A team of SunTrust interns, including two students from the Georgia Institute of Technology – Scheller College of Business, recently took top prize during the inaugural Internship and Co-op Carbon Reduction Challenge.
The SunTrust internship invited students from all throughout Georgia Tech who agreed to serve as sustainability ambassadors for their organization, taking on the challenge of developing plans that could reduce carbon admissions at their company while still cutting costs. The cohort included 20 students from four colleges at Georgia Tech, working on projects at more than ten organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to the City of Atlanta. A number of proposed projects have already been approved by the respective companies, proposals that will ultimately result in more than 12 million pounds of Co2 emissions reductions.
The Internship and Co-op Carbon Reduction Challenge is the result of an innovative partnership between Scheller and the College of Sciences. Together, the two schools will allow students to take on the challenge as a sustainability ambassador, while still benefiting from the business experience of their internship roles in fields like IT, research, business analysis, and engineering support.
The winning team was made up of two students from the Scheller College of Business and four from the Industrial and Systems Engineering program that were interning at SunTrust. Using a three-pronged approach to reduce carbon emissions for SunTrust employee travel, such as improving the quality of conference calls and reducing the need for in-person travel among other techniques, the team impressed at the highest level of SunTrust leadership, with parts of their proposal implemented immediately.