The Sustainable Campuses Initiative has as a main objective to create opportunities for knowledge exchange on Campus Sustainability between Dawson College and partner post-secondary institutions in Mexico. Student involvement in this initiative is key. Dawson students engage directly through participating in an institutional exchange which has been designed as an “internship”. Students spend a total of six weeks in Mexico carrying becoming involved in campus sustainability initiatives. During the 2017-2018 academic year, two cohorts of Dawson College students carried out an internship through the Sustainable Campuses Initiative.

The first cohort was a second year CRLT students, Petya Yordanova. She traveled to Mexico on February 2nd and returned March 18th,, 2018 For the first three weeks she did their internship at the Universidad Pedagógica del Estado de Morelos (UPN), Cuernavaca Campus. The main objective of her stay was to support ongoing sustainability projects. During the three weeks Petya visited all three UPN campuses giving a presentation on different Dawson College campuses that address environmental/sustainability issues. She presented on courses that she had attended at Dawson and shared the different pedagogical approaches used. This was shared with students and teachers at the three UPN campuses. It is important to point that that this is a teaching/pedagogical university and thus this particular topic was of much interest to them. For the SCI the internships act as an important means to share our institutional experiences and the student internships are important component of that. She was supervised by Jorge Dominguez, Academic Dean at the UPN. During her stay she got involved and learned about several institutional sustainability projects, in particular the building of a fish pond for friendship and a green wall. During the first three weeks she participated in a conference on environmental education and was also invited to give an interview at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM) radio Station. The student created a blog with weekly posts describing the activities she was involved in as well as her learning and experience beyond the academic and it is a testament to how the experience has impacted her life. See https://earthsteward2018.com

After three weeks at the UPN she continued her experience at the Preparatoria Comunitaria de Tres Marias, a community college part of the UAEM. For two weeks she volunteered every day to support sustainability projects there. She learned about the important role that culture and tradition can play in sustainability. In Tres Marias she engaged with younger students and learned about life in rural Mexico. She was supervised by Jorge Viana and the institution took her on local biodiversity explorations and involve her in a video project of local biodiversity. During the final week of her internship the student participated in the 4th International Forum for Campus Sustainability. She became part of a team of Dawson College students, teachers and staff that presented in the forum as well as participated in all of the activities.

A second set of interns traveled to Mexico from May 26 to July 8, 2018. The three interns were from different Dawson programs. It included Sophie Scattolin, first year student in the Environmental Science program, Abigail Lalonde from the Environmental Studies Profile, as well as Rachel Schleifer, second year student from general social science. The three students were chosen for this internships because of their proven engagement in environmental action. All three of them are part of Dawson’s Green Earth club and are also involved in environmental action in their communities.

The students began their internship at the UPN Cuernavaca campus, also supervised by Jorge Dominguez. They supported the campus’ sustainability projects as well as gave a presentation on different sustainability initiatives at Dawson. The host institution provided different opportunities for them to learn about sustainability from a local perspective including visiting an indigenous community and participating in indigenous clay workshop.

The last three weeks were spent at the UPEMOR. The interns were asked to support many of the ongoing projects of the CECAM, the UPEMOR’s sustainability office, and thus learnt through doing, about the campus’ composting, gardening and many other projects. They gave a presentation on several of Dawson College’s sustainability projects and were assigned responsibilities to head several projects during their stay. They were involved in reforestation efforts, environmental awareness raising, the aquatic peace garden and many others. They had an opportunity to see how a more technical, engineering school approaches sustainability. They also had the opportunity to live with host families of local students and thus have cultural experience. Their hosts were generous with their time and took the students on many cultural outings.

During the last week of their stay the interns also participated in a SCI gathering of all the institutional partners. This gathering had as an objective to both evaluate the impact of the project as well as brainstorm/dream a new stage. The gathering was a three-day event in a rural hacienda and it was designed to promote engagement and well being.

The students put together a blog that shares all their different activities, those linked to their internships and the more cultural ones as well.

Sustainability Campus Internship 2018