Former Sustainability Interns – Where Are They Now? Tanjimul Alam

How did you get involved with IUPUI Sustainability? What roles did you have?

Looking back, I can actually trace back to the exact week I first got catapulted into IUPUI Sustainability! I happened to sit next to the President of Student Sustainability Council week one of Spring semester my freshman year and found out about some neighborhood cleanup events. I decided to volunteer and met both an office intern and the director at the event that same weekend. The rest was history from there. I ended up joining the SSC team as a student org leader (VP of Administration) within the next few weeks and had the fortune of getting exposure to a lot of sustainability happening around campus from that point onward – with a lot curated by the IUPUI Sustainability team and interns directly connected to SSC. This included SSC’s own attempts to push green events around campus (like the Regatta) and Greening IUPUI Grant proposals as well as more educational outings like facility tours and regional/national conferences.

I cannot emphasize enough how helpful engaging directly in the diverse and practical “real-world” sustainability efforts at IUPUI was as an undergrad still exploring my interests. Eventually, I had worked alongside the team long enough and was able to become a formal intern myself. I ended up joining the Campus Kitchen team as a volunteer coordinator / data tracker doing weekly food rescue and repurposing work around Indianapolis.

What was your degree? When did you graduate?
After a bit of hopping around different academic tracks, I managed to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs degree majoring in Sustainable Management & Policy. This was just 3 years ago in May 2018.

Where do you work now? Title?
I currently have a role on Indiana University Bloomington’s sustainability team as the Sustainability Programs Assistant for Sustain IU. I’m one of 4 full-time staff in the Office of Sustainability and we are one of IU’s Capital Planning & Facilities units. I’m also a Co-director for one of our newer programs, SustainCollins, a living-learning program that brings together like-minded students with interest in sustainability and the environment on a floor within Collins Living Learning Center.

How did you find / land that job?
I was actually attending a IUPUI Sustainability staff meeting when I first heard about the role. IUB and other more statewide focused staff members would frequently swing by the office and I happened to hear the announcement directly from someone on the IUB staff at the time. After applying, having lots of IU connections and higher ed sustainability relevant experience was incredibly helpful alongside a bit of luck to land the role!

What do you do in your day-to-day?
In a nutshell, I have a jack-of-all-trades role for the office and IU sustainability. A lot of my work centers around being a seasonal projects lead and administrative arm for the staff. I act as a “front gate” (first person for emails / calls) for sustainability questions on the Bloomington campus and am pulled into various work priority areas throughout the year like intern hiring, research / data work, Earth Month planning, event coordination, etc. I occasionally handle website and other university systems tasks on behalf of my team as well like keeping up with maintenance, inventory, and more recently, GIS projects. Luckily, aside from emails and meetings, I have a good variety of things I work on!

What advice would you give a student who wants to find a job in your industry?
If we are talking about working specifically in higher ed, taking the time to get involved in sustainability efforts already happening on campus is a no brainer. You really can’t go wrong gaining experience, exploring how different topics / types of work fit you, and making connections at the same time. Chances are that there is a wealth of opportunity on your campus to get involved. Students should know that being involved can happen in a lot of different ways. There’s a wide range of organizations, topics, and commitment levels out there and every opportunity taken is likely to be a stepping-stone to other opportunities – or at least let you know what you did and didn’t like.

More generally, identifying a few people in already taking on roles you’d be eager to do yourself and seeing how they got there is always something that I students find helpful. There’s usually a lot of variety in folks’ stories and it can be insightful to see the steps other people have taken. No need to reinvent the wheel – there’s also always the option to consider reaching out to a few of them!