Bryn Mawr College students will get new paths into sustainability careers, less food waste in their dining halls, and repaired electronics that might otherwise end up in a landfill.
Three seed grants the college's Sustainability Office announced Tuesday fund a student career trip to Boston, an expansion of food-waste tracking technology to a second dining hall, and a campus e-waste repair program that will also serve surrounding communities. Dollar amounts for the individual grants were not disclosed, and the college has not announced specific launch dates or enrollment windows for any of the three fall programs.
Career trek to Boston
The Center for Career and Civic Engagement will send up to 15 students to Boston for employer visits, alumni networking and tours of sustainability-focused organizations. The center, which has a $15 million endowment serving roughly 1,350 students, said the trek responds to rising student demand for sustainability-focused careers.
Food-waste tracking expands to New Dorm Dining Hall
Dining Services will install Leanpath, an AI-powered food-waste prevention system that uses cameras and scales to identify and weigh discarded food, in New Dorm Dining Hall this fall. The technology was piloted at Erdman Dining Hall in spring 2026. Dining Services said the Erdman pilot demonstrated enough success to justify the expansion, which will quantify waste and set reduction targets at the second location.
Bryn Mawr College Dining posted about the Erdman launch on Instagram in February, describing the system's goal as decreasing both pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste using computer vision.
E-waste repair and donation
A partnership between a Computer Science faculty member, Library and Information Technology Services and the Office of Sustainability will repair and repurpose campus electronics rather than discard them. The program will engage students in hands-on technical work while donating usable equipment to local communities. The grant announcement noted most discarded electronics remain functional and valuable.
Broader sustainability push
The seed grants are small internal awards open to faculty, staff, or student-led projects that advance the college's sustainability goals. Bryn Mawr has cut greenhouse gas emissions 56.4 percent since its first emissions report in 2008 and aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2035, according to the Bryn Mawr Bulletin.
President Wendy Cadge said in her 2024 inaugural address that she was "committed to accelerating the College's sustainability work over the next five years," a pledge that included creating a full-time sustainability director position. The college hired Neha Sood for that role in May 2025; Sood previously spent seven years in Rochester Institute of Technology's sustainability office.
The three fall programs join a longer track record of dining sustainability at Bryn Mawr, which went tray-less in 2010 and introduced reusable to-go containers in 2021.
