Thirteen Living and Learning Villages spread across campus house 30 percent of N.C. State students. The newest of these is the EcoVillage, which creates an interdisciplinary experience that prepares students for lasting sustainable living. 

According to the University Housing website, students who live in the village “will go beyond the classroom to lead, serve, create, problem-solve and engage in complex issues facing the national and global energy and environmental challenges of society to advance sustainability.”

Home to 65 students, the EcoVillage is the work of a collaboration between University Housing, the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, Environmental Science Academic Program and all the academic colleges.

 Meghan Lobsinger, director of the EcoVillage, and Bryan Botts, assistant director of University Housing, have been working closely with the development of the idea of the village. 

“The idea for the EcoVillage is actually before our time,” Botts said. “I think there was a vision for an opportunity for students to come together in relation to sustainability for a while.” 

Botts said faculty members came together to ask what they could do to get students interested in the environment, energy and sustainability. 

“I think it has been a plan in the making for a while and this was the right time to do it,” Botts said.

The EcoVillage is located in Bragaw Residence Hall in a newly renovated suite. Botts said Bragaw was ideal because of its central location and openness to a new Living and Learning Village.

“[Bragaw] naturally ties into where the EcoVillage students live,” Botts said. “This way the mentors have the opportunity to connect students as well as opening an office somewhere else on campus that’s not going to be as beneficial to the students.”

In the EcoVillage’s first few months there have been several events in which the students can be involved.

“We’ve had quite a few big group events and we’ve had several small events,” Lobsinger said. “We had a lunch for freshmen who moved in early and also we had worked with University Recreation for some team building exercises.” 

According to Botts the EcoVillage collaborates with the Resident Advisors in Bragaw to create events. 

“They create sort of a blended social opportunity that has some relation between sustainability and environmental energy but it’s an opportunity for the students to come together and just really talk about whatever their interests are,” Botts said.

Lobsinger described several service work project the EcoVillage has been involved in from helping at the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle farm to helping clean a trail in the mountains. 

“We’re hoping to do a little more in the way of programming for sustainability, energy and climate once we get our programming developed next semester,” Lobsinger said. “So hopefully there will be some field trips.”

According to Botts, all members of the EcoVillage will live in Bragaw for convenience and for consistency.

“The idea of the village is to give students who have similar interests the opportunity to live together and be engaged in a topic that will help them become more active in the University,” Botts said. “We have the opportunity for the EcoVillage to take students from every college on our campus and bring them together to create an inter-disciplinary learning environment. They’re looking at everything through the lens of sustainability.”

The EcoVillage will have a booth at the America Recycles fair in the Brickyard in November to answer questions that students may have or discuss what they need to do to join the village.

Botts described that the EcoVillage is taking steps to ensure that the students have a say in their village. 

“One of the exciting things that Meghan [Lobsinger] is doing is taking the time to reach out to the EcoVillage students to figure out what it is that they might want to do in the future in addition to what we have planned,” Botts said. 

Botts said it’s this input that keeps the EcoVillage student-driven and successful in the sustainability mission.

“Students came up with ideas to figure out what activities and services that they might want to explore next semester to make sure we’re meeting their goals as well,” Botts said. “We’re giving the students the opportunity to develop what it is they want from this community because ultimately it is their community.”