Green Navigators

Who Are The Green Navigators?

Green Navigators are student sustainability leaders educating their peers about sustainability on campus and the community. They are trained by the on-campus Donald C. Howard Leadership Program in order to hone their skills to more effectively lead their fellow peers.

The program, launched in the Spring 2009 Semester, is coordinated through the UMass Dartmouth Office of Campus and Community Sustainability and the Housing Facilities Operations & Services Department (HFOS), under the direction of the Program Coordinators Kathleen Christianson and Robin Brow.

Green Navigators collaborate with groups such as MASS PIRG, Student Activities, and The Career Center/Community Service Program.

What Do Green Navigators Do?

The Green Navigators are split into 13 different teams all with a specific sustainable subject that they are focused on. The teams are as follows:

  1. Bike Share: This team is put to the task of researching and ultimately implementing an on-campus bike share program where students can rent bikes by the hour or day in order to quickly and more easily travel around and off campus.
  2. Bike Path: The main goal of this team is to research all versions of a possible UMass bike path and to encourage bike use on campus and in the community. This team works on campus to provide students with secure storage of their bike in residence halls and with the community to make local vendors more bike-friendly. Students on this team also attend Transportation Committee and Dartmouth Bike Committee meetings.
  3. Farmer’s Market: Students on this team coordinate monthly Farmer’s Markets that are packed with local farm fresh goods which is open to the community. They hope to expand the markets to include more activities such as student art sales, live music, and other local vendors in order to provide a sustainability-friendly activity for students to improve on-campus life. The team also pulls together volunteers in order to help the vendors with setting up and running an effective market.
  4. Energy Project: This team is put to the task of working with multiple organizations in order to promote sustainable behavior. These organizations include: NORESCO to market specific behavior change projects, such as Spare the Air, Power Shower, and Choose to Snooze; NISE and the incentive-based behavior change project in the Woodland community, and SEEAL to connect their Southcoast Energy challenge with our Energy Project.
  5. Recycle Mania: RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Although we are not eligible to compete nationally yet, this GN team works to provide an on-campus competition between the residence halls and bring our campus to nation eligibility.
  6. Programs (films, speakers): The main goal of this team is to support and promote the Sustainability Film Series, any guest speakers, and the Sustainability at Home: Brown Bag Series.
  7. Waste & Composting: Students on this team work to implement an on-campus composting type and location. To help combat waste, they also organize seasonal clothing drives and an end-of-the-year recycling program that will work to recycle old clothes, books, building materials, sporting equipment, furniture, and technology.
  8. Office: This team staffs the front office in order to assist central staff members by answering phones, sending e-mails, routing faxes, and managing e-mail lists. They are also put to the task of researching sustainability job and careers and information the community and student body about these opportunities.
  9. Forest: This team of students works to maintain current and create new nature trails in our on-campus forest that covers almost 400 acres. They are working to organize walks on the trails and create a system to inform people about plants, animals, and birds that might be seen on these walks. In addition, the team is updating train maps and keep the community informed of the forestry activities, and different methods of forest management
  10. Food: The main goal of this team is to work with our current food service provider, Chartwells, to insure sustainable interests are being implemented at all food venues on campus. Additionally, they hope to encourage and expand the use of the campus garden by working with the Garden Club.
  11. Social Media: This team is put to the task of maintaining the Sustainability web pages and social networking pages (Facebook, Google+, blog).
  12. Almanac: The Almanac is a weekly sustainability newsletter sent out to those who sign up for it. This teams searches for potential articles and formats them to be included in the Almanac.
  13. Emerald Award: This award is one of two leadership awards that must be completed in order to become a Green Navigator. This team works to advertise the award to Green Navigators and anyone interested in sustainability. They also provide assistance to the presenters of the information sessions.

For more information

To apply to become a Green Navigator or for more information on the Green Navigators Program, please contact one of the Program Coordinators: