Eco-Reps named, ready to contribute to Sustainable Skidmore

Sustainable Skidmore's new student Eco-Rep program is a peer leadership program designed to help increase environmental awareness among Skidmore students and to continue fostering environmentalism on campus.

There are 10 paid Eco-Rep positions each working four hours a week in a residence hall with two students working in Jonsson Tower. Click here to visit Sustainable Skidmore's Eco-Rep page. The Eco-Reps will offer information on a variety of sustainability topics, serve as a sounding board for environmental concerns and offer activities specific to each residence hall.

Five Eco-Reps will also serve as mentors to five first-year students as a service-learning project for a First-Year Experience seminar. The Eco-Reps will help the students learn about Skidmore's campus sustainability program, and also how to plan and implement sustainability initiatives and activities. The first-year students are part of Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Rachel Roe-Dale's Scribner seminar class "Without Bounds."

"The new Eco-Rep program is truly a campus-wide collaboration between students, faculty and staff. Facilities Services, Residential Life, and Skidmore's academic programs have already proven very supportive and vitally important to the success of the program," said Erica Fuller, campus sustainability coordinator, who is supervising the Eco-Reps.

To help them prepare for their new assignment, the Eco-Reps participated Sept. 2 in a full day of training to gear up for the upcoming year of sustainability education. Training included learning about current Sustainable Skidmore initiatives, participating in peer leadership activities, setting goals and brainstorming initiatives for the year. Fall semester Eco-Rep topics include the following: waste reduction and recycling, global climate change, energy conservation, a residence hall energy conservation competition, and sustainable food choices. Spring semester topics include: reyclemania (a nationwide recycling competition), Focus Skidmore, water conservation, stewardship, health and spiritual ecology, Earth Day celebrations and the Give and Go. The Eco-Reps will have biweekly meetings to discuss new topics and to brainstorm and plan activities.

There is no shortage of environmentally engaged students on Skidmore's campus, so when the call for applications went out the positions filled and excitement mounted. Kimball Hall's Eco-Rep, sophomore Laura Gruberg said, "When I first heard about the Eco-Rep program last year, I was tremendously excited because it showed not only that the school was ready to commit to a more sustainable, efficient residential life and overall campus, but that the administration had enough faith in the students to let us lead the initiative. The Eco-Rep program is another great opportunity to take learning out of the classroom, and I can't emphasize enough how excited I am to be a part of it."

Fuller is gratified by the students' response to the idea of Eco-Reps and looking forward to a year in which environmental awareness will be more fully implemented in the campus community. "As the Eco-Reps begin their work in the residence halls, I believe we'll see a growing awareness of environmentally sound practices in all aspects of campus life," she said. Students have indicated that they are concerned about making the campus culture greener and it's great to be able to work with them where they live and learn to make that goal a reality," said Fuller.