When themed housing options were proposed at Sweet Briar for the 2007-08 academic year, the notion quickly caught on with small but ardent groups of students.

Two motifs were put forward: an international floor for students who have academic interests in languages and international affairs and a floor for students sharing concerns about ecological and environmental issues. The College approved the plan, making the options available to qualifying students with sophomore status or above.

Flags represent many nations in Prothro atrium. International housing students hope to highlight various cultures through dinners, lectures and other events. Photo by Aaron MahlerThree seniors, a junior and five sophomores were accepted for the international housing, which will occupy part of Dew Hall's third floor. Pam DeWeese, a Spanish professor and a faculty sponsor of the project, said Dew offered a good kitchen and meeting spaces for hosting events.

Junior Katherine Beach, who will be returning from a year at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, said she opted to live on the floor to "keep up and expand the international connections" she made during the past year.

"I also love to travel and learn about different cultures and customs from all over the world. I think that living with people with similar interests will spark conversations," she wrote in an e-mail.

Beach, along with the faculty sponsors, want to use outreach programming to encourage others to think about international issues and relations. "It would be great if we could encourage more people to study abroad, both students going away from Sweet Briar for a semester or year and international students coming to Sweet Briar and enriching the campus with their ideas," Beach said.

The programming won't take shape until the students arrive and begin organizing themselves. "We really want the students to lead the way," DeWeese said. "Faculty will make suggestions, but won't dictate."

Some concepts already floated are food fiestas, film screenings and an international speaker series. But DeWeese thinks the real benefit may be in everyday interactions. "We tried to make it so that seniors returning from [Junior Year] Abroad could interact with sophomores planning to go abroad. There really is something about that experience."

Transitioning back after a year away can be difficult. "They don't have a natural audience. People get tired of hearing how great Australia was," DeWeese said. "I'm hoping for lots of little informal chatty forums."

Single rooms are reserved for teaching assistants from France, Spain and Italy, who work and study at Sweet Briar on one-year student visas. DeWeese said the assistants — who usually already have their five-year degrees — are expected to offer insights into cultural exchanges and to be a resource for the student residents as they work out how to internationalize the floor.

Meanwhile, a group of six students will be establishing the new ecofloor on Randolph Hall's lower level.

Assistant professor of sociology Debbie Kasper said the students who applied to live on the floor are excited and committed. "They want more autonomy over the size of the ecological footprint they make. They feel it's really hard to know what their impact is in a college setting."

Kasper has discussed with the students ways to live greener on campus. One of several proposals is to use inexpensive volt meters to measure how much energy individual appliances use for a given period of time. Using the data, the students could extrapolate a baseline of their own energy consumption and set goals for reducing their impact.

The students could use the same data to calculate and graphically display how much fuel — for example, coal — was required to produce the electricity and the greenhouse gases it produced. "Another big part of what the students are interested in is making information available to other students," Kasper said.

Additional ideas are planting edible landscaping around the building and growing produce in the Sweet Briar Community Garden. The ecofloor residents will receive a complimentary 15-foot plot in the SBCG.

"I want to have communal dinners with food grown locally and organically, and come up with ways to conserve energy and water," said Kelly Mauri '10, an environmental studies major.

Mauri said she wanted to live on the floor because she is passionate about the environment and "even more zealous in creating more awareness of what is going on today."

Sarah Doyle '09 is equally gung-ho, and easily rattles off her personal strategies. "I plan to use energy-saving light bulbs, unplug appliances when not in use, turn the computer off," she said, even pledging to seek out more fun things to do on campus so she can limit the need for car trips.

Like Mauri, Doyle hopes others on campus will notice the example she and her hallmates set.

"This first year will hopefully prove that this is a realistic option and a reasonable way for other students to live," Doyle wrote in an e-mail. "So that rather than a just a floor it will become a campus-wide initiative. Maybe in a few years, rather than an ecofloor there will be an energy-hog floor."