Catherine Jones is a third-year environmental health science major at the University of Georgia and the intern for the EcoRep program, which is currently hosting an energy conservation competition in Black-Diallo-Miller Hall entitled “Watt Wars.”
Q: Could you briefly describe your role as intern and what exactly the EcoRep program entails?
A: The EcoRep program is a resident focused program of students who live on campus that are ecologically like-minded.
It’s more like a voluntary process, and students can get experiential learning credit through it.
Big campus stuff is mainly what they do in the fall, and then in the spring they get to create their own sustainability focused events. So my role, it’s dynamic throughout the year. In the fall, it’s focused on getting them introduced to the program. We also take them on tours to Athens-Clarke County municipal facilities.
And then in the spring, I’m kind of more of a jumping point for them, so I help them coordinate all of their details, figure out who they want to work with, what the focus of their event is going to be, stuff like that.
Q: Sustainability is not always the priority of college students, especially those living in the dorms. How does the EcoRep program engage the students living within the dorms to participate in sustainable habits?
A: We try to start with our big, residence hall wide activities in the fall. So, our first initiative this semester was “Commit to the Bin,” which is where we tried to get residents educated on how to use their recycling bins.
We normally try and play games, try and engage them somehow at a table, so like stickers, we give out pizza, stuff like that. And then, hopefully, through that they try and build that habit. Competitions really get people excited, especially the people in Black-Diallo-Miller this past fall, they were very serious about it.
We try and get them educated in the shortest form we can, like super quick bites. And if they’re more interested, then we host our sustainability fair, or we’re hosting a speaker series now that people can come to to learn about stuff like that.
Q: On Feb. 10, Black-Diallo-Miller Hall began “Watt Wars,” which is an energy conservation competition between the halls of the dorm. How successful has this activity been so far, and what tactics are being used to engage as many residents as possible?
A: We’re about 10 days into our run this year, and it’s been pretty successful. We’ve had ups and downs like in terms of like literal watts they’re using.
Unlike “Commit to the Bin,” there’s not like tangible results. So we rely on the breakers on each floor to track the wattage.
I don’t think we’ve been going long enough to see any trends in increasing or decreasing since the start, so that’s kind of inconclusive right now. But we messaged the RAs about the program, we have posters on all of the halls, as well as digital signage on the TVs outside of the elevators. We also have been tabling, trying to get residents to just like walk up and talk about the competition. It’s a little hard, without like an incentive, but those are mainly the methods we’ve been using.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity.
Chrisaren Parker is a public relations major covering sustainability.
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