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This award recognizes outstanding student research that advances the field of campus sustainability.  Students are invited to submit research papers on campus sustainability of any length.  The winning paper or papers will receive priority review for possible publication in Sustainability: The Journal of Record.  Longer papers will be edited to meet the Journal’s length standards.  The awards will be presented at the Greening of the Campus VIII Conference (Sept. 20-23 in Indianapolis, IN).

Examples of research topics that could merit an award include:

• Best practices for a specific type of campus sustainability initiatives.
• Costs and benefits of campus sustainability efforts.
• Relationships between campus sustainability and other indicators such as number and/or quality of applicants for admission, alumni donations, number and/or quality of job applicants, campus employee satisfaction, etc.
• Case studies of campus sustainability programs.
• A comparative evaluation of different approaches to campus sustainability.
• An assessment of the effectiveness of strategies used to foster sustainability on campus.

Applicants may submit as many papers as they wish. AASHE will post eligible submissions on its website to help build the field of campus sustainability.

Eligibility: Any undergraduate or graduate student currently enrolled at a US or Canadian institution of higher education who has written a paper on campus sustainability is eligible for this award.  Groups of students who have written papers on campus sustainability are also eligible for this award.  Papers that have been previously published, are in a language other than English, or were not completed within the 12-months prior to the application deadline are not eligible for this award.

To apply for a 2009 Award for Student Research on Campus Sustainability, complete the online application form by July 1, 2009. Applicants will receive notice of the award decisions by late August.

Previous Student Research on Campus Sustainability Award Winners

Ryan Graunke, University of Florida (2008)

This resource, developed by AASHE, contains links to information about sustainable landscaping practices, policies, and plans.

Read the press release.

Carolyn Adams, program coordinator for the Humanities Research Center, was among the those who took advantage of Rice’s first “free”-cycling event, held at Rice Memorial Center’s Grand Hall May 21. Departments dropped off their excess or unused office supplies in the morning, and in the afternoon those items that had been one department’s surplus became another’s provisions — for free.

Thirty-six tables were filled with various office supplies, including an abundance of binders, which proved to be a popular item. “At the end of the day, we had nine binders left out of several hundred,” said Ute Franklin, manager of Delivery Services.

Items that were not claimed by the end of the event were slated for donation to a charitable organization.

Read the press release.

A group of Virginia Tech students have produced more than 200 gallons of biodiesel as part of a senior design project for the department of mechanical engineering. The Virginia Tech Bio-Fuels group (http://www.vtbiofuels.com/) is putting the fuel to direct use, running two pickup trucks on the liquid in a bid to not only stave off the use of foreign-bought oil but also to be environmentally friendly.

Read the press release.

The next time you see an Oberlin College grounds person mowing the lawn you may pick up the whiff of fried foods emanating from the tractor instead of diesel exhaust. That is because veggie-oil powered lawn mowing has come to campus.

The brainchild of Oberlin Grounds Services Manager Dennis Greive and his crew, the changeover was implemented by Sam Merrett of Full Circle Fuels, who converted the vehicle to run on 100% waste vegetable oil from campus dining halls. Greive believes it is one of the first such conversions by institutions of higher learning in the country.

Read the press release.

Vice-chancellors and presidents from Universitas 21, the international network of 21 research-intensive universities in 14 countries, on Friday signed a statement on sustainability at their annual meeting held in Seoul, South Korea. The statement emphasises the important role universities play in facing the challenges of climate change, the decline of biodiversity, the need for energy, food and water security, and of economic sustainability and of human health.

Read the press release.

Students in a Technology Clinic class are working with Easton’s West Ward Neighborhood Partnership on issues concerning the management of surface water runoff.

Tech Clinic is a hands-on course founded in 1986 that brings together students from different majors to help solve real-world problems of a business, nonprofit organization, or government body. This project is a continuation of a previous Tech Clinic’s efforts in the West Ward to improve the neighborhood’s urban ecology, which concerns interactions between people and nature in city environments.

Read the press release.

Alabama State University’s science program is leading the way in a model energy conservation program that will advance the study of biodiesel fuels, allow students to study conservation methods, and help make the Earth a “greener” place to live.

ASU, the Montgomery Public Schools (MPS) and the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries (ADAI) have announced a three-way partnership to establish a “Save the Environment” program, which will produce biodiesel fuel from recycled cooking oils for use in MPS buses and other equipment they use.

The scientific portion of the program will be administered by Alabama State University.

Read the full story from Inside Higher Ed.

Signatories of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment publicly pledge to take a series of concrete steps “in pursuit of climate neutrality.” The biggest deadline is yet to come: Climate action plans, which are to outline an institutional strategy for achieving climate neutrality and include a target date, are due for the charter signatories by September 15. Colleges can set their own timelines for achieving climate neutrality, but are (voluntarily) bound to set reporting deadlines along the way.

So far, the early signatories have had to submit an implementation profile identifying the “tangible actions” with which they’ll begin, and a baseline inventory of their current greenhouse gas emissions. Participating colleges submit to public accountability and scrutiny of their progress: In that spirit, 78 percent are meeting their reporting deadlines and are considered “in good standing,” according to the recently-released annual report. Another 22 percent are not. (The reporting system is available online.)

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

River views, granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, 9-foot ceilings. This is student housing?

When classes start this fall — if all goes as planned — some 300 students at Johnson & Wales University will be living in Capitol Cove, an upscale condominium project that had been languishing on the market for more than six months.

Read the full story in the Christian Science Monitor.

From kindergarten to college, school cafeterias become ecofriendly by banishing trays, growing veggies, and composting waste.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

A new oath to be taken by graduates of Harvard Business School next week says, in effect, that greed is not good.

Read the press release.

Beginning in June 2010, Kresge will only award capital challenge grants to colleges and universities building environmentally sustainable facilities.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

The 1970s-era modernist building in Chicago will undergo a $350 million green retrofit, which includes the installation of wind turbines on its roof.

NetDMR is a national tool for regulated Clean Water Act permittees to submit discharge monitoring reports (DMRs) electronically via a secure Internet application to U.S. EPA through the Environmental Information Exchange Network. NetDMR allows participants to discontinue mailing in hard copy forms under 40 CFR 122.41 and 403.12.

NetDMR is now available to EPA Regions and select States, Tribes, and Territories. EPA Regions and States that are currently utilizing NetDMR include: Region 1 (New Hampshire and Massachusetts), Region 3 (District of Columbia), Region 6 (Gulf of Mexico), Utah, and Louisiana. Additional States, Tribes, and Territories may adopt Network Discharge Monitoring Report (NetDMR) and enable their regulated NPDES facilities to begin utilizing the electronic reporting tool.

Built on previous efforts to create electronic discharge monitoring reports (eDMRs), NetDMR was developed under an EPA grant by a consortium of states coordinated by the Environmental Council of States (ECOS) and led by Texas. NetDMR provides a generic, open-standards-based, CROMERR-approved eDMR system. The application can be implemented by the U.S. EPA, by a state, or by any other organization with the authority to accept DMRs.

For more information visit:

• For States & Regions
• For Permittees

Read the full press release.

Continuing its commitment to provide more certification options for its customers, International Paper (NYSE: IP) today announced the expansion of its Forest Stewardship Council(R) (FSC(R)) Chain-of-Custody certification to include a majority of its U.S. pulp and paper mills and a number of converting facilities across its businesses. The increase establishes the company as having the largest FSC manufacturing platform across the globe.

Read the full post at Cybertration.

Considering introducing solar power into your home? Well, if so, you’ll be pleased to hear that I have gathered together some information so you can get a good idea of how much it will cost and exactly what the scale of the job is.

The new Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Formal and Informal Educators is an updated and expanded version of  Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Teachers and Interpreters, first published in 2001.

The new kit is designed for classroom teachers and informal educators in parks, refuges, forest lands, nature centers, zoos, aquariums, science centers, etc., and is aimed at the middle school grade level. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with six other federal agencies (National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USDA/Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management), developed the kit to aid educators in teaching how climate change is affecting our nation’s wildlife and public lands, and how everyone can become “climate stewards.”

Read the full story from Renewable Energy Magazine.

The European Environmental Agency (EEA) has published a technical report entitled “Europe’s onshore and offshore wind energy potential: An assessment of environmental and economic constraints”, in which it estimates that wind power could cover the continent’s energy demand 20 times over in 2020, with total annual production amounting to 70,000 TWh.

Read the full story at NPR.

Promoting responses to global warming as an economic opportunity — rather than as a pollution problem that needs to be solved through regulation — has long been championed by a tiny think tank in Oakland, Calif.

Hat tip to Thomas Vinson-Peng for the link.