Story by Julia Laquerre with the Climate Justice and Sustainability Hub
The Climate Justice and Sustainability Hub is working with students to build a culture around sustainability at Northeastern where students, faculty, and staff can engage together. Students have a unique perspective of how the campus can become more sustainable and the Hub recognizes this.
Though the Hub has been meeting with students monthly for many years, the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) was formalized in 2022 to connect student organizations directly to the Hub, allowing for the growth of innovative ideas and a more sustainable university.
SSC is a group of representatives from over a dozen sustainability or climate justice-oriented clubs on campus as well as students interested in engaging on sustainability and climate justice topics. The students provide input on various projects related to sustainability on campus and the committee provides student leaders the skills to broaden the influence of their student organization.
“We wanted to formalize the committee to strengthen the relationship with student groups and to ensure continuity in our discussions and committee topics,” said Megan Curtis-Murphy, the Director of Campus Sustainability and Engagement at the Climate Justice and Sustainability Hub and staff co-leader of the Student Sustainability Committee.
Amit Shenoy and Emily Heneghan are the elected co-chairs of the 2023-2024 committee, and they shared their thoughts on what it means to them to be a leader in the sustainability community on campus. Both Shenoy and Heneghan are leaders of other sustainability groups on campus, but one reason they value the committee is for its connection to the administration, which most student groups lack.
Emily voiced, “we have a lot of suggestions, but getting the administration to listen can be really hard. Through this student to staff pipeline that SSC provides, we can see some real change and clubs can have progress in goals that they want.”
Two topics the SSC is engaged on this year is the Climate Justice Action Plan, being developed by the Climate Justice & Sustainability Hub in partnership with community leaders, and the Institutional Master Plan which guides the development of Northeastern’s Boston campus for the coming decade. SSC members have an opportunity to share ideas related to these topics during their monthly meetings.
“The university has been working on this (Climate Justice Action Plan) for two years and we wanted to make sure we had student voices represented throughout the process,” said Curtis-Murphy. In addition, when a student wants to explore a specific initiative on campus, Curtis-Murphy responds that “we help make that connection with the staff who are involved in the topic. We strive to be kind of that one-stop-shop for making those connections across campus on sustainability.”
The committee also workshopped introducing sustainability initiatives to residential housing; taking sustainability to their doors. “Through discussions with students, we got the idea to work with RAs directly, because they are already someone who’s respected and has a job in the dorms…There’s already various programming that they are required to do, so we thought we could try embedding sustainability programming into residential life,” said Kiran Khosla, the Sustainability Program Associate at the Hub and one of the staff leaders of SSC.
The committee also allows student organizations and the Hub to strengthen their network and work together to tackle sustainable issues on and off campus. It allows them to share “how they might approach putting on an event or other best practices and bring them to their organizations, so they improve their effectiveness and how they can collaborate with other orgs,” said Khosla.
Shenoy appreciates the connectedness that comes with the meetings, “everybody was kind of in their own club bubbles. Now, we’re starting to see more and more collaborations and with that I’d like to see students get creative in the ways that they present sustainability to students who are outside of the sustainability bubble.”
When starting their positions as co-chairs, to encourage community-building, Amit and Emily brought group members to explore the city and play minigolf together. Taking time outside of meetings not only builds bonds between SSC members but also bridges between sustainability clubs on campus.
During the spring semester, Curtis-Murphy, Khosla, Shenoy and Heneghan are excited to facilitate both skills building and collaboration among sustainability clubs on campus, especially in celebration of Earth Month, thus engaging with students outside of the sustainability network. If you are interested in climate justice and sustainability, consider joining a meeting, attending an Earth Month event, or stopping by the annual Sustainability & Bike Fair in September to engage with student clubs, departments and local organizations advancing sustainability both on and off campus.