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Do you want to work at the Office of Sustainability?
Become a part of our amazing team of interns, working on all aspects of sustainability on campus and in the community. Interns will collaborate with other interns and office staff to spend 10 hours per week working on a specified project or topical area and assisting the Office of Sustainability staff as needed.
The following internship positions are available for Spring 2020: campus composting, electric transportation policy and strategic communications. Apply now at https://sustainability.uga.edu/student-programs/internships/ ...

Office of Sustainability interns went hiking this weekend at Rabun Bald, enjoying a beautiful fall morning. Are you interested in being a part of our group of interns and getting to do fun activities while working to make our campus more sustainable? Apply for one of our spring 2020 internship positions at sustainability.uga.edu/internships ...

Mike McCord, a 2015 UGA grad and a former intern at the Office of Sustainability, is the food forest ranger for Trees Atlanta. He oversees the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill, a 7-acre park in the city of Atlanta that incorporates edible plants and produce into the design. The community food forest is the first of its kind in Georgia and the largest in the U.S. The area where the forest is located was once considered a food desert, according to the Urban Food Forest website, but now a variety of native and well-known nuts, fruits, mushrooms, vegetables, and other produce will be available. Photo courtesy @treesatlanta ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Lauren Towe, a third-year ecology major with a certificate in sustainability.
"As the grants and outreach intern, I work with our communications team to promote sustainability initiatives on campus and in the community. I speak to classes to introduce students to the sustainability certificate and the Office of Sustainability internship program. I also inform students of the Campus Sustainability Grants program to encourage them to pursue their own ideas that will advance the sustainability of our campus. I provide feedback on draft submissions for grant proposals and will soon be collaborating with the grant selection committee to decide on the grant winners. Final sustainability grant proposals are due on Nov. 11 and grants will be awarded on Dec. 5 at the Semester in Review.
At the Office of Sustainability, I am inspired daily. We are actively working to create a positive impact, connecting people with their environment and community." ...

Did you know that the @universityofga campus is an arboretum? The entire campus is a botanical garden featuring a wide variety of tree species. From stately American Elms to classic Red Maples, there's beauty all around campus.

Kendall Busher is our campus arboretum intern, tasked with updating the campus arboretum map and sharing knowledge of our trees. "The UGA community is really lucky because we have a lot of really beautiful and old trees on campus," Busher said. "It encourages people to cherish trees and take care of them. Maybe they'll be inspired to plant different trees in their yard that help with natural processes, make them happy or just make the world prettier in some way." Find more stories like this in our weekly (RENEWS)LETTER. Sign up now at sustainability.uga.edu/newsletter. ...

This week's (RENEWS)LETTER contains tips for how to have a sustainable Halloween season, advice on how to cut back on waste while tailgating and some upcoming events to get involved in. Sign up for the newsletter at sustainability.uga.edu/newsletter to get the inside scoop on sustainability at UGA. ...

#InternSpotlight: Say hi to Kasey Stevens, a senior food industry marketing and administration major with a minor in agribusiness and management.
"I work for the UGArden as the public relations intern. The UGArden is UGA’s student community farm located on Milledge Avenue. My job entails planning, developing, and implementing marketing and PR strategies for UGArden events. I also manage UGArden social media accounts, send out a monthly newsletter, and work to improve our website. I am currently working on a promotional campaign for our UGArden Herb 3rd Annual Holiday Market, which will take place at the garden on Dec. 5 from 4 – 7 p.m. My favorite part about my job is having the opportunity to flex my creativity muscles and promote my favorite place in Athens!" ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Thomas Spoerer, a fourth-year environmental engineering and biology major with a Spanish minor.
"I work as the Creature Comforts Sustainable Metrics Intern. In my position, I work with Creature Comforts to collect, analyze, and utilize data regarding all the resources they use throughout their beverage manufacturing process. The purpose of compiling all these sustainability metrics is to devise solutions for the brewery to make their processes more efficient and less environmentally taxing. One of our main goals has been getting a clearer picture of Creature Comfort’s aggregate carbon emissions at all their locations stemming from brewing practices, electricity use, fossil fuel combustion, and purchased carbon dioxide. Secondly, after analyzing their water used for cleaning procedures at their downtown location, I designed a system that allows them to reuse water during a standard sanitization process the brewers need to complete after every brew, hopefully saving them around 200 gallons of water per batch of beer they make.
My favorite part of the job has been being able to act as a problem-solver for the brewery. After collecting all the sustainable metrics we could, my supervisor and I found particular places within the brewery where efficiencies could be increased and loops could be closed. This is where we get to come up with creative solutions to save the brewery water, energy, carbon emissions, and therefore, money – proving that sometimes efforts towards making wasteful processes more sustainable can actually save money rather than costing money." ...

On Sunday, Office of Sustainability interns and employees gathered at the office to create up-cycled reusable silverware pockets out of old vinyl signs. Our artist-in-residence, Kylie Anderson, plans to bring the kits to the @georgiamuseum Spotlight on the Arts in November to have students create cloth napkins to complete the kits. ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Anjali Sindhuvalli, a third-year majoring in finance and international business with a French minor and a certificate in workforce diversity. "I'm the curriculum intern, which means that I work with faculty to incorporate sustainability into course curriculums across all departments. My internship so far has exceeded my expectations - I've been working on projects like UGA's Bee Campus certification and faculty development workshops highlighting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I'm currently partnering with the UGA MBA program to work with an impact investing firm that's getting B-corp certified. I'm a business major, so I've loved learning about the importance of corporate social responsibility and how it intertwines with sustainable practices in companies. I'm so glad I decided to apply to be an intern because it's definitely been a gem of an experience so far, and my co-workers are some of the coolest people I've met at UGA!" ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Samantha Siragusa, a first-year master's student getting a degree in natural resources.
"I absolutely love my job at the Office of Sustainability. I am the UGA Chew Crew intern. My job is to run the logistics of the Chew Crew which is a student-led effort to restore neglected green spaces on UGA's campus. This means I promote the value of urban streams and woodlands, engage the community in ecological restoration practices, and conduct invasive plant species removal and prescribed grazing. Right now I am working on bringing sheep to our Driftmier site! My favorite part of the job is talking to the community about this initiative and using my creativity to come up with new ideas to promote Chew Crew!" 🐑 ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Alexandra Rios, a journalism major with a Spanish, Latin America and Caribbean Studies minor and an Arch Ready certificate. "Hola! I love storytelling. I love seeing what other people are excited about and being a multimedia intern for the UGA Office of Sustainability gives me that privilege. When I am not on campus covering an event, I am out in the community learning about how people tackle sustainability. After the shoots, whether it is a video or photos, I write and edit a minute long multimedia piece for our social media, including Youtube. I believe I have one of the best on-campus jobs." ...

Check out this week's (RENEWS)LETTER to find out more about our water bottle reclamation efforts and our partnership with the Athens Farmers Market and other local organizations to help bring produce to Athens residents who are food insecure. Sign up now at sustainability.uga.edu/newsletter for our weekly update to stay in the know on all things sustainability at the @universityofga ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Nethra Rajendran, a senior majoring in management information systems and international business with a minor in geography and a certificate in sustainability.
"Being the housing intern with the Office of Sustainability has been the BEST experience I have had in college. My role is to guide and train the EcoRep program. The EcoReps are a group of students elected to their hall councils who are tasked with making their residence halls a more sustainable place. I get to train them on hosting green programs, interacting with their fellow residents, and understanding how to apply sustainability to their lives. Currently, I am figuring out creative ways to curate conversation around sustainability and foster bonding between the EcoReps. My favorite part of the job is mentoring the EcoReps and getting to support them in any way I can." ...

We want to see how you're implementing #sustainable habits in your life! Post a photo of your reusable bag stash on your Instagram story and tag @sustainable_uga, and you could win one of these awesome new stickers made by our former intern Abigail West ...

#InternSpotlight: Meet Marielle Quinn, a third-year environmental health science major with a Spanish minor. "I am one of three compost interns working with the Office of Sustainability this semester. My primary role is to distribute and collect compost bins on an electric-powered trike around campus. The other compost interns and I have also been working on adding new buildings to each route in order to increase the volume of composted materials being collected. So far, it has been very rewarding to see the amount of enthusiasm that students and faculty members have towards the composting initiative. My goal for the rest of the semester is to focus on community outreach in order to educate more people about the benefits of composting and inform students about the accessibility of bins on campus." ...