Sustainability Solutions Lab
The Sustainability Solutions Lab (SSL) aims to provide students with paid experiential learning opportunities for sustainability in practice and cultivation of critical thinking and professional skills. Partnering with faculty, staff, and field experts, students work on sustainability-oriented projects for the Middlebury community, both on campus and across the globe.
SSL interns are given the opportunity to explore, reimagine, and implement action-based solutions, utilizing a lens of environmental justice to share Middlebury’s evolving sustainability journey.
Our History
The Sustainability Solutions Lab was founded in January 2017 and has connected over 175 paid student interns of varied backgrounds and majors with more than 40 environmental initiatives and projects around the Middlebury campus!
These projects have spanned topics from sustainable architecture to electric vehicle feasibility and deployment to rewilding and beyond. SSL strives to make sustainability and environmental action relevant across Middlebury campus, C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, and in partnership with Middlebury town.
Our Current Projects
SSL interns have been instrumental in creating and evolving initiatives like Energy2028, Global Partnerships for Sustainability, and many others. Check out this summer’s projects:
Sustainability Communications
Communications interns work on creating engaging content to help promote sustainability initiatives and programs around Middlebury and beyond, including Energy2028, Planet Forward, SSL project outreach, and awareness campaigns. These interns work on social media production and management, the FECH newsletter, and graphic design.
Current Interns: Charlotte Adelman and Max Tankersley
Advisor: Tara Federoff, Assistant Director of Communications and Outreach
Living Building Challenge
The interns working on the Living Building Challenge (LBC) project work closely with facilities and architectural studies on campus with the goal of implementing Living Building Challenge principles at Middlebury. This includes research and collaboration in the design of the new Marna O. Davis art museum and exploration of other sustainable design projects on campus.
Current interns: Emma Ackerman, Israel Ostos, and Sarah Troup-Galligan
Advisors: Sam Ostrow, Professor of Architecture and Mike Moser, Associate Vice President for Operations
Campus Lands
The campus lands intern works on a variety of lands-based projects, including updating our campus tree map, rewilding, and various bird and bug surveys. This intern walks the grounds identifying, measuring, and doing health assessments on Middlebury’s trees while using GIS to collect and map data (ability to hug over 2400 individual trees required).
Current intern: Elliot Dufeu
Advisor: Tim Parsons, Campus Horticulturist
Electric Vehicle Feasibility Study
The EV feasibility intern researches basic EV information for use by the college and the town of Middlebury. The intern surveys the current fleets, status of EV adoption on Middlebury College campus and town, and works closely with the Town of Middlebury Energy Committee to ensure that information is easily accessible and translatable between campus and town contexts.
Current Intern: John Masiello
Advisors: Mike Roy, Head of the Middlebury Town Energy Committee and Alice White, Professor Emerita, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University
Campus Food Web
The Campus Food Web intern works to research food-related initiatives, past and present, at Middlebury and beyond, to assess and coordinate sustainability efforts about food, with the creation of progressive narrative reflections as the final product. In conjunction with Food Studies faculty affiliates, past and present, ENVS faculty, colleagues in Dining Services, and food-related student organizations, the intern will identify, map, and outline the Food Web in our community.
Current intern: Sarah LaFond
Advisor: Megan Brakeley, Associate Director of the Knoll
Past Projects
The composition of SSL internship opportunities includes a mixture of long-term and one-off projects. To explore what past SSL interns have worked on, click here!
How to Apply
Applications for summer projects typically open in early March, with academic year projects hired depending upon needs. Applications are announced through the SEA newsletter, on the SSL webpage, and through social media.
Keep an eye on the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest newsletter/Instagram or contact Tara Federoff, Asst. Director of Communications and Outreach at tfederoff@middlebury.edu for more information!