About the Green Eagle Program

Green Eagles are employees of the Office of Sustainability paid to learn, conduct outreach, and carry out other projects. Students learn about waste, recycling, and composting; energy and carbon neutrality; water and conservation; local, organic, and fair trade food; and many other topics throughout the school year. 

One to two Resident Student Green Eagles are hired to staff each residence hall and work on engaging and educating their peers about sustainability. Keep an eye out for the Green Eagle in your res hall and ask what you can do to help!

Office Green Eagles are typically non-residential upperclassmen and graduate students hired to assist the offices and departments working on the Green Office program. Office Eagles assist with data collection and awareness building among AU staff members. 

All Green Eagles are required to choose a year-long personal project to address a sustainability problem they've identified and want to solve or do research about potential sustainability projects. Tangible change has come out of Green Eagle projects in the past including transitioning to trayless dining at the Tenley Campus. Check out this year's Green Eagles under Quick Links to learn more about the students and their projects.

Monthly Topics

Each month Green Eagles focus on a different sustainability topic and work on engaging their peers in the residence halls and staff members in their office in a month-long campaign to build awareness and change behavior. 2011-2012 school year topics are:

• September - Green Commuting
• October - Consumption
• November & December - Energy Conservation
• January & February - Waste & Recycling
• March - Food
• April - Engagement
  

Program Design

Each month the Green Eagles go through Doug McKenzie-Mohr's Community Based Social Marketing strategy for Fostering Sustainable Behavior to determine the behavior to target and the strategy for engaging the campus community.

• Week 1: Sustainability staff educates Green Eagles about the issue, providing a high-level view of the topic before refocusing on what our campus can do. Green Eagles jointly choose 1-3 behaviors to focus on for the month. Their assignment for the week is to identify barriers and benefits of participating in that behavior.
• Week 2: Green Eagles come prepared to share the barriers and benefits they've identified by surveying, conducting focus groups, and/or observing their peers. Sometimes the real reasons people state for participating in or avoiding a sustainability is not obvious. The group jointly develops strategies to be implemented to promote the sustainable behavior and begins their outreach and programming.
• Week 3: Students share the materials they've created and report back about progress in implementing. The strategies are refined as needed and students spend another week on broad-scale implementation.
• Week 4: Green Eagles report on all the activities they've carried out during the month and evaluate their impact based on people reached, events held, or other metrics.