the Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate levels. Penn is committed to reducing emissions and energy use, as stated in the 2019 "Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0." This submission documents Penn's efforts during the FY20 year and compares them to the FY09 baseline year which corresponds with the University's "Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 3.0." The submission relies on information related to the main, academic, West Philadelphia campus, but to more fully document efforts across the Penn system, information related to the Morris Arboretum and New Bolton Center has also been referenced and noted as outside the boundary in descriptions. The information is used to enrich examples of University efforts and is not intended to be the primary justification for credits. The responses for each of the questions and sub-questions are drawn from University materials, both internal and public documents. Each section notes the website where the information can be found.