The student-run University of Idaho Sustainability Center, now hiring its five-person staff, is the result of lobbying by students last year for an $85,000 share of school fees and tuition.

University of Idaho students already have a recycling program. Among the potential first projects for the sustainability center: Persuading students in the north central Idaho school's residence hall system to switch to nothing but ''fair-trade'' coffee that guarantees decent working conditions for people in Third World countries that pick the brown, aromatic beans.

''It's important that as global citizens we have this [center], with so many environmental and social issues, and issues of fiscal responsibility,'' Justin Saydell, who helped lobby for the center, told the Lewiston Tribune.

The center is also weighing a campaign for a food-scrap composting program similar to one operated by dining halls at Washington State University, located 10 miles across the state border to the west. And Idaho's cafeterias could be encouraged to buy more organic food grown on the Palouse, the rich, agricultural area that surrounds the campus in Moscow.

''It's to be sure that we are practicing sustainable policies that will ensure a better environment now and in the future,'' said Humberto Cerrillo, president of the student body.

Though the center hasn't yet occupied offices inside Shoup Hall, proponents plan to ask interior-design students from the university's newly resurrected College of Art and Architecture - back on campus for the first time since 2002 - to decorate them with lighting, textiles and furnishings that don't harm natural resources.

Saydell and others pushing the new program say they don't want to be portrayed as preaching to other students, but they think it's important to give suggestions on how classmates can lead more environment friendly lifestyles.

''It could show how people can live sustainably in their dorm rooms or in their office,'' Saydell said.