Student Sustainability Organizations

GT student Stephanie Kehl working the SOS Community Garden

Georgia Tech has a strong tradition of student led clubs and organizations. Sustainability related groups have proven to be no exception in this regard. The list below is a comprehensive picture of the broad range of sustainability related student organizations and volunteer opportunities available. Please help us keep this list current. Contact us with updates, or additions.

• Association of Environmental Engineers and Scientists - AEES is a student-run organization, traditionally a graduate student group, we now involve many undergraduate students in our professional and social events. Our organization’s main goal is to improve the overall educational experience  of the students in our department. We aim to provide a professional and social network to environmental engineering students  at Georgia Tech. We provide professional development services to our students, act as a communication channel between students and faculty, provide assistance to students attending conferences, and work to maintain a high quality of student life. AEES also provides a link between students and their potential employers.


• Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee - The GT BIIC was formed in late 2010 by SGA, to bring together graduate and undergraduate students with staff members of the Georgia Tech offices of Capital Planning and Space Management, Parking and Transportation, Facilities, etc. Together they are tasked with improving bicycle infrastructure on campus through the evaluation of existing facilities, the creation of events and programs, securing funding for facility improvements, and other related endeavors. They represent a commitment of students and staff to sustainability, mobility, safety, healthy living, and a choice of travel modes.


• Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service - Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service, also known as CHEFS, is the cooking club on campus. We strive to provide our members with fun, interesting activities that both expand their cooking knowledge and help the community around them.


• Circle K - Circle K is a service and leadership development organization for college students sponsored by Kiwanis International. We participate in volunteer projects around the community, such as at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Project Open Hand, Boys and Girls Club, and more. We have many leadership opportunities, including committee chair positions, and also promote fellowship among club members  by having various social events. There are also opportunities for awards and scholarships. Overall, we provide club members with as many chances to volunteer as possible and have fun at the same time.


• Earth Day Planning Committee - Georgia Tech's Earth Day celebration is among the largest in the Southeastern US. This is possible because of dedicated people who work to bring this annual event into being. The Earth Day Planning Committee welcomes students into the process. If you are interested, conact Cindy Jackson.


• Energy Club - The purpose of  the Energy Club is to educate students on the unique challenges and opportunities that are impacting the global energy industry. We bring together students, alumni, faculty and industry professionals in a forum that allows for interaction, discussion, exchange of innovative ideas and networking. We also develop student leadership specifically in the area of energy.


• Engineers for a Sustainable World - Engineers for a Sustainable World at Georgia Tech promotes engineering that fosters environmental, social, and economic sustainability and focuses the combined resources of Georgia Tech students, faculty, and alumni to develop sustainable solutions for local, regional and national problems.


• Engineers Without Borders - Georgia Tech - EWB-GT is a student chapter of a national non-profit organization called Engineers Without Borders-USA. We serve as a resource for connecting Georgia Tech students with opportunities for personal development and a stronger understanding of global health concerns and humanitarian engineering. Our student members design and implement solutions for health and infrastructure needs in developing communities.


• Georgia Tech Model UN - GTMUN is a two day conference for high school students that takes place on Georgia Tech’s campus. Established in 1998, this conference has worked to bring international affairs to the high schools of the Southeast. The conference has grown in size over the years and now attracts schools from the entire Southeast and beyond. Run by Georgia Tech students from a variety of majors, GTMUN offers a range of committees and issues for high school students to enjoy. We strive to educate and enlighten high school students on a number of international issues. We also help develop the public speaking, writing, and leadership skills of the high schools students and our staff.


• HyTech Racing - HyTech Racing is a student team at the Georgia Institute of Technology that formed with the intent of competing at the Formula Hybrid International Competition. The annual Formula Hybrid International Competition is an offshoot from the prestigious Formula SAE Competition. Hosted by Dartmouth College, it has been held five times starting in 2007 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. From late April to early May, teams from educational institutions around the world bring plug-in hybrid-electric, open-wheeled vehicles to perform in a variety of design and performance challenges. Design, Endurance, Autocross, and Acceleration events emphasize the importance of a balance between performance and efficiency


• Ideas 2 Serve - I2S is a business  plan competition for current Georgia Tech students and recent alumni who have early stage product/service ideas or venture concepts that are geared towards creating a better world. Entries might focus on reducing poverty, alleviating hunger, promoting health and wellness, improving air and water quality, reducing of the rate of depletion of natural resources, or developing alternate sources of energy just to name a few!


• The Maker's Club - The Makers Club is a collective of students who believe in the value of a hands on education. Our Mission is twofold: To provide students the resources they need to design and fabricate in a collaborative environment; and to educate the Georgia Tech community on fabrication with open, student taught classes and events.


• Net Impact - Net Impact inspires a new generation to use their careers to tackle the world's toughest social and environmental problems. We empower student and professional leaders to act locally though our vibrant chapter network and connect globally online and through our flagship conference. By 2020, we will mobilize a million new leaders to drive positive change in the workplace and the world.


• (ORGT) Outdoor Recreation Georgia Tech - We offer a number of programs throughout the year from caving and rock climbing to whitewater rafting and sea kayaking. Rent equipment at the Wilderness Outpost for your own camping excursion or join us on an organized outing. ORGT employs staff and students and accepts volunteers.


• Society for BioDiversity - The Society for BioDiversity aims to encourage and facilitate student involvement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) initiatives to promote and increase the retention of underrepresented and underserved minorities in STEM careers. Many of our initiatives are bidirectional in order to impact students on-campus as well as students in local K-12 schools. Through facilitating professional development, community outreach, networking among peers, peer mentorship, we hope to help to impact the diversity and growth in the biology world.


• (SEED) Society of Engineers for Environmental Development - Interested in organizing the biggest imagination and ideation party ever? SEED focuses on fabricating, encouraging the process of ideation, and problem solving with application to real world problems in the fields of alternate energy systems, global warming, sustainable energy, healthcare, communication, human interaction and much more.


• Solar Jackets - The Georgia Tech Solar Jackets is a student organization dedicated to the design and construction of competitive solar racing vehicles. We seek to develop teamwork, leadership, and innovative engineering skills by providing training and hands-on experience in solving real-world engineering problems. We are a student-run organization, built on the dedication and ambition of our members. The solar race car project promotes cross-disciplinary learning and interaction, and it necessitates engineering excellence, leadership, and teamwork from all students involved.


• Starter Bikes - Starter Bikes began as a collaborative project between Georgia Tech’s Students Organizing for Sustainability and the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Volunteers refurbish abandoned and donated bikes into low-cost, entry level bicycles for students and community members in need of inexpensive but reliable transportation. The program is also available for people who would like to try a bike, but don’t want to make a large up-front investment until they have more experience. Starter Bikes also provides free access to tools, so you can fix your bike yourself. Volunteers are available to provide mechanical expertise.


• Student Government Association Sustainability Committee - The purpose of the Campus Sustainability Committee is to facilitate cooperation between faculty, staff and student sustainability movements and present a united front for Georgia Tech Sustainability efforts in our interactions with the City of Atlanta and larger global community, and further to be direct advocates for students' sustainability concerns in SGA.


• (SOS) Students Organizing for Sustainability - Students Organizing for Sustainability is a student-run organization at the Georgia Institute of Technology dedicated to promoting the awareness and implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable practices on our campus and in the local Atlanta community.


• The Sustainable Dining Committee - The Sustainable Dining Committee came together in late 2007. A few students, passionate about campus and food sustainability, initiated the meetings with GT Dining in order to express their views about current dining practices and work to decrease the environmental impact of student dining at Georgia Tech. This group meets monthly at dinner meetings to discuss action oriented ways to improve the sustainability of campus dining at Georgia Tech. The mutual respect demonstrated by both students and GT Dining management has created an environment where creative problem solving and big ideas are always encouraged. Anyone is welcome at the meetings.


• Tech Beautification Day - Tech Beautification Day is an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to volunteer to work on campus beautification and landscaping projects.


• Trailblazers - The purpose of GT Trailblazers is to increase student and faculty appreciation for the outdoors through trail adventure and exploration. Throughout the fall and spring semesters, GT Trailblazers also leads a variety of environmental service projects in the Atlanta metropolitan area. These projects are open to both and students and faculty, and include but are not limited to trail-building and maintenance projects on hiking and biking trails, invasive species removal, and other conservation-related projects.

BBISS Hosts Sustainable Engineering Educators

College and university engineering educators from around the country convened at Georgia Tech to learn how to integrate sustainability into their engineering curriculum and pedagogy. About 35 participants from a wide spectrum of engineering specialties worked with experts in the field of sustainable engineering and shared their experiences to advance the state of the art in sustainable engineering education. The two day workshop is an annual event offered by the Center for Sustainable Engineering. The CSE is a partnership of five universities: Syracuse University (lead institution), Arizona State University, Carnegie-Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas at Austin and is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Center is dedicated to helping engineering professors update their courses, and develop new ones, to account for the rapidly changing global conditions that are transforming the practice of engineering.

Workshop participants are encouraged to not only apply what they learned in the workshop to their curriculum, but to share their curriculum as modules for anyone to use through the CSE’s Electronic Database. Modules are peer reviewed in a similar fashion to an academic journal article. This ensures that just as the variety of topics covered expands, the credibility of the content is maintained at a very high standard.  Among the reviewers are former participants in the workshops.

The workshop also serves as a catalyst for building a community of sustainable engineering teachers and practitioners.  It is hoped that as participants implement the principles and concepts of sustainable engineering in their classrooms, they will share their experiences with their colleagues, and through their curriculum modules, with the wider community of engineering educators.

New Open Journal of the Anthropocene

February 2013

BBISS Deputy Director, Michael Chang, is a founding editor-in-chief for the new online academic journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.  Elementa is based on an innovative publication model for an academic journal. It is online, open-access, and peer-reviewed. Elementa publishes timely and high quality articles that deal with the interactions between human and natural systems and behaviors. Elementa is a nonprofit initiative of BioOne, Dartmouth, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington.

The editors of Elementa embrace the idea that basic knowledge can foster sustainable solutions for society.  The journal’s focus will be original research reporting on new knowledge of the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems; interactions between human and natural systems; and steps that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to global change.  Elementa will report on fundamental advancements in research organized initially into six knowledge domains.  Each of the six knowledge domains is edited by one of the journal’s founding editors.  The six domains are:

• Atmospheric Science – Detlev Helmig, University of Colorado Boulder

• Earth and Environmental Science – Joel D. Blum, University of Michigan

• Ecology – Donald R. Zak, University of Michigan

• Ocean Science – Jody W. Deming, University of Washington

• Sustainable Engineering – Michael Chang, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Sustainability Sciences – Anne Kapuscinski and David R. Peart, Dartmouth

Dr. Chang, in a Q & A on the journal’s website, puts the new publication model in context in this way, “Elementa is a ground-up reinvention of the way the research community communicates even as it holds onto the requirement of rigor in peer review. And given these changes, it is wholly appropriate then that Elementa is about the Science of the Anthropocene. The speed and magnitude of change occurring in the publishing paradigm is an excellent metaphor for the speed and magnitude of change occurring on the planet. New challenges call for new solutions.”

Submissions will be accepted beginning in April 2013 with publishing dates for the first articles in July

 

See other editorships held by BBISS staff at this page.

VIRTUES of a Workforce for the Next Industrial Revolution

January 2013

From L to R:  Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson,
Mary Hallisey-Hunt (SEI), Harriet Langford
(Anderson Foundation), Michael Chang (BBISS)

The Ray C. Anderson Foundation recently awarded a grant to Georgia Tech for a project called VIRTUES (Vertical Integration of Research, and Technical, Undergraduate, and graduate Education for Sustainability).  Headed by Michael Chang, Deputy Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, and Mary Hallisey-Hunt, Director of Special Projects for the Strategic EnergyInstitute, the leadership team also includes faculty and administrators from Georgia Southern University and the University System of Georgia, and industry partners from across the state.
 

Like Georgia Tech, most universities now have sustainability initiatives that work internally with their faculty and students.  Likewise, private and public organizations have their own education and training programs related to sustainability and energy.  Each has been successful within its niche and with its own constituency, but to date there has been no direct connection between any of these programs.  As one unit of the system graduates mechanical engineers educated in sustainability and another unit produces mechanics trained in sustainability, it is often left to employers and the invisible hand of the economy to coordinate their practice and knowledge, and to fill any gaps. VIRTUES will improve the state’s workforce development capabilities by producing an educational “roadmap” for creating the type of vertically integrated workforce that is required for the “Next Industrial Revolution.”

In 2013, VIRTUES will host four workshops around the state of Georgia with the purpose of identifying gaps in the current higher educational system and needs for the future.  The workshops will invite participation from all the universities and colleges in the state, in-state private sector employers especially in manufacturing, state and regional economic development offices, and state, county, and municipal officials. 

See the Ray C. Anderson Foundation press release here.

See the Georgia Tech news story here.


 

Contacts: 

Michael E. Chang, Deputy Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, chang (at) gatech (dot) edu 

Mary Hallisey-Hunt, Director, Special Projects, Strategic Energy Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, mary (dot) hunt (at) energy (dot) gatech (dot) edu 

The Brook Byers Institute forSustainable Systems enhances Georgia Tech’s research, education, and service missions, and campus operations through leadership, communications, development, and decision making inspired and defined by the principles of sustainability.  Sustainability is a core value at Georgia Tech that touches every person, action, and decision within the Institute.  Programs and projects initiated or supported by the BBISS lie at the intersections of these themes. 

The Strategic Energy Institute was established to serve as a conduit for integrating, facilitating, and enabling Institute-wide programs in energy research and development. Engaging the best and brightest from industry, government, and academia, the SEI will create innovative solutions to current and future energy challenges. 

The Ray C. Anderson Foundation was created in honor of the late Ray C. Anderson (1934-2011), founder of Interface, Inc.  During his time at Interface, Ray championed the notion of businesses doing well by doing good.  It’s these noble qualities of advancing knowledge and innovation around environmental stewardship and sustainability that recognized Ray as a pioneer in industrial ecology.  The purpose of the Foundation is to perpetuate these shared values and continue the legacy that Ray left behind. Through research and funding, the Foundation aims to help create a better world for future generations—tomorrow’s child.