Student Development and Engagement

Description - Students have always played a pivotal role in ACS Environmental Programs. Through the Student Development and Engagement Alliance (SDE), ACS collaborated with students to build a comprehensive student development initiative that enhanced student environmental citizenship and increased student participation in the ACS Environmental Initiative.

Foundation, 1997-2001 - The Student Development and Engagement Alliance emerged out of several existing programs, including:

• Student Environmental Intern Program. From 1998 to 2008, Student Interns assisted the Faculty Fellow in bringing environmental issues--and the ACSEI in general--to the attention of individual students and groups on campus, with an emphasis on increasing student participation. They took on independent leadership roles by developing environmental projects, activities, etc., or by directly building on whatever environmental activity was already in place on campus. Between 2001 and 2008, 269 students served as Environmental Interns. For more information about student projects, please see Student Involvement.
  
  
• Student Leadership Training Workshops. Forty-five students from 15 institutions were trained at these workshops between 1997 and 2001.
  
  
• Summer Internship Programs. During the summers of 1999 and 2000, 8 students from 3 institutions were placed with six different environmental organizations (Heifer Ranch, Southface Energy Institute, Louisville Zoo, Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Cumberland Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development, and the River Basins Research Initiative).
  
  
• Campus Environmental Organizations. Student participation in environmental clubs increased more than 200% between 1997 and 2001.

Early SDE Program Areas – From 2001-2005, the SDE alliance built on the success of previous student programs, and identified new targets of opportunity for student environmental citizenship in fraternities, sororities, outdoor clubs, religious clubs and honor societies, to name but a few. In addition, the SDE Alliance worked closely with admissions, first year orientation, career planning, and student affairs staff at each institution to maximize the Alliance's exposure to student populations and to institutionalize environmentalism into pre-existing academic structures.  

Prior to 2005, the Student Development and Engagement Alliance featured the following programs:

• Student Leadership workshops - The Alliance created special environmental student leadership training programs, drawing on ACS and outside faculties, with the aim of identifying and refining the environmental interests and leadership capabilities of outstanding students. Student leaders used their training to maximize student involvement at each institution by targeting events (such as first-year orientation) and organizations (such as fraternities and sororities) that were under-represented within the program. Almost 300 students from 16 institutions were trained between 2001 and 2005.
  
  
• Student Grant Program - The student grant program provided funding (e.g., to purchase supplies and material such as recycling bins and shared bikes) so that students could implement small-scale projects on the campuses, thereby increasing the visibility of student environmental initiatives among the general student population. ACSEI support helped students develop almost 90 on- and off-campus student projects, which run the gamut from environmental research, to Styrofoam elimination, to hybrid car demonstrations, to vermiculture.
  
  
• During the summer of 2003, 9 students from 6 ACS institutions worked on a water monitoring project at their institutions, and then presented papers at a student research symposium in Fall 2003.
  
  
• Student Circuit Rider Program – Student circuit riders visited other member institutions to establish a network of inter-institutional student support for the Alliance.
  
  
• Environmental Career Planning - The SDE gave special attention to assisting ACS institutions in preparing students for environmental careers (i.e., in identifying, documenting and publicizing career opportunities), and in reviewing and enhancing academic curricula to allow students to take better advantage of existing opportunities. Working with campus career-planning offices, the Alliance assisted students in pursuing available opportunities and careers via environmental career fairs, better use of the Internet, and publication of environmental career directories. Students were offered assistance in developing environmental portfolios detailing their backgrounds, goals, research projects and particular interests. Portfolios could be used in pursuing internship, graduate school and employment opportunities.

Final SDE Program Years. Between 2005 and 2008, SDE supported students who sought internship opportunities, providing enabling funds for unpaid or semi-paid internships associated with the environment, both on and off campus. In addition, ACS supported student teaching assistantships, providing an opportunity for student engagement in the teaching process, offering experience and reinforcement for teaching assistants, more ample instruction for students, and a broader set of instructional possibilities for course instructors. In those three years, twenty-five students received internship support and three served as teaching assistants.