Student Organizations

The UK Greenthumb Environmental Club was founded on the University of Kentucky campus in 1993. Greenthumb is engaged in environmental activism on campus and beyond. Currently much of Greenthumb's work is focused on push for a more sustainable campus. In the past Greenthumb members have lobbied for change on campus by holding positions within the Student Government, the President's Sustainability Advisory Committee, the Student Sustainability Council, the original Sustainability Task Force and various other university bodies.

The Student Sustainability Council was formed to supervise the distribution of the Environmental Stewardship Fee in order to responsibly advance the theory, practice and reality of Sustainability at the University of Kentucky. Any member of the University of Kentucky community can submit a proposal for funding support. If you have an idea for a project that will enhance the culture of sustainability on UK's campus, we encourage you to use our submission form to make us aware of your project.

The Campus Kitchen at the University of Kentucky (CKUK) is an on-campus student service organization that was established in April 2014 with faculty support from the Department of Dietetics & Human Nutrition. CKUK is an affiliate of the national The Campus Kitchens Project (CKP), which provides a sustainable approach to reducing food waste on college campuses while also providing healthy meals to those struggling with hunger.

LEYO's goal is to bridge the environmental education/experience divide. LEYO works with William Wells Brown Elementary in Lexington, KY to conduct biweekly educational activities for fourth/fifth grades that make the environment relevant and interesting. Our goal is to promote passion for sustainability issues while providing marginalized youth in Lexington with skills necessary to combat environmental injustices. LEYO will utilize University of Kentucky undergraduates as Sustainability Mentors to mentor students during activities and during our once a semester excursion trip.

The mission of the University of Kentucky Center for Community Outreach is to serve, connect, and unite the campus community with the surrounding community in collaborative efforts to promote life-long community service, Our vision is a campus of socially aware and civically engaged students. We achieve these efforts through 10 issue-based programs that allow students to connect regularly with the surrounding community, from down the street to around the world, through direct service, education, and reflection.

USAS is a social justice organization, focus on labor-related issues. It may come as a surprise that sweatshop labor still exist, and can be found everywhere, even in the United States. Sweatshops are defined as "any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous." Sweatshop industries also have a tragic history of wage theft, child labor, and exposure to chronic health issues. Here at UK we work with the surrounding community to ensure UK is not involved or creating sweatshop-like conditions.

SSTOP Hunger leads the University of Kentucky in the War on Hunger. The committee unites the Universities Fighting World Hunger and Presidents United to Solve Hunger chapters on-campus. Our purpose is to facilitate communication between and provide resources to hunger-related organization at the University of Kentucky in order to engage faculty, staff, and students across disciplines in developing and implementing a strategy to end hunger through hunger awareness and consciousness-raising, fundraising, advocacy and academic initiatives (teaching, research, and outreach).

The University of Kentucky Solar Car team is an independent, student-led organization that operates on the campus of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY through the College of Engineering. The team was formed in 1999 — nearly 16 years ago, and is one of the larges, thriving, student engineering organizations on campus. With a large and active student body the team works during the school year to design and construct solar vehicles which are used in STEM outreach and to compete in national competitions which include the Formula Sun Grans Prix, and the American Solar Challenge