Emboldened by a proactive student body, Oxy doubles down on its commitment to a more sustainable campus
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Zoe Bush ’26 enjoys her role as a chicken tender at Occidental’s FEAST Garden, the student-run organic garden just south of the UEPI House on Campus Road. “A couple of times a week I’ll go in and check on the chickens—make sure they have food and water, see if they laid any eggs, and just cuddle them and make sure they’re happy,” says Bush, an urban and environmental policy major from Culver City.
Her affection for Oxy’s four-toed feathered friends—a plucky flock with names such as Jelly, Dijon, Misty, and Marshmallow—dovetails with her love for the natural world. “It’s inherent to who I am,” she explains. “And when I learned that it’s threatened by climate change, I knew I had to find a way to fight this. It’s important that everyone gets involved … and that can start right here at Occidental.”
Since its creation in 2009, the FEAST Garden has come to embody Occidental’s commitment to sustainability, along with the 1-megawatt solar array (which has generated nearly 12 percent of the College’s electricity annually since “first light” in 2013), various recycling and composting programs, and a host of alternate-transportation initiatives.
In the last 12 months alone, a number of high-visibility projects across campus have accelerated Oxy’s sustainability efforts. Last November, around 80 volunteers—including students, staff, faculty, and families—harvested 500 pounds of olives from the century-old grove near Thorne and Booth halls, which were pressed and collected into 170 bottles of olive oil. At 1541 Campus Road, the lawn outside the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute was replaced with native plants this spring. In May, nearly 9,000 pounds of goods (including 5,500 pounds of clothing) were collected for redistribution during the College’s first-ever Green Move Out.
And on a flat grassy space behind the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center, Oxy students and community members came together last December to plant a microforest with 29 varieties of native trees, shrubs, and perennials that will eventually “do all of the things that biodiversity does to sustain an ecosystem,” says Gretchen North, the John W. McMenamin Chair in Biology, who is overseeing the project.
This new wave of activity coincides with the resurrection (after a four-year absence) of the College’s Office of Sustainability, which leads comprehensive sustainability planning, amplifies opportunities for student and community engagement around sustainability, and supports sustainable operations with the overarching goal of creating a healthier, more resilient ecosystem on the campus and beyond.
“I was that child that when people would ask, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ I would say, ‘I want to be an environmentalist,’” says Alison Linder, who joined the College to lead the Office of Sustainability last October. As a Ph.D. student in urban planning at USC, Linder’s dissertation focused on corporate environmental responsibility. Prior to coming to Oxy, she worked at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) doing transportation and land use planning.
“When I saw this job opportunity, I was really excited about it because it was a way to return to a more holistic perspective of what an institution can do to improve the environment,” Linder says. She and assistant sustainability coordinator Isa Merel ’23, an urban and environmental major who started the Sustainable Oxy Citizens Club (SOCC) as a student, are fostering the College’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and possibly sooner—a timeline that will be explored following then-President Harry J. Elam, Jr.’s signing of the Second Nature Climate Commitment in January.
Implementing a comprehensive Climate Action and Resilience Plan within four years of signing the commitment—with greenhouse gas reduction targets based on data being compiled by the Office of Sustainability—will help address the “Sustainability Lens” component of the Occidental Promise, the College’s strategic plan. In joining the Second Nature Climate Commitment—becoming the 384th international signatory to do so—Occidental can learn from and contribute to experience from other schools in this area, Linder notes.
Since his arrival on campus in July, President Tom Stritikus has reiterated Oxy’s commitment to stepping up its sustainability game. “Occidental College has a vital role to play in fighting climate change,” he says. “By taking action now, we can protect our campus and ensure the health of future generations.” As Associate Professor of Economics Bevin Ashenmiller sees it, “The Climate Action and Resilience Plan will be really valuable to us because it will help us to highlight what we’re already doing and then to think about where the gaps are.”
Bush, who spoke on behalf of the student body at the signing as a member of the President’s Sustainability Advisory Committee, is encouraged by the progress she’s seeing across campus, “but I also want to make sure that we're all held accountable,” she adds. “I’m excited to see what Occidental can do with this new commitment—it gives me hope for the future.”
After 20-plus years of conservation efforts focused mostly on water and energy usage, sustainability took a big step forward at Occidental only a decade ago. Buoyed by the successful launch of the solar array—which Professor of Physics Daniel Snowden-Ifft expects to fully pay for itself by 2028—the Occidental Board of Trustees created a $3.5 million Green Revolving Fund in 2014 (part of the College’s permanent endowment) to invest in energy and water efficiency upgrades, renewable energy, and other cost-saving sustainability projects that reduce Oxy’s environmental impact.
Emma Sorrell ’13, an urban and environmental policy major, was named sustainability coordinator soon after graduating from Oxy—the first full-time hire in that role. She left the College in January 2015 and was succeeded by Jenny Low, who came to Oxy from a similar role at UC Riverside. (Sustainability was the academic theme for the College during the 2015-16 academic year, as an Occidental magazine cover story detailed.)
Following the departure of Low in August 2019, Ashenmiller assumed the additional role of faculty director of sustainability, a position she maintains today. Initially, she says, “The goal was just to make sure that we didn’t lose things that we had added and try to keep track of things that we were working on.”
Upon returning to campus in the wake of COVID, “It was really challenging for a lot of the sustainability projects that we had on campus, dealing with things like composting and reusing materials,” she continues. “Having the campus empty for a year meant that we sort of lost all of our momentum and leadership in those areas. When the students came back, it was hard that first year managing the that we were producing.”
That setback may have been a catalyst for change because the campus community took notice. In May 2022, President Elam created the Occidental College Climate Resilience and Equity Task Force (OCCRE), a group of trustees, faculty, administrators, and students who convened to advise the president on climate action, with Ashenmiller and Bhavna Shamasunder, associate professor of urban and environmental policy, as co-chairs. OCCRE unanimously recommended three things: reinstating the Office of Sustainability with two permanent positions, signing the Second Nature Climate Commitment, and establishing governance around the development of a Climate Action Plan. Occidental followed through with all three, and OCCRE has since been renamed the President Sustainability Advisory Committee (PSAC), which continues to meet to guide the development of a Climate Action Plan and monitor the College's progress.
Even before the revival of the Office of Sustainability, a major sustainability milestone occurred last August, when Campus Dining made the shift to an all-reusable takeout container program in the Marketplace. In its first year of usage, the reusable, re-washable, and eventually recyclable eco-clamshell has kept nearly 55,000 single-use to-go boxes out of landfills, according to Erik Russell, Oxy’s assistant vice president of hospitality and auxiliary services.
In response to that post-pandemic pileup of discarded containers, “Some of our students got really invested in sustainability, and that led to the eco-clamshell program, which has been a huge change,” Ashenmiller says. She lauds the persistence of Merel, who spent three years with Campus Dining as lead intern for sustainability research and implementation; former Sustainability Fund president Sarah Cook ’24, a media arts and culture major from Bala Cynwyd, Pa.; and Jakob Barton ’23, an economics major from Winchester, Mass., in bringing about the change.
The success of the eco-clamshell program (which was first piloted by Sorrell as the Campus Dining sustainability intern more than a decade ago) will aid Occidental in reducing its carbon footprint, which is a key component of the Second Nature Climate Commitment. To calculate Oxy’s carbon footprint, for instance, the College uses a carbon and nitrogen-accounting platform developed by the University of New Hampshire called for short. It's doing all the calculating for us for the most part,” Merel says. “We just have to configure the data so that it is compatible with the reporting platform.”
The challenge has been identifying where that data lives on campus—from the Business Office to Facilities to Campus Dining—and then figuring out the best way to collect it. Assisting in that task was Katie Callahan ’24, who conducted an emissions inventory for Occidental for her senior comps, which she presented in April. In gathering the data, “I gained valuable insight into how the College can move forward with climate planning,” Callahan writes in her comps. “As a small residential school that is research-intensive, how Occidental chooses to reduce its carbon footprint can inform other institutions with shared qualities on how to do the same.”
Among her recommendations: Transition away from natural gas in heating buildings and fueling appliances; replace the synthetic fertilizer used on campus with organic fertilizer {“Better yet, non-athletic grass could be transformed into native landscaping that would never require fertilizer”); and expand investment in renewable energy development to offset the energy Occidental consumes. Such data-driven recommendations mirror the format of the Climate Action and Resilience Plan under development—a targeted series of steps toward carbon neutrality.
Growing up in Queens, N.Y., Callahan was alerted to the perils of climate change by her marine biologist grandfather, riding alongside him in his truck on environmental quality inspections when she was about 10. “He was very active in different protests, such as water rights on Long Island,” Callahan says. “I remember sitting on the floor of his house during summertime, drawing protest signs with him. That was very influential on me.”
After taking Environment and Society (UEP 101) her sophomore year, Callahan joined the ASOC Sustainability Fund (SusFund for short), the 12-member student government branch founded in 2007 with the mission of funding projects and leading initiatives to make Occidental “a more sustainable and environmentally just community.” She was treasurer of the organization as a senior, overseeing the allocation of nearly $27,000 in student fees to support the sustainability activities of a dozen individual groups and clubs.
SusFund's largest funding expenditures supported wages for officers of OSCAR, the student-run compost group; event expenses for Sunrise Movement at Occidental, a climate justice political action group; farmers market vouchers for SOCC outings; and a pair of brunches staged by FEAST (lovingly known as “FEAST Feasts”). In addition to underwriting Earth Month programming, SusFund also facilitated the launch of Fleagle Rock, an on-campus flea market led by Callahan and Cook.
In another role—as an Education in Action facilitator with the Center for Community Based Learning—Callahan assisted North on community outreach for the microforest planting project last fall. The initial idea was brought to North by Ashenmiller, who through her work with greening campus schoolyards got to know a team that had created what is reportedly the first native microforest of its kind in California—a 900-square-foot space in Griffith Park modeled after the Miyawaki method of afforestation that was completed in August 2021.
Japanese ecologist Akira Miyawaki originally conceived of the microforest in the early 1970s, in response to the rampant air pollution in Tokyo. “His idea was to cram a lot of plants together and see what they could do to clean the air, but it has to be a diverse group of plants that is native to the area,” North explains. “And the importance of that is they bring with them all of the birds, insects, fungi, and everything else that is native to the area as well. A microforest can do all of the things that biodiversity does to sustain an ecosystem.”
The idea had kicked around for several years before taking root last fall, when students in North's Plant Form and Function class rallied around the microforest concept to the point that they all but insisted on breaking ground before the end of the semester on a piece of ground that had gone largely untended following statewide water restrictions imposed in November 2021.
Working in conjunction with Lola Trafecanty, Occidental’s grounds manager, “We did it on the cheap,” North says. “We had a lot of plants that my students had started from acorn and seed, and we were able to include them. That became the backbone of the woody species.” FEAST contributed some plants as well, and North used some money allocated for the class to purchase tools “that will serve the plant biologists in this office for a long time,” she adds.
“I didn’t know what a microforest was until we learned about it in Dr. North’s class, and I liked the idea of creating something that would have a positive impact beyond our time at Oxy,” says Olivia Plumb ’26, a biology major from Eugene, Ore. “I'm really interested to see how it can be used for community education about biodiversity and urban green spaces.”
Graham Luethe ’26, an urban environmental policy major (with a biology minor) from Seahurst, Wash., took the lead in preparing the ground for planting. Of the 141 shrubs and trees planted last December, “About 95 percent of them have lived and look very good,” Luethe says. A subsequent scattering of California poppy seeds bloomed during the spring, and a planting of native milkweed attracted a flutter of monarch butterflies, who deposited their eggs on the plants.
After growing up in the Pacific Northwest, moving to Los Angeles for college “was kind of disorienting,” Luethe says. “The first time that I really felt connected to the L.A. area was doing native restoration events on Fiji Hill. Being able to walk up Fiji and check on the plants that I had planted really made me appreciate being here a lot more. From that, I became really interested in Southern California ecology.”
“Los Angeles is in the middle of the California Floristic Province, which is one of the biodiversity hotspots in all of America,” notes Casey Wisely ’24, a biology major from the San Fernando Valley, who was working on campus this summer: “Almost all of that biodiversity, especially in Los Angeles, is threatened by urbanization and land use change. Little things like the microforest create important waystations for the massive biodiversity that we have here.”
Over time, the project has the potential to sequester enough carbon to offset the equivalent of 650 miles driven in an average car. “We can't delude ourselves into thinking that we’re making a measurable effect on Los Angeles air pollution,” North says. “But it's a model that can be used to inspire others. The Occidental campus has been called an oasis of sorts, and with the microforest, it will be even more so.”
In addition to participating in the microforest project, Luethe was instrumental to the planning and implementation of the native restoration project at the UEPI House at 1541 Campus Road. The project grew out of a conversation he had with Sharon Cech, an adjunct professor and UEPI program director, “about there being a lawn in front of the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, which is kind of ironic,” he recalls.
With Cech’s encouragement, Luethe spent a semester of independent study researching how to replace the lawn with native plants. Guided by the Office of Sustainability, he submitted a landscaping plan to the LADWP turf replacement rebate program, “and we were awarded $13,500,” he says. This past spring, the project was incorporated into a two-credit UEP class taught by UEPI program directors Cech and Rosa Romero. (Lending their expertise to the project were the Urban Homestead, a regenerative farming organization in Pasadena, and native landscape designer Lake Sharp ’05.)
“I was a teaching assistant for the class, and every week we worked on different projects involved in the restoration.” says Luethe, who is currently president of the ASOC Sustainability Fund. “At the UEPI House, we dug really large trenches called swales to capture rainfall,” he adds. “Between that and putting in rocks and mulching everything, the initial effort is pretty high. But once the plants are established after the first year, there's really no work at all other than some weeding and occasional watering.”
Whether it’s the UEPI House or the microforest, one challenge on campus is managing people’s expectations of what a landscape should look like. “Alumni may remember a green campus with grass that they can roll in,” North says. “That's an idea that was formed when the climate was different. We're just going to have to adapt rather quickly. People must be willing to live with a landscape that’s a bit unkempt and often kind of brown, but that’s compensated by the fact that it is independent and sustaining.”
These days, sustainability is a constant topic of discussion in the classroom. T
Working with the Office of Sustainability and Oxy Ecossentials president Julianne Yotov ’25, a computer science and physics double major from Brooklyn, “We’ll be putting together a long-term proposal for how the store could operate in the future,” Ashenmiller says. “Right now, we have a space [the Side Track concessions stand outside of Jack Kemp Stadium] and things to sell, but we need to figure out how to make the store financially sustainable. Ideally, by the end of the school year we’ll have that proposal.”
At a kickoff meeting last spring, more than a dozen student leaders and Oxy administrators turned out to underscore the priorities for Earth Month, which for years has been the centerpiece of sustainability at Oxy. “A goal I have for our office is to facilitate behavioral change and activism not just during Earth Month, but year-round,” Linder says.
From senior comps and speaker series to bird walks and book talks, more than 30 Earth Month activities—the majority of them run by students—took place in April. A personal highlight for Linder was an all-staff meeting where she and Merel gave a progress report on their efforts. “One of my priorities is to let everyone on campus know that sustainability affects them in one way or another,” Linder says. “We all have a role to play in making Occidental a super sustainable and resilient campus.”
A favorite activity for Merel was a three-part film fest that culminated with the premiere screening of The Big Raise, a 40-minute documentary about a permaculture farm in France by filmmaker , a media arts and culture major and Obama Scholar. Following the screening, “FEAST students were asking Angelina questions about permaculture, while the Womxn of Cinema and Television Club were asking questions about the filmmaking process and how to communicate climate to the masses,” Merel says. (Lee is currently in postproduction on her first feature-length documentary, Making a Mini-Forest, which she filmed in five countries.)
“So much has happened since Oxy signed the climate pledge in January,” Linder says. “Sustainability is often thought of as the three E’s—environment, economy, and equity, forming what we often call the triple bottom line. Determining and implementing actions that allow for wins across all three dimensions is what Occidental is working toward.”
Wherever the process leads, getting student buy-in will be essential to making any climate action plan a reality. “Having students engaged in the process is going to push this beyond just words on a page,” Merel says.
Circling back to Bush, the Oxy junior wants to create awareness about the many sustainability initiatives on campus and encourage more of her peers to get involved. “Every project I hear about, I want to jump in on and help out, but I need to learn that I can only take on so much,” she says. “I’m looking forward to coming back in 10 years and seeing how the campus has changed, and knowing I was a part of that.”
