From increasing rates of e-waste production to astonishing datacenter carbon emissions, the ecological effects of computing are staggering. Computer engineering and computer science students need, and want, to understand the complex social and environmental context of their work, and to develop practical skills required to build more sustainable solutions. Learning sustainable development skills is challenging in a traditional university classroom: meaningfully building these skills and mindsets requires holistic, student-centered approaches, including situative, experiential, and community-centered strategies. While educators and universities have begun to integrate sustainability into computing curricula, we propose another approach, building a community of learning through dialogue and collaboration with students and the wider community. The eKitchen is a university-based community of practice, whose purpose is to give students opportunities to develop hands-on skills in electronic repair and sustainable computer engineering, reduce e-waste on campus, and advocate for sustainable computing through public outreach, workshops and community partnerships.

We use a participatory action research methodology, continually co-creating research questions, developing actionable strategies, and reflecting on the challenges and opportunities we encounter in collaboration with students, community partners, and university stakeholders. We also plan to partner with and interview similar organizations to collaborate, to learn from their experiences and contextualize our findings. In this lightning talk, we hope to discuss our approach to building a university-based community of learning and practice promoting sustainable computing. This effort is just underway, but we hope to share our inspiration, challenges and strategies, and to hear from existing educators and organizations doing similar work.