Students’ $5 Green Fee is being put toward the development and growth of the UTM Sustainability Center.
The fee was implemented for the fall semester after 75 percent of students polled said they would support one. It ended up establishing the effort that acts as a support body for sustainability at UTM.
The UTM Sustainability Center hopes to help fund and guide campus projects. Some of the things that have already been requested and discussed include creating a bike repair station, establishing a bike-share program, bringing back a community garden and working towards composting all food waste at UTM.
The center plans to have a physical location in the next year that provides space for two student interns. Though the center does not have a physical location at this time, its work is not limited by that and they still strive to be a support system, a communications facilitator for sustainability and a unified voice for UTM as a higher education sustainability-initiative success.
The Sustainability Center is managed by an oversight committee that is composed of 16 members from around campus as a part of the student body, faculty and administration.
The center has already assisted the Recycling Center in making signage that helps people know how to utilize their facility as well as a few other small-budget needs. The Oversight Committee is also a member of the Climate Leadership Network, the Southeastern Campus Sustainability Coordinators Network and the TDEC Office of Policy and Sustainable Practices Higher Education Group email list. As their time progresses, the volume of their works will likely increase, especially as student organizations begin to utilize their grant opportunity.
The Sustainability Center is now accepting applications for their sustainability grant. The grant would be an award up to $5,000. It would be awarded to a student group, who upon application, shows that they have a sustainability-related project which would benefit the school.
Eric Pelren, Coordinator of the center’s Oversight Committee and Wildlife Science Professor, said that as of Tuesday, Oct. 30, the Sustainability Center also has a dedicated Gift Fund, which allows donors to the university to specify that they’d like their gifts to go towards sustainability.
Pelren defines sustainability in three different specific legs: ecological, economic and social, each of which is focused on continuing operations indefinitely throughout different areas of the world, economics and society.
The UTM Sustainability Center follows in the path of other universities and is in line with The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). The Sustainability Center and the Oversight Committee encourage all students and faculty to join that association by going to www.aashe.org and clicking the ‘New Account’ tab on the top right of the page. Membership may offer discounts for sustainability products.
“I don’t want to be the face of the sustainability center,” Pelren said. “The oversight committee, with those students giving their voice– that’s what I want to be the face of the center. This is an organic effort. This is people saying, ‘Support my values,’” he said of the support others give for the center’s efforts.
For students and faculty wanting to get involved with the Sustainability Center, they may reach out to Pelren via email at epelren@utm.edu or by going online to utm.edu/sustainability.
Pelren says that he looks forward to reading any suggestions and that he knows the center will take off to do its purpose.
“I hope that people will be happy with what the center does… and that the oversight committee will be the eyes and ears [that] will help us steer it, so that it gives the students what serves their values. If it [the center] doesn’t do that, then we don’t deserve to exist.”
(UTM strives to encourage all forms of sustainability. | Graphic credit/UTM Sustainability Center)
