Avery Indermaur
Sustainability Engagement Certificate ePortfolio
On-Campus Sustainability Engagements
Overview
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Over my past four years at Duke, I have engaged in a variety of on-campus sustainability initiatives. Most of my involvement was through Green Devils, DuWell, and the Green Roof and Orchard Workforce (GROW). These experiences have allowed me to deepen my knowledge about sustainability; learn how students perceive and engage with it; and integrate my passions for sustainability, food, and wellness through programming at Duke.
Green Devils
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When I joined Green Devils as a first-year, it was an internship program run through Sustainable Duke designed to help students interested in sustainability get involved in greening Duke's campus and the Durham community.
While the program structure has changed slightly each year, it was first organized into teams based on sustainability themes. I chose the Health & Wellness Team, which is where I honed my passion for the connection between sustainability and wellness. As the only consistent member of the team, I had the freedom to design and implement whatever sustainability projects I wanted. I organized a pumpkin patch event for first-years to promote the local farming community and the Bleed Blue Eat Green campaign. I also hosted a series of wellness and sustainability events, like yoga on the East Campus Quad, an air-plant building workshop, and a pop-up farmers’ market on West Campus.
Shots from the Green Devils Pumpkin Patch in Fall 2017; We had over 150 students come by to carve and hang out!
Designing these projects with the backing of Sustainable Duke gave me the confidence and leadership skills to continue hosting sustainability student engagement programs throughout my Duke experience. In the following three years as a Green Devil, I hosted a bi-weekly tabling series to chat with students about integrative sustainability; arranged a gratitude lunch; assisted with Zero-Waste K-ville; collaborated with DukeHealth to create webpages about integrating sustainability into the workplace; and acted as a mentor to a cohort of first-year students in our Sustainability Ambassador Certification Program.
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If you're interested to learn more about the Green Devils program as it runs now, check out this Powerpoint I made for a first-year info session!
I also wouldn't be a very good Green Devil if I didn't share a few sustainability tips! Click below to see my favorites from over the years :)
Manning the station at Zero-Waste K-Ville in Fall 2019
DuWell Internship
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After a year on the Green Devils Health & Wellness Team, I realized that I wanted to dive deeper into the connection between sustainability and wellness. I brought my enthusiasm for this topic to the Student Wellness Center and became an intern for DuWell in the fall of my sophomore year.
I tried to use this position in conjunction with my role as a Green Devil to strengthen the connection between sustainability and wellness on Duke’s campus. For instance, I joined the two offices to host a Gratitude Lunch at the Wellness Center sponsored by the Green Grant. We used a sustainable, local caterer and encouraged the students, faculty, and staff in attendance to reflect on what they were grateful for about themselves, their current circumstances, their food, their environment, and anything else that came to mind. Generally, these are not the material items we possess but the people, experiences, and places that nourish us most. Shifting the focus away from material possessions to what makes us truly happy is a fundamental part of adopting a more sustainable mindset.
Tabling in the DuWell hut on Halloween in 2018
Students at the Gratitude Lunch in Fall 2018
Green Roof and Orchard Workforce (GROW)
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The Green Roof and Orchard Workforce (GROW) is the group responsible for managing the green roof space on top of Duke's Grainger Hall. In addition to planting and maintaining the garden, the group also hosts talks, sustainable agriculture workshops, and social events on the roof space.
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As President of the group, I have overseen and engaged in the planting of the garden for four seasons now. Over the past few years, we have hosted workshops on composting, fruit tree pruning, the environmental and societal benefits of urban agriculture, and what to do with vegetables and herbs from one's garden. Last year, I also asked Tom Szigethy from DuWell to do a talk for GROW about the connection between gardening and mindfulness, pulling in the sustainability and wellness theme here as well.
Photos of the green roof and the seeds we used for flower planting in the spring
Connection to Sustainable Agriculture
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While all of these experiences have not been directly related to sustainable agriculture, they led me to realize that agriculture and food systems are the best way for me to channel my passions for sustainability and wellness. Food and nutrition provide a natural link to both wellness, through human health, and sustainability, through environmentally-conscious farming, that everyone can relate to. Hopefully, by using these topics as a touchpoint, I will be able to be a part of integrating social and environmental sustainability to create a more physically and environmentally healthy society.