As a second year undergraduate student, Shay Furze was always determined to reach her goals, not only within her education, but also in her social life throughout her college career. No matter what university Furze ended up attending, she wanted to leave a lasting impression. 

Only a sophomore, Furze is already beginning her first term as the Sustainability Coordinator for Sonoma State, and is an active member of the President’s Sustainability Advisory Committee (PSAC) for the school.    

“My official title is Sustainability Coordinator. What I’m personally doing, is tracking all of our food purchases,” said Furze. “That is my main goal. It is a lot. We have to feed so many kids and we have so many different venues. But, I’m tracking it to find out how much we buy from local farms and businesses. We want to get to about 20% of all of our total purchasing from local farms. It is a big number.”

As Sustainability Coordinator, Furze does her best to ensure the University does its part to be an environmentally conscious school. She takes this even further by being a member of PSAC.

As apart of the President’s Sustainability Advisory Committee, Furze advises the president on ways to provide a more sustainable and livable environment for students at Sonoma State. The PSAC coordinates the work of the three pillars of the Climate Commitment, which are organized under three tracks: academic, resilience, and carbon. The council will develop goals, tactics, timelines, and metrics to support the Sonoma State sustainability plan. Some of these goals or tasks include establishing a vision that informs the campus, establishing a governance structure, developing and executing a plan to enforce the three main tracks, drafting a strategic plan to enforce, and then reviewing the plan to make sure that it is maintained.

“I’m in a group that is working on regional resilience. We want to use our influence to affect the entirety of the North Bay. This is really cool and I enjoy it a lot,” said Furze.

Furze’s inspiration for joining the committee came from a trip that she took in high school. Students were required to live on a farm for 11 straight days, and here, she witnessed composting for her first time. Using the composting gardens at the farm gave Furze a real sense of how important food waste is. 

Furze also joined the Sustainability Club in August of 2019. Although she is no longer enrolled in the club, she plans to rejoin and become more involved in her last years at Sonoma State.  

After graduation, Furze is excited to be apart of the new opportunities in the sustainability industry. Her primary focus lies in getting into the food industry aspect of sustainability. She is very passionate about making a change for the future generations to come. 

“It’s like my passion. It is the one thing that I have always wanted to do and have been good at,” said Furze. 

Furze’s personal food of choice on campus is the Chinese chicken salad from Charlie Brown’s Cafe. She also professes that she loves to bake.

“I love to bake cookies because who doesn’t love cookies?”

 Furze works at the Etcetera station in Sonoma State’s cafeteria, where they serve delicious desserts and other baked goods. 

Throughout the rest of her college experience, as well as after her graduation, Shay Furze will continue to promote and educate future generations on culinary sustainability. She is looking forward to furthering her passion with the PSAC and hopes to take what she has learned outside of Sonoma State.