AASHE Campus Sustainability Hub

In the early 2020’s with the onset of the pandemic and accelerating impacts of the climate emergency, students in Tufts University’s sustainability programs began asking for ways to more effectively center inclusivity and wellbeing into their work on campus. As a result, the office undertook a program restructure that resulted in three new programs that prepare students to be resilient climate leaders. These programs have resulted in deeper and more inclusive campus engagement that align with the university’s goals of education and research.

Tufts' Office of Sustainability was amongst the first universities to create a student-focused sustainability program, later coined as Eco Reps. The office had run a successful Eco Reps program for over a decade that engaged hundreds of students with sustainable living and other campus initiatives. In the early 2020’s with the onset of the pandemic and accelerating impacts of the climate emergency, students in our Eco Reps program began asking for ways to more effectively center inclusivity and wellbeing into their work on campus. Around this time, the office hired Ann Ward, who had recently completed her PhD studying the ways that young people process their emotions around climate change. With help from Ann’s research and in partnership with our current Eco Reps, the office embarked on a strategic planning process to update our programming to meet the needs of our students and prepare them to be able to solve future climate challenges with resilience.

This new programming was developed with four goals in mind:

1. Prepare students to handle real-world sustainability and leadership challenges

2. Support the complex emotional experiences of students, with a focus on well-being and resilience

3. Create a more equitable and inclusive sustainability community at Tufts

4. Align the work of the Office of Sustainability with Tufts University's mission: to provide transformational educational experiences and generate cutting-edge research

The result was three new programs under the umbrella of Resilient Climate Leaders, designed to help students develop skills to tackle climate challenges in ways that preserve wellness now and in their future careers.

Tufts' Office of Sustainability engaged in a programmatic redesign with two key questions in mind: How do we support the development of our future climate leaders, and how do we foster a more inclusive sustainability community on campus? With these guiding questions, and in collaboration with our student leaders, we launched our new Resilient Climate Leaders programming. This programmatic overhaul reimagined the traditional campus Eco Rep program and transformed it to meet the realities of the world that students live and learn in today: a world that desperately needs accelerated climate action, where many young people are experiencing climate anxiety.

These three programs include Sustainable Spring, which is a course that helps students learn about ways to get involved in sustainability work on Tufts campus and meet like-minded fellow students; the Sustainable CORE Fellows (Cultivating our Resilient Environment), who focus on inclusive campus community building that emphasizes sustainable action, equity, and celebration; and the Sustainable Solutions Fellows, who work in collaboration with staff and faculty to solve sustainability challenges related to decarbonization, waste reduction, and other major institutional challenges.

In addition to making Tufts a more sustainable place, students in these programs are provided the space and tools to engage with the complex emotional realities faced by many young people today. Drawing from research on young climate activists and their emotions, these programs were designed to support well-being based on 4 principles to provide students with the opportunities to engage in:

1. Meaningful Climate Action

2. Inclusive Community Building

3. Reflection and Exploration of Positionality

4. Joy and Celebration

Sustainability offices across the country have long offered programs that give students the chance to participate in meaningful climate action. However, this new Resilient Climate Leadership model asks sustainability professionals to prioritize community-building, reflection, and celebration in the same way we prioritize sustainable action. This allows students to develop their leadership skills in a holistic way, intended to provide them with the tools to deal with the complexity of climate change.

While we decided to engage in a full programmatic redesign at Tufts, this doesn't have to be the case everywhere. The four principles outlined above are adaptable to various contexts and can be incorporated into existing programs. This means the Resilient Climate Leaders model—focused on well-being and sustainable action—can be applied across different contexts, providing a useful framework for those looking to support student leadership and resilience without overhauling their current programs.

Starting in the 2022-23 academic year, the Tufts Office of Sustainability embarked on a strategic planning process to update its programming to meet the needs of current students amidst the climate emergency. Staff underwent conducted background research, engaged with campus stakeholders, and refined the program restructure over the course of the year. In Fall 2023, the office debuted two of the three new program offerings: the Sustainable CORE Fellows and Sustainable Solutions Fellows. In Spring 2024, they debuted the final new program, Sustainable Spring. The office has since run these three programs each semester and has grown student participation over the past year.

The bulk of expenses for this project were related to staff and student wages. These expenses were paid for by the Office of Sustainability.

Last year, these programs engaged 47 students as direct participants and reached thousands of students indirectly through events and initiatives. Based on preliminary feedback, students who took part in our programming indicated that it was a positive experience. Highlighting the impact of the Resilient Climate Leader model, one CORE Fellow shared:

“I’ve learned so much I don't even know where to begin. I’ve met so many people on campus and made connections within and outside of Tufts. I’ve discovered my passions and secured an internship in my desired field because of what I’ve learned about myself. I’ve learned how to lead events, how to conduct myself in both formal and informal settings, and I’ve connected with faculty and the institution.”

As detailed by this CORE Fellow, students in these programs are directly impacted, but that impact also radiates out to the broader Tufts community through peer-to-peer community building and problem solving. For example, last year, a Solutions Fellow conducted a deep dive into our seafood purchases. She made recommendations to our Dining Team on how they could include more local fish on their menus. She also set a standard for the percentage of seafood that should be purchased from local vendors, which is now being implemented on campus. In all these programs, students are given the opportunity to explore real-world sustainability challenges through collaboration with campus partners.

Inclusive community-building is central to the mission of this programming, which means that Resilient Climate Leaders are continually engaging with new partners and stakeholders. For example, Sustainable CORE Fellows are tasked with organizing fun, relatable, accessible, and engaging events designed to "widen the tent" of who feels included in the sustainability community on campus. These events have one requirement: they must be done in collaboration with others and/or have an explicit focus on equity and justice.

This requirement serves two purposes: it ensures that CORE Fellows work with diverse populations when planning events, and it guarantees that our events draw clear connections between sustainability, equity, and inclusivity. The CORE Fellows hosted 29 events with 48 partners to help bring new people into the sustainability community at Tufts. These partners included student clubs, academic departments, other universities, municipalities, and non-profits. As these programs continue to grow, we look forward to increasing the total number of partnerships and events to further our commitment to creating a more inclusive sustainability community.

Because Resilient Climate Leaders are explicitly tasked with being collaborative and building community, the work these students do to bring new people into the climate conversation on campus is designed to support climate action activities across campus. CORE Fellows and Solutions Fellows meet partners and stakeholders where they are at, asking how they can best support collaborators needs. Last year, Solutions Fellows collaborated with eight administrative offices on sustainability projects that otherwise would not have been engaged with due to limited staff capacity. These programs impact students who participate in them, their peers who they engage with, campus staff who serve as key partners, and the campus culture as a whole. This approach to problem-solving provides additional capacity to the university while simultaneously giving students real-world, hands-on experience in addressing sustainability challenges.

This fosters a culture of sustainability on campus, framing climate change as connected to everyone’s interests, passions, and work—not just the Office of Sustainability. This model also shifts the approach, highlighting the importance of well-being in sustainability work, emphasizing community building, reflection, and celebration as part of the work, not as separate things to do if there is extra time. It serves as an opportunity for folks across Tufts campuses to join in, not only to do “less bad”, but also to do “more good.

As mentioned above, Solutions Fellows are paired with an institutional challenge to tackle, resulting in the creation of sustainable solutions that model climate work on a global scale. Not only do they learn problem-solving skills, but the Fellows also practice collaborating with and understanding the needs of university stakeholders. The existence of Sustainable Solutions Fellows and Resilient Climate Leaders more broadly provides support to staff and students who want to see Tufts strive to be a more sustainable place, but aren’t sure where to start.

To support students, we provide training and opportunities to explore the connections between equity and sustainability. This is a critical part of developing Resilient Climate Leaders who understand the importance of inclusion and diversity of perspective when creating impactful solutions. Exploring positionality is a key principle of the Resilient Climate Leaders model, which means that students are asked to engage with questions of who they are and how they fit into the world. We believe this approach to leadership development has a ripple effect, ensuring that the future generation of climate leaders understand structural inequality, the way we all exist within those structures, and the possibilities for disruption of those systems.

This programmatic restructure was the result of several factors, one of which was the need of our students to center inclusivity and well-being in their work. We learned that involving our students in every step of the restructure was vital in understanding what our students needed most and ensuring that the new programs reflected themselves. We also quickly learned that we needed to align our new work closely with the mission of the university by building bridges between sustainability challenges and teaching and research. We designed these programs to support not just the operational goals of the university, but the educational goals as well, which helped to garner more widespread interest, support, and impact of these programs.

• Jennifer Reilly - Communications Specialist | Tufts University