Hands-on Learning in Sustainability Studies

Students who major in Sustainability Studies will engage in service learning in one or more class. The Leadership, Ethics, and Social Responsibility course (SUS 321) requires a service learning experience, and your professors for other courses may offer you the opportunity to do additional community based project or research work. Since Sustainability Studies students and faculty share a concern about the health of societies and ecological systems, doing something about the sustainability challenges we face is a natural fit for our program. Service learning is valuable career experience for graduates.

All majors are required to take SUS 489, Capstone in Sustainability. This course requires you to learn about and apply ethical standards to conducting original research in an area of your choosing. The capstone course is an excellent opportunity for you to prepare yourself for graduate-level studies and/or to learn highly practical research methods that can support you in the nonprofit or business realm or help you obtain grants or other funding for sustainability projects.

Several CMC campuses are undertaking local food initiatives in which students and the local community are partners in projects that entail local food production and healthy food system education. Permaculture design courses are offered at the Steamboat and Spring Valley campuses, and Permaculture design certification is offered at the Steamboat campus.

If you’re interested in local food, inquire at your campus about how to get involved with these activities or with community efforts to grow and distribute healthy local foods.

The Steamboat Springs and Spring Valley campuses have signed on to the Real Food Challenge, a pledge to obtain at least 20 percent of campus dining food and beverages from “real food” sources by 2020. Take a look at the Real Food Challenge website to learn more about what is meant by “real food,” and consider getting involved at the ground level in meeting the Real Food Challenge.

This work will leverage the purchasing power of the CMC's dining services to improve the sustainability of the food system and promote local food production. It will also help educate all CMC students about health and sustainability issues in the food system so that they can make informed choices about the food they consume.

Most CMC campuses have a “green team,” a group that helps CMC walk the sustainability walk in its day-to-day operations and educational activities. Students are invited to participate on campus green teams. Green teams offer you an excellent opportunity to put your education to work on the ground and to gain experience as a sustainability leader and practitioner. Ask your professors about green team participation possibilities at your campus.

Every other year, CMC holds a college-wide sustainability conference. The event features student research work from the Sustainability Capstone course (SUS 489) and other courses across the college. Students also participate in organizing the conference.

As a Sustainability Studies student, you’ll be invited to attend and participate. Sustainability Studies student Ben Saheb created an excellent video about the first CMC sustainability conference held in 2014. Check it out.

Participating in student clubs is a particularly effective way to develop your personal and professional network and to gain project and leadership experience. They offer you a way to connect with other students who have similar interests, and they are vehicles for doing sustainability work that’s personally enriching and professionally relevant.

Club participation and leadership are excellent professional development experiences that are valuable to include on your resume. Clubs are also fun!

If there’s a club fair at your campus, be sure to attend so you learn about all of the clubs related to sustainability at your campus. Also ask your professors and other students about opportunities to participate in student clubs.

If you want to start a new club, that's possible, too. Talk to the Student Affairs staff at your campus about how to do so.

 

The mission of the Beekeeping Club is to educate students, the campus community, and the broader public in Steamboat Springs about the importance of beekeeping and the practice of beekeeping. Our efforts contribute to healthy food systems and healthy ecosystems as well as to the development of knowledge and professional skills among our club members. Ben Saheb created an excellent video about a full-day beekeeping workshop sponsored by the club and the about the first beehive installed at CMC in 2014.

Campus: Steamboat Springs

Advisors: Becky Edmiston, Associate Professor, Biology, and Tina Evans, Professor, Sustainability Studies

This club is especially focused on the social equity aspect of sustainability. The following information is quoted directly from the club’s Facebook site: Amnesty International is a global movement of more than three million supporters, members, and activists in more than 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights. Our vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

Campus: Steamboat Springs

Advisor: Bob Gumbrecht, Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences