2022 Award Recipients
Sustainability Organization
Winner: Eco Reps
Nominated by Fiona Reyes, Eco Reps supports the work of the Cal Poly Green Campus Team through educational programs and fosters community among students of a variety of educational backgrounds that are interested in environmental sustainability.
Eco Reps supports the Green Campus team during Sustainability Month, the Annual Conservation and Diversion Challenge, and Earth Week by creating and hosting sustainability education programs. Most frequently, these programs include an informative presentation on topics focused on living sustainably paired with an interactive activity such as a game. The Eco Reps club is really shaped by the members' interests and passions and allows for students to become leaders and advocates for the environment.Honorable Mention: Surfrider
Staff Sustainability Champion
Winner: Morgan Bing
Nominated by Kylee Singh for her work to revamp the Green Offices program. Morgan researched various other programs across the nation and then took the best parts she could find to make a Cal Poly certification. To perfect the program she even tested it in her office, the Animal Science department office, and made sure the program was SMART. Since the end of her internship, Morgan has continues to stay engaged in sustainability efforts and even decided to take on recertifying the animal science office again now that her and her co-workers have made some improvements. Morgan is a sustainability champ for our campus and we hope she will continue inspiring more people across campus!
Student Sustainability Champion
Winner: Lauren Londoño
Nominated by Max Callan, Lauren has been a leader in sustainability efforts both on campus and within the community. Since taking over the President position of the Surfrider club in June 2020, Lauren has engaged her club members in a variety of efforts from education and awareness on campus, running a beach cleanup series, overseen their leadership team of 13 individuals, managed a partnership with our San Luis Obispo Chapter’s Blue Water Task Force water quality monitoring program, and has run the club’s annual Make Waves Film Festival. Post-COVID, it was extremely challenging to rebuild a leadership team, since most members of core team had graduated or moved on from the club. In Fall quarter 2021, Lauren worked diligently to rebuild the club, recreating a new core team of 30 students. By the end of the quarter, the club was back up and running, and they were able to begin doing events and meetings again.
Lauren also serves on Surfrider’s national Student Club Leadership Council, which is comprised of 14 of our most accomplished student club leaders, and whose role is to help strengthen Surfrider’s engagement of the next generation of coastal defenders. Lauren is also a member of the Green Campus Team at Cal Poly, where she collaborates with five other team members along with Facilities, Energy, and Sustainability Department to help Cal Poly reach campus and CSU goals for sustainability. She helps lead Eco Reps, a student team dedicated to educating the community about sustainability through workshops, events, outreach, and Green Living Certifications. Lastly, Lauren has been the chair of Cal Poly Bee Campus Club and wrote a grant from the IRA Green Fund last school year to ensure that Cal Poly was a Pollinator friendly campus.Honorable Mention: Hope Springer
Faculty Sustainability Champion
Winner: Yiwen Chui
Nominated by Xiaowei Cai, Dr. Chiu’s specialty is highly related to the theories of sustainability sciences and practice of sustainability. She teaches “Environmental Life-cycle Analysis” and “Systems Thinking in Environmental Management”. In her classes, students learn the positive and negative feedbacks in a system pursuing sustainability. This is an urgent need for developing such competence to understand why often time we are shifting environmental problems rather than solving them. This course has a profound impact on understanding unexpected consequences associated with policies and actions originated with a good intention. Overall, unlike many qualitative courses discussing sustainability, Dr. Chiu’s teaching focuses on offering students real tools to derive quantitative baselines for initiating meaningful discussions on achieving sustainability goals.
Dr. Chiu also developed a study abroad program in Taiwan specifically for the learning and teaching of sustainability. This was the first Cal Poly international program that addresses sustainability issues in Cal Poly’s history. During the challenging time in COVID pandemic, she transformed “Systems Thinking in Environmental Management” into a collaborative online international learning (COIL) course by inviting faculty and students from Taiwan to solve real-world sustainability issues. This was also the first COIL course at Cal Poly focusing on sustainability. Dr. Chiu, with no doubt, is one of the few faculty who actually took advantage of the pandemic to successfully continue the international education in sustainability. These activities enable students to rethink sustainability from a much broader scope that can hardly be implemented in a normal class setting. Lastly, Dr. Chiu has been working with many faculty members to assess Cal Poly’s sustainability learning outcomes voluntarily. This part of effort has been published in multiple peer-review journal articles, which provides detailed insights to enhance our sustainability curriculum.Honorable Mentions: Jonathan Reich, Erin Pearse