Rooting For The Green Team

Colleges aren't just going head to head on the gridiron and basketball court any more. Now, the big rivalry may be in garbage.

In late January, more than 400 institutions across the U.S. kicked off a 10-week competition--RecycleMania--to see which of them is the best at recycling and which is doing the most to cut the waste produced on campus. Students tally up the results each week and post them to RecycleMania's Web site for a bit of bragging rights.

RecycleMania is about half over and the scoreboard leader is Kalamazoo College, in Kalamazoo, Mich., which is first in a combined ranking of source reduction and recycling. North Lake College, a community college in Irving, Texas, is tops currently in waste minimization, while the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recycled the highest gross tonnage of materials so far. There are four additional challenges in recycling by source material. Medical University of South Carolina is the leader in paper, United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., is shipping out the most corrugated cardboard, Rhode Island School of Design is tops in bottles and cans, and Mills College, a school for women only in Oakland, Calif., is socking away the most food service organics.

Updated results are posted every Friday, and you can check them here.

Maryland Gangs Up On Climate Change

How many colleges does it take to change a light bulb?

The University System of Maryland has decided that the magic number should be all 13 of its universities and research centers, and that they will not only change their light bulbs, but a bit of the world too.

USM Chancellor William E. Kirwan (pictured) recently launched a sustainability and climate change initiative aimed at sharply cutting his schools' energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, developing green building guidelines for new construction and major renovations, strengthening academic and research programs on the environment, and improving the environment of Maryland. Each of USM's schools--which range from the many campuses of the University of Maryland to Towson University--will be building out its own sustainability program and initiatives.

Kirwin named Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, to be USM's vice chancellor of environmental sustainability. USM has already set up a Web page on its sustainability initiative. You can get more information on its many green undergraduate and graduate degrees here .

Image credit: The University System of Maryland

A Video Game For The Environment

Can video games save the planet? Maybe, if they are in the hands of the right high school students.

The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley was just awarded $238,000 for its work on an alternative reality game that stars … the environment. The game, called "Black Cloud", lets teams of high school students use data from real air quality sensors to act the part of real estate developers or environmentalists. The students, who are in high schools in Los Angeles and Cairo, must balance sites for development with sites for conservation.

Berkeley's work was recognized by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. But "Black Cloud" had a lot of competition: Judges sorted through more than 1,000 applications to name seven winning projects, which also included another environmentally themed entry. The Sustainable South Bronx Fab Lab, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won $100,000 for a system that lets users turn digital models into real world constructions.

You can learn more about the HASTAC competition here.

Image, credit: Black Cloud development screenshot, The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley

Western Washington's Conservation Challenge

Sometimes, in environmental studies, the goals are so big that they are overwhelming. Maybe that was Mark Powell's inspiration for the highly focused challenge he just threw out to students in a guest lecture at Western Washington University.

Powell, a former university professor and scientist with a focus on conservation and sustainable fishing who blogs now at "Blogfish", calls his idea "3 C conservation". The first C is for change--picking out the conservation change you want to see happen. The second is for context--make it easy for people to understand and embrace. And the third is for compelling--using the best tools new media has to offer to get the most people involved and contributing.

Western Washington seems a good place to issue such a challenge. The Bellingham-based institution offers both a B.S. and a B.A. in environmental studies, the latter with a concentration in either environmental education or planning and policy through its Huxley College of the Environment. Nicholas Zaferatos, one of its professors, has just been named the principal investigator of a European Union project to build sustainable economy trade ties in the Mediterranean. The university also has a green car project through its Vehicle Research Institute.

Image, credit: Viking 32, Western Washington University

CBS Looks At Green Jobs

So you tell the folks you're going to major in environmental studies, and what's the first thing you're likely to hear? "What are you going to do with a degree in that?"

CBS News' Early Show ran a segment earlier this week that looked at some of the green jobs that are popping up around the country. The piece highlighted obvious opportunities in environmental law and engineering, both fields that offer substantial salaries, and the growing trend among companies to have social responsibility or sustainability professionals. But it also focused on jobs that could be attained after a community college program, such as an associate's degree in solar power. According to CBS, the starting salary for a solar installation pro is $40,000 a year.

The CBS piece, by correspondent Danny Seo, also noted that there is a rising demand for talent in fields that might not be covered by a traditional college degree, such as artists and designers. It says that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks growing and shrinking areas for employment in America, has picked out green interior design for homes and businesses as a fast-growing field.

Image credit: hmm360 at Morguefile.com

Green In Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Morris has had an extremely green campus for years. It gets up to 60% of its power from wind turbines like the one at left. Now it has a major to match.

Last week the university, which is based in the west/central part of the state and is one of five campuses of the University of Minnesota, announced that it will have a full-fledged environmental studies major come fall. The interdisciplinary program builds on an earlier ES concentration with courses such as "Environmental Problems and Policy", "Environmental Biology" and an English class called "The Environmental Imagination". There will be internship and research opportunities with soil and wildlife conservation agencies, and the university says it will add a faculty expert in fisheries management and environmental policy and ethics next fall.

UMM is continuing to green its campus too. It will open a sustainable dorm, dubbed the Green Prairie Community, in the fall of 2009, and it is scheduled to be energy self-sufficient through onsite renewable generation by 2010.

Image credit: University of Minnesota, Morris