Small Steps, Big Wins Campus Challenge Announces Fall Results
A national contest to empower college students to take positive social and environmental actions, such as donating blood or recycling, released the top scoring schools for fall semester as Oklahoma State University, University of California at Berkeley, Southern Illinois University, Penn State University and Washington University.
Green Mountain College Students Build Sustainable Mobile Home
Motivated to build a mobile living space that could be towed behind a four-cylinder vehicle, the Renewable Energy and Ecological Design students custom-built a 70-square-foot room with a composting toilet, rainwater collection system and a 120-watt photovoltaic panel.
North Carolina State U Students Engineer Heat Ventilation System
Students from the university's Landscape Construction Studio class recently designed and implemented the heat ventilation system for a garden space that has steam pipes underneath it causing vegetation to die. The student-staff collaboration won a local award.
U Idaho Students Develop Net-Zero Lab
(U.S.): After time spent researching forestry's role in wood production, graduate students were challenged to use the resource in new and innovative ways to construct a new campus laboratory building.
U Iowa Students Hold Sustainability Summit
(U.S.): Hosted by the university's Student Government, the event invited dialogue from administrators, students, faculty, staff and community members about campus sustainability and taking action beyond campus borders.
Maharishi U Management Students Build Adobe House
A group of 12 students studying natural building traveled to the Texas desert last month and spent 11 days building an adobe house measuring 14 feet by 14 feet. Construction included local soil for the bricks and locally harvested dead trees.
Dickinson College Selects Sustainability Fellows
The Baird Sustainability Fellows, a college-wide honors program, recognized seven graduating seniors who have advanced campus sustainability goals through scholarship, leadership and service.
Princeton U Students to Install Solar in Peru
A pilot program of the university's Pace Center for Civic Engagement, eight students and one faculty will install a portable solar unit and provide education to the community members about how to install and maintain the system.
Boston U Held Regional Eco Rep Conference
(U.S.): The recent Eco Rep Symposium at the university featured games to prompt discussions, presentations and roundtables about campus sustainability topics including waste, engaging students and communities, programs, effective communication, social justice and failures.
Loyola U Students Help Lower Avian Mortality
In a concerted effort to reduce avian mortality on three of the university's buildings, service-learning students enrolled in the spring 2013 SOAR (Student Operation for Avian Relief) program designed a plan that includes nets and usage of the building's automation system to lower blinds during early morning hours.
North Carolina State U Homecoming Becomes Sustainable Certified
Through the university's Sustainability Office, the fall event earned the highest achievement, Wolfpack-Certified Green Champion Level, for its efforts to reduce event waste, including parade materials, offer healthy food options and donating leftover food, and community engagement.
U Nebraska Lincoln Begins Student Engagement Campaign
Students of the campus' Association of Students of the University of Nebraska are hosting events that engage on-campus residents to reduce energy consumption, discuss campus sustainability, and further Dining Services food waste diversion and recycling program.
Wesleyan U Uses App for Sustainability Contest
A fresh effort to engage students in campus sustainability and learn how social media can promote behavior change, the JouleBug Sustainability Contest used the mobile application to track environmentally-friendly efforts, such using a reusable mug.
U Texas Austin Students Plant On-Campus Farm
The new green-fee funded Micro Farm is the university's first student-run operation where students grow vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs for university dining halls, a local food shelter and an onsite farm stand.
U West Florida Students Begin USGBC Chapter
In hopes of creating an environmentally-friendly campus, the new U.S. Green Building Council student club's first project will be construction of an Earthship structure composed of compacted dirt and used tires, which will be used as a seating area outside of the science and engineering building for campus members to create community.
Duke U Arts Festival Centers Around Sustainability
The annual festival's thematic choice this year is sustainability in order to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and expand the boundaries of artistic endeavors on campus. Organizers' intention is for participants to consider how creativity can galvanize sustainable behaviors.
Portland State U Questions Oppression in Sustainability Movement
The university's new Social Sustainability Month theme for 2013-14 is Decolonizing Sustainability: Unsettling the Dominant Paradigm, a focal point that encourages consideration of how the mainstream environmental and sustainability movements may perpetuate historical systems of oppression, colonization and domination.
Wesleyan U Students and Faculty Re-Envision 'The Commons'
As part of the university's College of the Environment year-long academic think tank on critical environmental issues, students and faculty discuss management of common property from an interdisciplinary perspective involving humanities and performing arts. The think tank will conjoin its scholarly work with the efforts of student sustainability groups like the Long Lane Farm Club, WILDWes and WesFresh.
Students Organize Around Campus Food Day 2013
(U.S.): Campus Food Day was celebrated recently at 350 U.S. colleges and universities. The event mobilized students to unify the food movement and launch efforts to change food policies on campus through events such as lectures, documentary screenings and petitions. Johns Hopkins University, Northeastern University and The University of Massachusetts, Amherst signed onto the Real Food Campus Commitment, pledging to source 20 percent of its food from local, fair, sustainable and humane farms and food businesses. As of Campus Food Day, 22 institutions have signed the Real Food Campus Commitment.
Concordia U Students Learn About Homelessness
In an effort to understand the plight of the homeless demographic, students organized an event in which they built cardboard shanties that they slept in overnight and spent time serving the homeless.
Penn State Students Aid in Stormwater Infrastructure Rebuilding
Students from the university's architecture program, staff and community volunteers worked with the Penn State Cooperative Extension and Public Media to rebuild one of the city's rain gardens and stormwater remediation areas. The project was part of an outreach effort for Penn State Public Media’s documentary "Water Blues, Green Solutions," which aims to encourage public education and awareness of green infrastructure.
U Toronto Launches 'Faces of Sustainability'
The university's sustainability office's new the bi-monthly feature recognizes the individuals who are contributing to campus sustainability, bridging dialogue across campus with varying stakeholders.
New Mexico State U Maps Outdoor Recycling Bins
Attempting to understand how far campus members have to walk to recycle, student researchers in the Spatial Applications and Research Center discovered only 22 percent were located within 25 feet of building, whereas 70 percent of the trashcans were within 25 feet.
Taylor U Begins Sustainability Assistants Program
After a recent trip to the Bahamas, a honors cohort conceptualized and brought to fruition a program where volunteer student representatives educate students in residence halls about environmental issues and act as change agents for sustainable living.
Tufts U Creates 'Sustainability House'
Students helped implement what is now the Sustainability House, an on-campus housing initiative where students who have a common interest in sustainability can live in community together. Students in the community are required to work on research related to sustainability or work with groups that seek to create change on campus.
Falmouth U, U Exeter Cornwall Launches Green Living Project
(U.K.): Student members of the Falmouth and Exeter Students’ Union are launching two projects aimed at promoting more sustainable behaviors within the student and staff populations. The projects aim to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reduce resources being sent to landfills.
National U Singapore, U Melbourne Win Design Competition
(Australia): Open to architecture students from higher education around the world, the Tropical Architecture Design Competition focuses on tropical green architecture and sustainable building design solutions. A collaboration between the two universities, this year’s winning entry was inspired by natural mushrooms and relies heavily on fresh air, daylight and rainwater for energy, and local construction materials such as ramp earth and rice straw walls.
U Illinois Chicago Students Teach Diversity with Gardens
(U.S.): Birthed from two different student cultural groups' desire to promote the importance of environmental and cultural diversity, the new Heritage Garden provides an experiential learning space where students, in collaboration with campus and community members, can engage in hands-on horticultural activities while expanding their knowledge of culturally diversity and environmentally friendly traditions and values.
