The word "change" is echoed throughout college campuses today more than any other. At the same time, taking the step from talking about change to actual implementation is often an uphill battle. However, the students participating in President Bill Clinton's CGI U weekend on March 14-16 in New Orleans are not only willing to take that step, but are required to by the program itself. In order to apply for CGI U, students are required to make a commitment aimed at issues of energy and climate change, global health, human rights, peace and poverty alleviation, by the time that they leave. CGI U is about ideas, but more than that, it is about following through. CGI U also provides the students with donors and financial support to bring their commitments to life.

Over 700 college students descended on the Tulane University campus on Saturday for a day of brainstorming ideas, attending panels of activists, academics, and journalists, and making the commitment to enact change. The following are examples of commitments that we found most compelling ...

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When you work in television, you spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen: waiting for interviews, waiting for press ops, waiting for people to arrive and waiting for media outlets to finish. We spent a good part of Sunday in the Lower Ninth Ward, waiting and hoping to interview former President Clinton about CGI U.

Things scheduled early in the day ran late, and the major networks were also waiting to talk to the big guy. CNN went first: A 10-minute interview turned into 20, and 20 turned into 30. Then Fox News took its turn, followed by "Good Morning America." By the time our turn came, the former president was being whisked away by the Secret Service.

I've always wanted to interview President Clinton, but yesterday just wasn't my day. We did, however, talk to his press rep, and we're planning to cover the stories of some specific CGI U participants in the future. Hopefully that includes Clinton.

Sunday was the final day of the CGI U weekend, and all 700 students were in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, the area hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. What was once a neighborhood is now little more than a barren field littered with cinder blocks and debris.

It was shocking to see firsthand how little had been rebuilt in the past two and a half years. But yesterday two organizations came together to bring the Lower Ninth Ward one step closer to repair.

CGI U partnered with Brad Pitt's Make It Right organization to aid in post-Katrina reconstruction. The plan was for the students to rake leaves, dirt and debris away from sidewalks and empty lots so rebuilding could begin sometime in the fall.

Saturday was about sharing ideas, brainstorming plans and making commitments. Sunday was about making things happen. Brandon Wolff from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania put it best: "Yesterday, we were learning about what we can do to take action, and today we are actually taking action."

All work ceased as Pitt and former President Bill Clinton made the rounds, thanking everyone for their efforts.

For the students, the pairing of conversations about commitment with real action was both inspiring and motivational as they headed home, ready to bring about change.

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More than 700 students, dozens of community leaders, activists and academics gathered in the Fogelman Arena at Tulane University this evening to hear former President Bill Clinton give the day's closing remarks, and to hear about the latest commitments made by the participants of CGI U.

Clinton said that in the past three years, the Clinton Global Initiative has made 1,000 commitments that have affected 100 countries. Over time, he said, "we were struck by how much energy we had coming in every year from young people." So CGI U was born.

On this first full day of CGI U, we have already met so many young people with ideas large and small, all aimed at helping to solve some of the world's biggest problems. Here are just a few of the ideas that have inspired us so far:

At a press conference earlier today, Clinton honored Julie Carney, a senior at Yale, for her commitment. She is a co-founder of Artemis, a project that will preserve history by digitizing and archiving the findings of truth commissioners so that, in the future, we will be able to dig up facts on human-rights atrocities so that they can be dealt with accordingly.

On a more local level, we also met DJ, a Tulane student who was handicapped after an accident in 2002. DJ survived, but with severe brain damage. His commitment is to further expand campus recycling efforts here at Tulane. He told us that although he is now handicapped, his gratitude for survival and new appreciation for life have made him want to give back, and he has become one of the most active leaders of student recycling efforts here at Tulane.

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At 1 a.m. this morning, I put the top back up on my rented pretty aqua-blue Mustang convertible, with sand still in my shoes from the past five days, during which I had been covering mtvU spring break '08 in Panama City Beach, Florida. The six-hour drive took me through the beautiful beach town of Destin, FL, through desolate roads in Alabama and Mississippi, before finally arriving in New Orleans, the site of the inaugural meeting of CGI U, the college wing of the Clinton Global Initiative.

After a few hours of sleep, we arrived on the campus of Tulane University and immediately into a room where President Clinton was giving his introductory speech. "This is, I hope, the beginning of a movement," Clinton told the room, explaining that "it's not enough to turn people away from destructive behavior. You haver to turn them towards constructive behavior." It was a call to arms to the 700 students at CGI U and the millions who are not.

Following his speech, we interviewed several students who had applied and been accepted to the conference. In order to be a part of CGI U, each student has to come ready with a commitment, which ranged from local recycling efforts to ending the conflict in Darfur. Each student had a detailed plan and had already begun implementing it on their campus, and often other campuses as well.

After five days of witnessing students from those same campuses partying at spring break, with water guns in their hands and kegs at their feet, I was struck by the diligence, vivacious creativity and active level of responsibility and duty by the students at CGI U. I was inspired by their projects of such global scale, wondered to myself, "Why didn't I think of that?!"

I am really looking forward to meeting more of the students over the next two days and watching them work together to implement these extremely creative, innovative and, perhaps most importantly, workable ideas. Ill post a little later and report on more of their stories.