Drake University isn’t just Bulldog blue — it’s green, too. Revitalized last semester, Drake’s sustainability committee is a group working to improve on-campus sustainability through a variety of initiatives driven by students, faculty and staff.
Though recently given new life, the committee isn’t a new presence at Drake. Originally running as a faculty senate through the Office of Sustainability in 2016, the committee has fluctuated in both activity and function — even nearing extinction — before becoming the standalone action-focused community it is today.
Sydney Dvorak, 2025 Drake alumna and current sustainability coordinator, leads the committee. In this position, Dvorak began by tracking campus events and recognizing opportunities within them.
“Let’s make sure that sustainability ideals are being incorporated into it to help move our university forward and meet these carbon neutrality goals,” Dvorak said.
This year, Dvorak reorganized the group into four subcommittees: sustainable events, native planting, curriculum and the Green Grad Program. Each subcommittee strives to complete specialized objectives while fostering a diverse community of members along the way. This diversity is made possible by existing in a categorically undefined space.
“It’s not a student club, it’s not a Faculty Senate committee. It’s a group where people get together and they can make change,” Dvorak said.
Lance Noe, professor of public administration in Drake’s Zimpleman College of Business and a member of the committee since its conception, said he appreciates the recent revival.
“I like having a community that’s well organized and functional and has energy. This committee has all three of those things,” Noe said.
Noe is a member of the native planting subcommittee, which identifies ideal areas on campus to plant and conserve native flora. Noe recognizes that while committee membership has changed over the years, so has the University’s approach to sustainable groundskeeping.
“A generation or two ago, we would treat the campus like cleaning your house. We pick up every leaf, and every blade of grass — everything is very artificially kept,” Noe said.“That is no longer the goal. It’s to find the right way to create an aesthetically pleasing place that’s sustainable, that’s maintainable at a reasonable cost, and which is supportive for the environment.”
This comprehensive focus stretches beyond native planting. Another initiative currently at the forefront of the committee’s efforts is the creation of a sustainability guide. This is a reference for any Bulldog to use to implement greater sustainability practices while planning on-campus events.
Anna Snyder, a senior environmental sustainability student and head of the sustainable events subcommittee, described the process of completing the guide with the support of interested community members.
“We’re working on finishing it up, editing it, shopping it around to our different stakeholders and trying to get full University approval for it,” Snyder said.
The guide doesn’t simply serve as an educational document, however. Committee members hope that with time, the guide will improve sustainability at Drake University on a deeper level.
“Different universities are rated based on their level of sustainability,” Snyder said. “A lot of what we’re doing is to get our score up so that we can have a higher rating as a university and be more recognized. Hopefully, that would improve our sustainability program or improve retention of students.”
Snyder credits the community as the root of her motivation and the committee’s dedication to pushing for on-campus sustainability.
“Sustainability matters on college campuses, and in general to me, because I love my friends and family and I love the people that I’m around — and I just want to guarantee prosperity for them in the future,” said Snyder.
This vision for a prosperous future through sustainability, Snyder said, applies to safeguarding Drake for incoming students as well.
“There’s stuff that everyone complains about, but at the end of the day, I made really great friends here,” Snyder said.“I want other people to have the opportunity to do the same thing in the future — viability for the University, human life and everything in general is dependent on sustainability.”
Today, the committee’s momentum only grows with revived community engagement, Dvorak said. She added that it’s not the tasks that complete the committee, but the members themselves.
“The overarching goal of the current sustainability committee is to increase sustainability awareness on campus and increase buy-in across students, faculty and staff, with a secondary goal of really building relationships and community between all the groups of people on campus,” said Dvorak. “I really believe that a lot of people on campus are more connected than they realize, and have more similar goals than they realize.”
