RAD Sustainability

By Joe Clevenger and Rhianna Hruska, RAD Sustainability.

If you’re a student at The Evergreen State College and have an interest in sustainability, you could possibly start an internship with the sustainability crew at RAD Services. You can gain some college credit and these internships are a great way to get out into the field and do independent work on hands on projects. Some of the fields that we’re exploring are mycology, aquaponics, community gardening, renewable heat and electricity sources e.g. solar and compost heating, data collection, and general sustainability studies.

In the past we’ve had students help us establish and maintain the many gardens on campus, a student focused on solar panels to helped us to analyze data and assess how well our solar panels were producing electricity and heat, and other students helped us to cultivate mushrooms in the sustainability lab in C building. If you would like to do any of these things or you have an idea for a different sort of internship please send us an email at radsustainability@evergreen.edu. In this email let us know who you are, what your sustainability based interests are, and possibly your vision for your internship. We’ll email you back with more information about how to set up an internship and how we think your internship will work. If you email us in fall, you’ll have until the end of week 10 fall quarter to set up an internship for winter quarter and if you email us in winter, you’ll have till week 10 of winter quarter to set up a spring internship. We’re dedicated to working with you to not only further your own sustainability studies, but also to spread the word about sustainability at Evergreen. A key part of sustainability is sharing knowledge, spreading the word about successes and failures, and trying to include many people in the projects that we are working on.

Here is a list of potential projects that students can either volunteer or intern for:

Solar Evergreen:  Photovoltaics and Solar Thermal

• Evaluate existing projects at RAD
  • What is operating, where?
  • How well is it working?
  • Does it need repair or maintenance?
  • Is it saving or producing energy?  How can we tell?  How much?
  • Can it do better?  What would it need?
• Help plan future projects
  • Costantino Recreation Center:  solar thermal to heat pool and/or showers?
  • Recreation Pavilion needs a new roof – can it be solar PV?
  • expand the Library Photovoltaic installation

Forest Garden Specialist

• Reinvigorate the forest garden
  • assess current situation:
    • What is planted?
    • How is it doing?
    • Do we need more light and where?
  • make recommendations:
    • new plantings: what sorts of communities can exist?
    • how do we create potentials for grazing?

• new irrigation system/method
• maintenance system

Mushroom Maintenance

• Assist w developing mushroom path project
• Develop mushroom production on campus
  • find indoor space
    • must be well ventilated
  • choose multiple varieties/methods of growing

Garden Maintenance

• Weeding
• Soil/Plant health
• Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
• Harvest/Plant
• Water/irrigation
• Research opportunities
  • Integrated Pest Management
  • Nutrient cycling
  • Plant Botany
  • Different methods of tilling/planting

Compost Maintenance

• Manage compost heat pile
• Enter and analyse compost heat pile data

Sustainability Photojournalist

• Photographing RAD at work in sustainability
• Photographing other sustainability efforts on campus

• Blog and writing about sustainability

• Submit to the Cooper Point Journal, Green Pages, and other local media
• Could post photographs to the RAD Sustainability Instagram or Twitter

Greenhouse/Aquaponics

• Temp/light intensity data
• Insulative winter nighttime blanket
• Vertical/Horizontal growing
• integrating clams/shrimp
• comparing growth rates in greenhouse to growth rates in adjacent garden
• nutrient cycling
• plant & fish pathology
• botany
• microbial activity

RAD Sustainability Event Coordinator

• Coordinating volunteer days
• Coordinating workshops
• Speakers

10 hours of work/research per week = 4 credits

You can potentially budget 1-2 more shifts than they need each quarter to allow for 1-2 absences throughout the quarter without requiring additional shifts or research.

Credit earning will require faculty coordination

Some folks can do the internships through class just by setting aside hours