The Ray C. Anderson Foundation’s NextGen Committee has awarded a $30,000 grant to Georgia Tech to expand the Georgia Tech Carbon Reduction Challenge to include and engage more students across a broad range of disciplines. The Foundation’s grant is being matched by a grant from the Scheller College of Business Dean’s Innovation Fund.
The Carbon Reduction Challenge began as a class project that Professor Kim Cobb initiated in 2007. During the class, teams of students develop a cost-effective, carbon reducing program or initiative that a partner organization can execute. It has evolved into a highly successful mechanism for educating and engaging Georgia Tech students about carbon footprints, while achieving significant measurable reductions in carbon emissions through short-term student projects.
Meaningful and enthusiastic engagement by a variety of external stakeholders, ranging from multi-national companies to Atlanta based NGOs and small businesses, has inspired this expansion of the program. Georgia Tech professors L. Beril Toktay, faculty director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, and Kim Cobb, professor Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will work together to bring the Carbon Reduction Challenge model to Georgia Tech’s existing Internship and Co-op programs.
The new program will enable Dr. Cobb and Dr. Toktay to identify a 30-member subset from the hundreds of undergraduate interns and co-ops, who will be housed in a variety of organizations across the country in the 2017-18 academic year. Priority will be given to College of Science and Scheller College of Business students, who will then work to design and implement initiatives for their host companies that will simultaneously reduce carbon and save money.
