Sustainable Impact Academy connects students, faculty, staff, and community leaders

Katy Schurtz knew her course load for the spring semester long before the first day of classes, but when her advisor emailed her about a new pilot course on sustainability being available, she decided to add it to her schedule at the last minute.

“She gave me the class description, and I looked at the list of all the professors who were supporting it and a lot of them were in my college,” Schurtz said. “Several of them I had already taken a class with or was taking this past semester. Many of them I had kind of heard of and their topic of interest was something different, but also new and engaging to me.

“So I thought it would be a good way to dip my toe into all these different specialties and become more familiar with, at least at a basic level, a bunch of different topics.”

Schurtz, a rising junior from Arlington who is pursuing a degree in environmental conservation and society, and four other students represented the first cohort in the Sustainable Impact Academy, a new credit-bearing program within the College of Natural Resources and Environment. Taught by professors and staff from diverse disciplines across the university, it uses the Blacksburg campus as a classroom and brings collaborative problem-solving teams together to tackle everyday sustainability challenges.

“We designed the academy to build on the College of Natural Resources and Environment’s extensive record of sustainability scholarship and partnerships across campus to offer hands-on, career-ready experiences,” said Kiara Winans, collegiate assistant professor within the college’s Department of Sustainable Biomaterials, who heads the program. “We’re building on these relationships and opportunities to support students in their learning paths toward successful careers and global citizenship.

“Our partnerships with campus partners, community organizations, and industry, will guide the academy’s engagement with real‑world sustainability challenges, broaden the university’s impact, and position the program as a model for sustainability workforce development.”

Campus as a classroom

The Sustainable Impact Academy differs from the traditional course in that it uses a “campus as a classroom” approach. Students begin by building a scientific foundation and developing analytical skills through short 20-minute pre-class videos. In class sessions, they combine reflective discussions of the material with focused, problem-based work.  

Thirteen professors from the College of Natural Resources and Environment developed short online lectures for the spring cohort, covering topics such as biomaterials, nutrient cycles, circularity, sustainable packaging, the built environment, urban ecology, and social science — demonstrating the diverse perspectives and expertise within the field of sustainability.

Under the guidance of social scientists Marc Stern, Bruce Hull, Tim Baird, Eranga Galappaththi, and Michael Sorice, students explored concepts such as common-pool resources, indigeneity, positionality, and trust ecology while learning strategies for working across differences.

Students also collaborated with faculty from the College of Engineering on green technology and innovation in water systems, faculty from the Pamplin College of Business on sustainable business, and staff from the Virginia Tech’s Energy Management and Sustainability teams.

Dirk Buengel, associate professor of practice within Pamplin, gave one of the lectures. Buengel played a large role in developing the first comprehensive business sustainability course and the business sustainability minor at the university.

“When I was looking for other courses for the sustainability minor, I knew it shouldn’t be only business courses,” Buengel said. “It should be interdisciplinary across colleges, and I found some good courses that Kiara’s department was offering. So I reached out to her and she was agreeable, and then she said, ‘Look, it would be cool to have the business perspective integrated into the Sustainable Impact Academy versus only the scientific and environment perspective.’

“So this is interdisciplinary. It’s science. It’s engineering. Business is part of it. Stakeholder engagement is super important. Success stories of student placement, making a tangible difference in practical sustainability projects, and corporate sustainability partnerships are critical and capture the essence of what we are trying to accomplish.”

Experiential learning

In addition to offering an interdisciplinary perspective on sustainability, the course’s format allowed students to step out of the classroom and find a solution to a problem-based learning experience. Specifically, the group of students – a collection of sophomores, juniors, and seniors – spent part of their time in the course using real-world data to analyze water consumption and energy use in Patton Hall, the home of the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an academic building along the Drillfield that was built in the 1920s.

The student-led analysis of Patton Hall’s water and energy use, conducted in partnership with the Office of Energy Management and Office of Sustainability, culminated in a Green RFP proposal and presentation. Steve Durfee, assistant director for the Office of Energy Management, provided real-world water use and energy data, functionally equivalent, more efficient upgrades to fixtures, and training in calculating the payback period. Students analyzed the data, assessing potential benefits from the upgrades in terms of cost savings and payback period, including a 20 percent contingency. They also used nearby Holden Hall as an example for potential upgrades to existing fixtures.

“We really looked at three things,” Schurtz said. “We were looking at faucets, toilets, and lab sinks. The lab sinks were part of it, just trying to make sure that they had pedals so that if you have contaminated hands, you’re not just leaving the water running. I think that was the biggest water saver.

“We did use the fixtures in Holden Hall, which is one of the newer buildings [renovated and expanded in 2022], as our standard. It was just cool to go in person and see the difference between the two buildings and how to make the older building have a little bit more efficiency with water conservation and some energy efficiency.”

At the academy’s conclusion, students put together a final presentation on what they learned and their recommendations.

“There was a good integration of business perspectives,” Buengel said. “That was an important point. What they recommended will reduce costs and is a positive for the environment, and I thought it was important to translate all the theoretical input into something that was pragmatic, hands on, and hopefully Virginia Tech will implement it. I thought that was a cool approach.”

A Green Request for Proposal

In addition to giving a final presentation, the students also put together a Green RFP, or request for proposal, through the Office of Sustainability and the Division of Finance.

Each year, the Office of Sustainability seeks student proposals for campus sustainability projects through its Green RFP Program. The program allows students to submit proposals for sustainability ideas that they would like to see implemented and requires students to state what the problem is, a clear budget, funding sources, and any potential cost savings. Additionally, Green RFP proposal guidelines require students to get approval from a university official from the department that will receive the project.

Once initial requirements are met, subject matter experts review and choose proposals to go to Virginia Tech’s Climate Action, Sustainability, and Energy Committee. The committee recommends a priority list of proposals to the Office of Budget and Finance Review Committee for final approval. These projects are all chosen to enhance Virginia Tech’s pursuit of environmental, social, and financial sustainability.

The students divided each part of the Green RFP, but won’t find out if it will be accepted and implemented until next spring. According to Winans, future cohorts will tackle different challenges —such as carbon management or decarbonization strategies and circular resource management —and will produce proposals for implementing recommendations.

Even if their project doesn’t get accepted, the students learned valuable soft skills to help them in the future.

“Through the academy, the spring cohort has further developed critical social science skills by effectively working collaboratively with teammates, faculty, and staff mentors to engage in and manage a real-world sustainability challenge, from concept through concrete recommendations,” Winans said. “They have also strengthened their ability to integrate scientific, technical, and business perspectives. Additionally, they have refined their skills in delivering professional presentations and reports that translate complex technical findings into actionable recommendations for decision‑makers.”

The program's future

Winans, Buengel, and others aspire to embed the Sustainable Impact Academy (SIA) permanently at Virginia Tech in some capacity. That requires collaborative efforts among faculty experts, university administrators, and industry partners who confront sustainability challenges every day. It means marketing its success to both internal and external stakeholders, and of course, it also means securing long-term funding, never an easy feat.

But the academy, at the least, served as a prep course for those who may become future environmental scientists, urban planners, managers, policy analysts, and supply‑chain or operations specialists.

And the potential for growth is there.

“Maybe we have a team of student consultants who eventually offer pro bono sustainability consulting work,” Buengel said. “Or maybe it’s not pro bono, it’s paid for. Maybe we have corporate partnerships, where we place them for internships on the science side and on the business side. … My hope would be that people think of SIA as, ‘Hey, that’s one of the better-known centers of Virginia Tech with significant external impacts and external partnerships.’”

Schurtz isn’t sure what career path she wants to take, but she credited the course with opening her mind to any number of possibilities.

“I’m just interested in collaborating and trying to figure out the best-case scenario,” she said. “I’m interested in trying to change people’s minds and shift sustainability away from being seen as a sacrifice and more so as an opportunity to have better alternatives in the future where the environmental, the social and economic can kind of work in conjunction with each other.

“I don’t really know what that looks like as a job, but this was an experience that stimulated something new. It opened my mind in new ways, and that’s something throughout my career that I want to continue to do, keep learning and learn different perspectives along the way.”