MRIT U Launches Energy and Water Reduction Retrofit
(Australia): The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University will invest AU$98 million ($92 million) in its Sustainable Urban Precincts Program over three campuses, which will work with two corporations to reduce its water and energy use through improved, more efficient equipment, saving money and lessening greenhouse gas emissions. A portion of the funding will support teaching and research in sustainability including 10 doctorate of psychology scholarships.
Pueblo CC Students Begin Environmental Club
(U.S.): The recently started student club helps bring awareness and education to the campus and surrounding community and has several projects underway including initiating a recycling and tree planting program.
Seattle U Publishes First Sustainability Report
(U.S.): The recently released four-year sustainability progress report highlights the institution's climate action plan and its goals for academics and research, co-curricular education, environmental justice, operations, and strategies for the future.
Shippensburg U Begins Food Recovery Network
(U.S.): Students from the university's social work discipline recently began fighting hunger in the surrounding community by delivering surplus food to a community meal program.
U Alaska Anchorage to Implement Bike-Share Program
(U.S.): Using a university identification card, students, staff and faculty will be able to check out a bike through the campus library circulation desk, which can be used for an hour, a day or up to a month, for free. The bikes come with fenders, lights, a back rack and a front basket, and require monthly safety checks.
UC Riverside Installs Off Grid Solar Power
(U.S.): Bringing the university closer toward its carbon neutrality goals, the 13 solar charging cafe-style tables have recently been installed across campus and provide the campus community with a vehicle to charge the growing number of handheld electronic devices and laptops.
U Hawai'i Manoa Hires First Sustainability Coordinator
(U.S.): Aurora Winslade, previous director of sustainability at the University of Hawai'i West O'ahu, is now charged with moving Manoa's sustainability efforts forward as directed in its strategic plan, and hopes to empower campus leaders, staff, faculty, students who care about campus sustainability.
U Maryland Awarded $50K for Urban Design Competition
(U.S.): A team of university graduate students took top honors at the 12th annual ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, which asked the student teams to submit a development proposal that would promote healthy living for the residents of a Nashville neighborhood. Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Texas at Austin each received $10,000.
U Maryland Grants $50K for Sustainability Projects
(U.S.): The university's Sustainability Fund granted Facilities Management $50,000 to implement a rainwater harvesting system, a teaching green roof, or both, for the new Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center, which is scheduled to open summer 2016.
U Utah Offers Community Solar Program
(U.S.): Called U Solar Program, the university is now sponsoring the community solar program, offering a 25 percent discount on installation of rooftop solar panels for students and other university associated residents.
U Wyoming Launches Revolving Fund
(U.S.): The university's new Conservation and Efficiency Revolving Fund, aimed at energy, water and waste efforts, emerged from a student project and was granted $250,000 seed money from the school's Physical Plant. Part of SEI's Billion Dollar Green Challenge, projects will be tracked and evaluated through Green Revolving Investment Tracking System (GRITS) and internal metrics.
Villanova U Commits to Catholic Climate Covenant
(U.S.): The university president recently signed the St. Francis Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor, which is a pledge that asks individuals, families, parishes, organizations and universities to live their faith by protecting God’s Creation and advocates on behalf of people in poverty who face the harshest impacts of global climate change.
Western Illinois U Calculates Value of On Campus Trees
(U.S.): Students from an urban forest management course recently used free U.S. Department of Agriculture software, i-Tree, to estimate benefits of the university's tree canopy including carbon dioxide sequestration, energy savings and shade cover for people enjoying or working in the outdoors. The tree canopy is estimated to cover about 35 percent surface area of campus, which the program equates to roughly $26,000 of annual benefit to the surrounding area.
Bentley U Remakes Disability Icon
With assistance from the university's Diversity Mini-Grant program, the Accessible Icon Project will repaint handicap parking spots on campus with an icon that represents independence and abilities of individuals who use wheelchairs.
Cornell U Creates Faculty Director Endowments
The original funders of the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future are now going to gift an endowment for the center's directorship and establish a challenge campaign to endow the center's three faculty director positions. For every $2 million a donor gives for a faculty director chair, the Atkinsons will contribute another $1 million to endow each of the three faculty leadership positions that oversee the center's three main research areas: energy, the environment and economic development.
Cornell U to Install a 2MW Photovoltaic Array
The university's largest solar endeavor, the two-megawatt solar electric system will include 6,500-plus panels, 10 of which will be designated for academic use allowing students physical access to manipulate the panels and access to the web-based dashboard monitoring software.
Energy Dept Announces $4M Toward Renewable Energy
In an effort to accelerate development of marine energy systems including tidal energy, a consortium of universities will receive $4 million for research that seeks to optimize operations, reduce maintenance costs, and improve the components and performance.
Loyola U Chicago Votes to End Plastic Bag Usage
Waiting to see how the administration votes on the matter, students are in favor of using compostable totes carrying a charge $0.70 per bag, which they hope will incent students to use their own reusable bags.
Montgomery County CC Honors Sustainable Food
A new focus of a Honors Colloquium, students spent time learning about sustainability issues of the modern agriculture and food system and were asked to provide possible solutions such as policy changes.
Springfield College Students Clean Local Zoo
As part of a 735-acre city park, the zoo recently hosted students from the college's Project for Sustainability club to volunteer their time with clean-up to prepare it for its opening.
Student Startups Compete for $100K in Energy Dept Competition
University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Colorado at Denver, Iowa State University and University of New Mexico were represented at the CU Cleantech New Venture Challenge. The seven groups representing the universities presented solutions to pressing sustainability issues. The winning team receives $100,000 seed funding and a chance to compete at the national competition in Washington, D.C.
SUNY Cortland Becomes Tree Campus USA
The establishment of the university's urban forest with 53 tree species recently earned it the designation and will be celebrated by a tour during the school's Green Days festival.
U Maryland Panhellenic Receives $4K for Energy Efficiency
Allowing the building to stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, the university's Fraternity and Sorority Life housing coordinator applied for the grant to install the ceramic glazing on the windows of a Panhellenic chapter house as a pilot program.
U Maryland Procures Solar Panels Jointly
Partnering with a local renewable energy-based nonprofit, seventeen university faculty and staff have recently signed up for a bulk purchase of photovoltaic panels.
U Ottawa Declared Fair Trade Campus
The university recently achieved the status through increasing availability and awareness of coffee, tea and chocolate that has the Fairtrade designation.
Ursinus College Issues Green Living Certification
In an effort to grow the culture of sustainability, the four-tiered pilot program for students is designed to encourage sustainable actions across campus including residence halls, classroom, bathrooms and dining halls.
Ursinus College to Form Sustainability Committee
The new committee's primary mission will be to oversee the integration of sustainability into the life of the college and to help guide and oversee the implementation of the Climate and Sustainability Action Plan. Some of the subcommittees are tree care, sustainable student experience, sustainable facilities and energy conservation, and membership on the committees is open to campus members.
Belmont Abbey College Focuses on Affordability
A recent move to shrink general administrative costs by $1 million annually builds on the 33 percent tuition reduction last year to help the college focus on student learning and affordability.
Bucknell U Creates Sustainability Council
At the university's recent Sustainability Symposium, the president promised a ten-fold increase in green project funding and the creation of a President's Sustainability Council to address large-scale initiatives at the highest administrative level.
California State U Fullerton Students Map Campus Trees
The university's Geographic Informations Systems students have inventoried the 2,333 campus trees and produced a website where users have access to identifying information including its measurements, health and recent treatment.
Harvard U to Sign Onto Responsible Investment Guidelines
The university recently announced its decision to sign onto the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, which is a network for investors who are committed to integrating environmental, social and governance considerations into investment practices and ownership policies.
Loyola Marymount U Achieves Fair Trade Status
The recently attained designation means that the university has met the Fair Trade Campaigns five requirements including sourcing fair trade products at events and meetings and education dissemination about the benefits of fair trade.
North Carolina State U EcoVillage Learns from Boston
The living and learning group recently traveled to Boston to learn how the city embraces sustainability through its Greenovate Boston program. The trip included learning about sustainability at Harvard University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College and Boston Architectural College.
Over 89M Pounds of Material Diverted Through RecycleMania
The nationwide college and university competition to recycle and compost material had 461 participating universities that diverted over 89 million pounds during the eight-week period. Antioch University was awarded Grand Champion with the highest percentage of overall recycled waste (93 percent); Kalamazoo College won the Per Capita Classic with over 48 pounds of recyclables per person; and Valencia College won in the Waste Minimization category with 2.87 pounds of waste per person. Rutgers University won the Gorilla Prize, the highest gross tonnage of combined paper, cardboard and bottle and cans regardless of campus population, at 1.53 million pounds.
Pitzer College to Divest From Fossil Fuel Companies
The college's board of trustees just unanimously approved its Fossil Fuel Divestment-Climate Action Model, which divests nearly all the college's endowment investments by the end of 2014, develops an environmental, social and governance policy to guide investment decisions, and targets a 25 percent reduction of the college's current carbon footprint by the end of 2016.
Stanford U Organizes Inaugural Climate Week
Part of a Stanford Green Fund Project, the university's Graduate School of Business organized the week-long series of events, which seeks to highlight the urgency and opportunity of climate change and engage the campus community in solutions-based thinking.
U Maryland to Help Community Overcome Challenges
A new university program to begin in fall of 2014 called Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability will offer students the opportunity to engage with specific sustainability-related community challenges with coursework tailored to reflect those challenges.
U Maryland Uses Moss to Clean Pool
In an effort to reduce the amount of chemicals used to clean the university's pool, sphagnum moss aids in the cleaning process by stabilizing the pH, which makes the chlorine more effective.
Western Kentucky U Composts Food Waste
Recently installed into an existing university dining hall, the new food pulper/extractor takes pre and post-consumer food waste, breaks it down into small pieces, and then the material is hauled to the university's arboretum to be mixed with wood chips to create compost.
