This January, leaders in Student Government and AU’s environmental community announced an evolution of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund to help mobilize students and community members to create a more sustainable campus.
Instead of waiting until $100,000 is fundraised for projects to begin and focusing only on clean energy, the improved AU Sustainability Fund will benefit students immediately and empower our community to implement a diverse array of sustainability initiatives. The change from CERF into the AU Sustainability Fund was made to adapt to changing local and national environmental developments, to better reflect the strengths of our community, and to help bring our campus together around environmental issues.
This fall, the Sustainability Fund will enable all AU students and community members to apply for grants to implement sustainability initiatives on campus. The Sustainability Fund board composed of undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, faculty, staff and other community members will allocate funds for worthy projects and provide support for applicants to put their ideas into action throughout the year. Through this collaborative and grassroots effort, the Sustainability Fund will help empower, educate and engage our community to make AU America’s greenest campus.
The AU Sustainability Fund will not be limited to projects that pay themselves back. This creates more opportunities for students and community members to design meaningful sustainability projects with greater flexibility and resources. The creativity, innovation and passion of the AU community can now be fully unleashed to grow green initiatives from expanding the community garden to composting. The Sustainability Fund embraces the strengths of our campus by empowering students from biology to business majors to leave a lasting imprint on AU’s campus.
Fighting climate change and finding a way to live sustainably is one of the most critical challenges our generation faces. The Student Government and the AU community responded to this challenge with the Clean Energy Revolving Fund. This was a necessary and practical first step in starting a conversation on campus around sustainability that is evolving into an even stronger initiative. All of this can be achieved while uniting our campus without an increase in the Student Activity fee.
In addition to the broad range of environmental projects that our community will start through the Sustainability Fund this fall, the Clean Energy Revolving Fund has already created tangible changes on campus. It has sparked a meaningful discussion about sustainability at AU, helped inspire the senior class gift of a wind turbine, and earned overwhelming support from students in the spring 2010 Clean Energy Referendum. Also, later this year, the Department of Sustainability will announce a solar installation project that will make AU the largest solar energy producer in the D.C. area at nearly no cost to the University.
The ultimate goal of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund was to engage our community around sustainability and create a culture of environmental consciousness on our campus. These are objectives that the AU Sustainability Fund will build upon and use the momentum of CERF to accomplish even more. No matter what it is called, the efforts of all who supported the Clean Energy Revolving Fund last year continue on through the Sustainability Fund. From uniting our community around environmental issues to generating ideas to build a more sustainable school, we look forward to seeing the Sustainability Fund ignite the passion of AU students to leave our campus, our city and our country better than when we found it.
We welcome your comments and feedback about this initiative. If you have questions or ideas for sustainability projects, please contact HYPERLINK “mailto:Environment@AUSG.org”Environment@AUSG.org
Jennifer Jones, Stephen Bronskill, and Sara Schwartz The AU Student Government Department of Environmental Policy
