Hi! My name is Kaylyn Sinisgalli. I’m a third year Environmental Engineering student with a Spanish minor. Last spring, I was fortunate to be a part of the first student group to embark on the “Serve-Learn-Sustain in Spain” Georgia Tech Faculty-Lead Study Abroad Program. Choosing to step outside of my comfort zone and into Granada is a decision I will never regret.

I entered Tech as a freshman with a desire to be an engineer capable of mixing design with practicality, mixing machine with man. To combine these things as seamlessly as possible, I knew that I had to learn to communicate beyond barriers. I see language as one of the most prominent barriers to the travel of knowledge. To break the language barrier, I knew that I needed to study abroad. The question was no longer to study abroad, but where to go.

I’ve always had an interest in working in…


Marilyn Brown, a Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy Regent’s Professor, and the head of the Climate and Energy Policy Lab speaks with Michael Pearson about the implications of the replacement of the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE). Read the blog here.  

 


With course selection for the spring comes a slate of exciting SLS-affiliated courses! And in a special twist, we are also sharing the details of a brand new SLS- affiliated study abroad program. Read on and get excited to register!

 

SLS 3120 Foundations of Sustainable Systems, Beril Totkay, PhD, and Kim Cobb, PhD

Create sustainable communities for the 21st century! Beril Totkay and Kim Cobb are very excited to teach a key SLS class (SLS 3120, Foundations of Sustainable Systems) again in the spring! They designed this course to help students think about the big questions of our day: How can we accelerate progress towards a more sustainable world? How do we create sustainable systems for the 21st century? How do we advance sustainability at multiple scales, including a community, a company, a supply chain, a region, or an entire nation?

Since climate change is such a pressing issue for our times,…


Interested in hearing more from the Equity Champions? Come to the Net Positive Symposium on Tuesday, October 18th, where they will speak on how they have found solutions to making a living building in the hot, humid climate of Atlanta.  If you are a student, faculty, or staff at Georgia Tech affiliated with SLS, contact SLS at serve-learn-sustain@gatech.edu about scholarships to the conference.


My name is Janay Jones and I am 3rd year Industrial Design major with a minor in International Affairs. Along with being a Living Building Equity Champion, I am also a Georgia Tech Diversity Ambassador and a United Nations Academic Impact Millennium Fellow.  I am thankful for being extended the opportunity to attend the NAACP’s Centering Equity in the Sustainable Sector…


RCE Greater Atlanta will hold its official launch event this Wednesday, October 10th, from 6:30pm - 9:00pm, at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.  Please join us - tickets are still available!  Click here to register.  Serve-Learn-Sustain has a limited number of complimentary tickets for students - please email us for information.  Read more in a Saporta Report article published this week.  As part of RCE Greater Altanta, our RCE Youth Network is also in full swing and recently held a back-to-school event at the Atlanta Beltline.  Read an account of that event by Nathan Lindsey, Graduate Student, Emory…


Interested in social innovation or starting a social enterprise?  Not sure where to start? Read about two students' experiences attending The Center for Civic Innovation's Social Enterprise Boot Camp, and then check out the SLS Fall Buzz Course on Social Innovation for Sustainable Communities.  Registration Deadline: October 2nd.

This summer, the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain offered me the opportunity to attend a boot camp. Thankfully, this was not a physical training boot camp in the sweltering heat, but an air-conditioned boot camp offered by the Center for Civic Innovation, focusing on social innovation. Isabella Stubbs, an SLS summer intern, also participated in the workshop. Together, we spent a day learning the basics of creating an organization that successfully…


In the comfortable classroom at the Outdoor Activity Center in Oakland City, there are twenty- three “students” seated in a circle. We are participants in the TransFormation Alliance’s March 2018 Academy, focused on Equitable Transit-Oriented Development.  We are quite a mix: brown and white and black, twenty somethings to septuagenarians, native Atlantans to transplants.  On one wall is a map, and on another a timeline, sprawling several sheets of butcher paper, charting Atlanta from the 19th century to the present. At the instruction of our facilitator, Dwayne Patterson, all twenty-three of us push our pins into the map, indicating our home neighborhoods, and make sharpie-scrawled entries on the timeline.  In the moment, I felt self-conscious about my mark on both.  My home neighborhood is almost all white; long gentrified, it…


The Millennium Campus Network (MCN) is a global student network that works to make social impact in the name of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  This year, students will be focusing on improving quality education (SDG 4) and advancing sustainability on 30 campuses around the world.

This summer, 285 schools from around the world applied to be sponsored by the UN Millennium Fellowship.  Only 11% of the campuses are accepted, and within these campuses only a select group of fellows are chosen to represent their campus.  The 15 to 20 students chosen make up that campus’s cohort, and the Class of 2018 is the first to include a cohort of 18 fellows from the Georgia Institute of Technology.  The Georgia Tech cohort is working on a total of eight different projects focusing on equity, education, outreach, environmentalism, and energy efficiency. 

The MCN Fellowship now has over 5500 alumni from more…


The Leadership for Social Good Study Abroad Program offers students the opportunity to gain insight into global civil society, learn about the challenges of creating and leading effective and sustainable social enterprises, and make a positive impact by working closely with a non-profit organization in Budapest, Hungary. This program also fulfills the Learn and Engage components of SLS's new Innovating for Social Impact program.  

Below read Hannah Schafer's reflection from the program, which focuses on her experiences with "parks and recreation" while abroad.  Hannah…


Happy New Semester to All! We are excited to announce our Fall Event Series. This year at SLS, we’re embracing -- and exploring --  the call to “Think Global, Act Local.”  Within that broad theme, SLS’s focus this semester is Community Health. It is both our Linked Courses theme, as well as the guiding concept for the Event Series, so you’ll see several health-related events in our calendar.  In the list, we have included our own SLS events as well as those sponsored by our partners on and off campus. Along with Community Health, the Event Series engages SLS’s six other Priority Issue Areas: Social Innovation; Climate Change and Energy; Equitable Development; Water, Green Infrastructure, and Citizen Science; Civic Data; and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. 

We have a compelling line-up and can’t wait to see you, share ideas, and build momentum to Create Sustainable Communities…