First-Year Sustainability Presentations

In the past year, our First-Year Presentation on Sustainability reached 1,555 students across 9 different departments These presentations are delivered by trained student volunteers who play important campus sustainability roles; a total of 37 classes across a variety of departments learned about sustainable opportunities available to at Pitt Additionally, volunteers presented to 15 First-Year Engineering seminar sections, encouraging students to choose a sustainability concentration as they move forward with their academic careers in engineering.

Sustainability Advisor Toolkit

Updated in 2023, the Sustainability Advisor Toolkit puts easy-to-reference resources in the hands of Pitt advisors about the many opportunities for students to apply and grow their interest in sustainability through academia, service, advocacy, and more.

The toolkit is available both in digital and physical form – and distributed campuswide to advisors, faculty, and mentors.

Faculty Resource Hub

The Sustainability Faculty Resource Hub will go live this Fall as the home for academic tools and resources to help faculty include sustainability in all aspects of teaching. Pitt faculty will be able to download content from these primers to incorporate into their curricula. The resources cover a variety of topics, including air quality, water, energy, food, materials, waste, and more

Undergraduate Summer Research

Over 19 years, MCSI’s summer undergraduate research program has supported over 375 students. In Summer 2023, this MCSI program is supporting 26 students from 14 different departments.

MCSI is especially thankful to the following donors who make this program possible each year.

2022 Summer Undergraduate Research

In Summer 2022, 26 students from 15 departments participated in MCSI’s summer undergraduate research program. Learn more about their project outcomes here. Students presented their projects and 2minute videos at an Undergraduate Research Symposium took July 25 & 26, 2022.

Students voted for the best Symposium presentations (considering their connection to sustainability, creativity, and research quality). The winners were:

• Rebecca Hotton, Increasing the Energy Efficiency of 3D Binder Jet Printed Metal Filters

• Molly Draper, Sustainable Forestry within the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome: Is Salvage Logging Compatible with Healthy Forest Regeneration Following a Major Windstorm?

Additionally, two student summer researchers led social media takeovers of the MCSI Instagram account: , Rishika Dhanda and Rebecca Hotton.