Managing and Mentoring

For many green living program (GLP) reps, being an active peer environmental educator will be a new experience. Some may not be familiar with issues like global climate change or renewable energy. Even the reps who are very knowledgeable about environmental issues may not be aware of the fine details, especially those related to the local area. For example, what happens to a can when it is placed in a campus recycling bin? How is the heat for campus buildings produced?

At the same time reps are educating their campus peers about environmental issues, they too will learn and grow. Most likely, they will feel more informed because of the GLP campaigns they help run. They will pick up new facts, investigate systems and come to better understand the scope and complexity of your campus' infrastructure and the world's sustainability problems.

Because the experience of being a rep is both one in which you educate and one in which you are educated, the program requires a delicate balance of management and mentorship.

Managing

To ensure a successful GLP, it will be necessary to give concrete tasks and information to the student employees. Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) reps have said the best campaigns had clear expectations and were broken into relatively small, easy tasks. The more plentiful the guidance and clear the expectations, the more successful the students felt afterward. With inadequate guidance or confusing expectations, the reps' four hours per week can slip by leaving the students feeling they have not accomplished anything concrete.

Reps have expressed a preference for very clear, easy-to-follow tasks. Whether you map out that they should table for two hours about heating efficiency or research dishware loss in their dining hall, be clear about how they should approach each task. For example, if they are researching something in their residence halls, tell them:

  • who they should talk to;
  • who they should receive permission from;
  • who they should question about data;
  • what their questions should be.

When you assign projects, the students must have the key information so they feel empowered. For example, if they are going to be talking about the importance of shutting off computers at night, then give them facts and figures about the energy it takes to run a computer 24 hours per day, seven days per week. If they are going to be advocating recycling, give them information about what happens to recyclables and clearly spell out and debunk common myths. Also consider bringing them on a field trip to the recycling plant your school uses to let them see the process firsthand.

Keep in mind that sometimes administrative staff may not want to share information for fear that students will misuse or misrepresent the meaning of the information. It will be your job to make sure the reps receive enough information to do their job properly, while also making sure administrative staff are comfortable giving data to the reps.

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Mentoring

The GLP coordinator and captains will be mentors, in some capacity, to the reps. The reps will look to them as experienced environmental leaders who have a fuller view of the environmental history of the campus and beyond. It is the role of the coordinator and captains to ensure the reps are having meaningful, professional and personal capacity-building experiences. Similarly, the coordinator should ensure the captains are having the same valuable experiences in their leadership positions. Finally, the manager of the GLP coordinator—probably a member of the host department or steering group—ensures that the coordinator:

  • is managing the captains and reps appropriately;
  • has enough advice and guidance;
  • is having a positive experience;
  • is developing in his or her professional life;
  • is not over-worked;
  • is generally feeling supported.

There is a clear distinction between a mentor who takes on an informational role versus a power role. As a GLP coordinator or captain, it is your role to provide information and guidance to the reps. An informational, mentoring role will be a much more effective managerial style than a power-driven approach. You will be learning in the process along with your reps because they will have as much to bring to the table as anyone else.

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Orientation, Midyear Training and Feedback

Mentoring reps will be a full-year process that begins with orientation, continues with midyear training and concludes with personal feedback at the end of school. Personal feedback will be one of the most important steps you take to help mentor your captains and reps. Be ready to respond via email to their checklists. If they do not get a response, they will feel as though their recorded thoughts are not being read or addressed. The captains and coordinator can share the task of responding to rep checklists. Positive encouragement and reinforcement will help strengthen the reps’ confidence in their work.

Sending personal emails periodically to individual reps can also help bolster their confidence. With a team of reps, especially one that meets once every two weeks, individuals can easily begin to feel as though they are not getting personal attention. Similarly, loneliness can set in because in the HGCI model only one rep is assigned to each dormitory. To address this, you could consider Yale’s STEP model, in which two students work in each residence. If you do not have the funds or desire to assign two students to each residence, then the GLP coordinator and captains could have regular, one-on-one conversations with each rep via email, phone or in-person meetings to ensure they are getting enough attention.

If a rep misses a meeting or begins to feel they are getting behind in their work for other reasons, consider meeting personally with him or her over a meal. At the HGCI, we have found that reps often feel overwhelmed with schoolwork. If they get behind on their GLP work, then they can begin to feel guilty and further overwhelmed, and it takes them longer to catch up with tasks. Meeting with them and asking what the coordinator and captains can do to help has proven very useful in getting them back on track.

We have also run midyear feedback sessions, in which the captains meet one-on-one with the reps for 10-15 minutes each, asking them how the year is going, giving them encouraging feedback about their work and evaluating together what can be done to improve the program next semester.

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Seeing the Full Person within Your Reps

Reps are, after all, college students, all of whom are going through a major life change—either by being on-campus and away from their parents for the first time, taking on the largest and hardest academic projects they have ever had, or potentially trying to secure post-graduation jobs and getting a glimpse of future “real world” responsibilities. This does not mean it falls to you, as their supervisor, to be the only mentor or to advise them on all aspects of their lives; however, you will most likely take on a mentor role for the students. You can add positively to their lives on a professional and personal level through your mentorship. In the end, you may find that you have developed friendships with these fellow environmental activists, which could potentially lead to a lifetime of continued mutual inspiration.

It is important to continue developing the leadership capacity of your reps. Here are just a few ways to do this:

  • coordinator-led training sessions
  • peer-to-peer presentations
  • guest speakers, such as steering group members or other experts, at GLP meetings

Remember that continued mentorship will help reps grow as leaders, professionals and people.

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Other Sources of Mentoring and Support

Consider seeking other mentoring resources for reps, if necessary. For example, consider having your campus’ equivalent of the Bureau of Study Counsel run a time management session for reps or the health and wellness office run a stress management session. While it is not necessary, connecting your students with campus resources that can help them prosper will improve their GLP work and promote their development as a person and lifelong contributor to environmental sustainability. You may want to include these campus resources in your orientation or midyear training. You can also consider going to the GLP steering group or other resources to provide mentoring for the reps. For example, contacts that students make elsewhere on campus, at other schools or at regional conferences can serve as mentors.

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