Students greening campus

By: Alexia Lang

Posted: 11/17/08

Thanks to a new class in the Environmental Studies Program, students are learning to take a hands-on approach to sustainability.

Last spring, Geosciences Professor Caroline Davies and Urban Planning and Design Professor Michael Frisch teamed up to teach the cluster course Environmental Sustainability.

Frisch just returned from presenting a paper on implementing the course to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in Raleigh, N.C.

"Students were exposed to an amazing range of national level speakers, global and local issues," Davies said. "Sustainability requires community, so students were required to identify a community of their choice, develop a sustainability project and carry it out."

Some of the campus related projects the 80 students enrolled in the class completed include calculating the university's carbon footprint, evaluating dorm energy efficiency and recycling, building from dumpster waste and displaying art on sustainability.

Other off-campus projects included recycling in public schools, recycling in a prison, evaluating a commercial green roof, analysis of light rail for Kansas City, analysis of the municipal stream buffer policy and developing sustainable neighborhood designs.

Kaye Johnston, coordinator for Campus Facilities Management and director of the Sustainability Team, helped students with their projects and worked with a couple students on the campus carbon baseline study to determine the amount of carbon UMKC emits.

She said the practical application is huge in getting students engaged in sustainability efforts.

"Anytime you engage students and faculty with the many facets of campus life and the surrounding community, you have a heightened awareness of what is going on," Johnston said. "In that way, students can look at their daily decisions and see how they impact their quality of life and then apply that knowledge both on campus and in the community. When more individuals realize that their actions do matter, it is revolutionary."

Davies said the results, in part stimulated by the class, include the University of Missouri President Gary Forsee signing the College and University President's Climate Commitment, more dialog across campus about sustainability, the new student union being built LEED certified, sustainability becoming part of the University Urban Mission and more.

"In the last 2 1/2 years, UMKC has definitely begun to move toward an environmentally sustainable emphasis," she said. "The Environmental Studies Program is in the forefront of this change on campus. The environment is inextricably linked to our urban mission and our goal of leading in education and research."

Coming at the issue from a science perspective, Davies said she hopes sustainability is not just a fad that will soon leave campus.

"These are ways to be much more efficient and, in the end, cost us less. I think momentum is gaining."

At this point, the next Environmental Sustainability class has not been scheduled and the instructors have not been selected. However, Philosophy Professor Jim Sheppard and History Professor John Herron are considering teaching the class, according to Davies.

She hopes the class will be taught by different professors each time it is offered in order to bring new perspectives to the subject.

She said, "What students find most appealing about our program is the wide range of expertise and course offerings across campus, each providing perspective on environmental issues relevant to students lives."

alang@unews.com