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

Religion And The Environment

Science and religion haven't gotten along all that well lately. So it might come as a surprise that the one place that they are finding some common ground is in environmental studies.

How so? Well, the historic mission of many Christian colleges is to help students care for the world that God has given them. And that places the environment squarely on their curriculum.

Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, which grew out of the Wesleyan movement, offers a bachelor's in environmental science. St. Norbert, a Catholic college in Wisconsin founded by the Norbertine order, does too. Santa Clara University, a Jesuit school in California's Silicon Valley, offers both environmental science and environmental studies, and trumpets the fact that its alumni magazine is printed on paper and at a printing facility certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

All of which leads me to Environmentalchristian's Weblog. Its author is a Baptist geologist pursing a master's of science in environmental geochemistry at Texas A&M. What he has to say about being a Christian and an environmentalist makes for very interesting reading indeed.

Green Studies Add Up At Holy Cross

Colleges are structuring environmental studies programs in many different ways. There are policy tracks and science tracks, programs with a focus on the domestic economy and those that take a global view.

Until last week, I hadn't seen a math angle. But there it is at Holy Cross, and it has, according to the college, become very popular. It might have something to do with the fact that Catherine Roberts, who is an associate professor of mathematics, is also the director of the college's Environmental Studies program. She teaches a course called Environmental Mathematics (in the Holy Cross catalog as Math 110), and this semester it was full--with a waiting list.

Environmental Mathematics is just one component to the environmental studies program at Holy Cross. But it seems a fair barometer of a larger trend there. The college says there were eight Environmental Studies students graduated in 2004; 12 in 2005; 23 in 2006; and 33 in 2007. There's a lot happening outside the math department too. Roberts has rallied professors for a series of 15 free lectures that range from a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday to women in environmental jobs.

Image, credit: Catherine Roberts, by John Buckingham

Focus The Nation, Hit--And Miss

America's colleges and universities focused on the environment yesterday, but what about the rest of the country?

First, the good news. Higher education largely heeded the call of the environmental advocacy group Focus The Nation: 1,200 colleges and universities hosted events, as did 300 K-12 schools across the country. So many users tried to watch the group's Webcast, "The 2% Solution", that the site crashed. Collegiate publications did a bang-up job covering the event. By the goals that FTN had set for itself, it was a big hit.

But the mainstream media? Not so much. OK, it is tough to command front-page space on a day when Microsoft makes a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! As you might have expected, FTN made the California papers with staff-written stories in The San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The FTN story didn't make the print edition of The New York Times, although its Web site ran a dispatch from the Associated Press. USA Today had the story only in print, though it's hard to tell how many editions ran it.

Did the big press miss the big story? Only time will tell.

Udall Scholarship Deadline Nears

A blog created for and about biology undergraduates at Indiana University has put up a very complete post on applying for a 2008 Morris K. Udall Foundation Scholarship.

"Mo" Udall, who died in 1998, was an environmentalist long before that term was part of the political landscape. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years, he wrote the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which brought nearly 80 million acres into the U.S. National Parks system, much of it as wilderness. Congress funded a scholarship in his honor in 1992, which is why there's a ".gov" in the Web site for his foundation. The 80 scholarships and 50 honorable mentions it awards every year fall into three broad categories: any student showing commitment to the environment, native American or Alaska native students planning careers in tribal public policy, and native American or Alaska native students heading toward careers in healthcare for native American peoples.

To be eligible, a student must be nominated by his or her college's representative to the Udall Foundation. The deadline for nominations is March 4, and the winners will be announced April 8. For more information, you can also read the Foundation's guidelines here.

UNC's Green Communicators

It's not easy to write about the environment. Passion for the subject matter can sometimes get in the way of even the best prose. So it's interesting to see a group of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cutting their teeth on both the environment and communication by writing a green blog.

Environmental Blogging is co-authored by students taking Environmental Advocacy, a course taught by a doctoral candidate interested in rhetoric, public culture, environmental communication, and critical-cultural theory. The class itself looks at ways of using oral and written communication to influence others and what it calls "dilemmas of redress" of environmental problems. The course is also offered in a service-learning version in the spring. That allows students to do more than 30 hours of service with an environmentally-oriented group in the surrounding community and participate in advocacy field trips across the state.

UNC runs much of its environmental programs through its Institute For The Environment, which brings together the university's many departments to do interdisciplinary research and education. It offers both a bachelor of arts in environmental studies and a bachelor of science in environmental science. In addition, there is a bachelor of science option through its School of Public Health, which also offers four related master's degrees and a doctorate in environmental sciences and engineering.

SUNY-ESF Adds Master's Programs

New York's state system of higher education includes one university that is all environment, all the time: the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. And somehow, despite having a roster that already includes 20 undergraduate majors and nearly two dozen graduate degree programs, it has managed to add two more.

Last week, SUNY-ESF announced that it has added both a master of science and a master of professional studies in environmental studies.

Dr. David A. Sonnenfeld, chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at ESF said the MS degree will be an interdisciplinary approach to environmental issues geared toward students from a wide range of undergraduate backgrounds. The MPS degree is career-enhancement program aimed at individuals already working in environmental jobs. Students can take classes at ESF as well as at Syracuse University, and they may also work toward concurrent degrees at SU's Newhouse School of Public Communications or its Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs.

Image: Environmental studies students at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry research the urban environment along Onondaga Creek in Syracuse, N.Y.

Credit: SUNY-ESF

W&M Gets $1.5 Million Grant

The College of William and Mary has gotten a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to add two novel programs to its environmental studies lineup.

The first will be a Center for Geospatial Analysis, which will train students to use geographic information systems to analyze environmental data. The Mellon grant will also be used to set up a postdoctoral program in environmental science and policy. According to Carl Strikwerda, W&M's dean of arts and sciences, the program will help graduate students learn to balance the teaching and research aspects of the faculty positions they are likely to hold. The college must, however, raise $1.6 million to complete the endowment for the teacher-scholar program.

W&M's environmental studies efforts have received money twice before from the Mellon Foundation, which counts conservation and the environment among its core program areas. In 2000, the foundation funded the development of its environmental science and policy minor--now a major. It provided a second round of funding in 2004.

Image credit: The College of William and Mary

Nebraska's Switchgrass Researchers

There seem to be, thankfully, few sacred cows when it comes to university research on the environment.

The clearest sign of that came last week, when the University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced that researchers there had shown that switchgrass produces 540% more energy than is needed to grow it, compared with just 25% more for corn. This from a university in the heart of America's corn belt.

The research was led by Kenneth P. Vogel, an adjunct professor in the department of agronomy and horticulture whose research into plant genetics is focused on developing perennial grasses and legumes. His work has important implications not only for biofuels, but also for soil and water quality in the heartland: The planting of perennial grasses would mean less erosion from plowing and less pesticide runoff into rivers and streams.

In addition to its research, UNL also offers both a bachelor of arts and a bachelor of science in environmental studies through its College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and the College of Arts and Sciences. Beyond the core courses, students can tailor their studies to place emphasis on areas from applied climate science to sociology.

Image credit: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

To Africa And Back At UCSC

Right now on the Web site of the University of California Santa Cruz there's a fascinating look at how one student constructed a rich major in environmental studies.

The piece says that Katie Roper (right) was encouraged to seek ways to expand her studies. And she did, through on-campus studies in globalization, two internships in Kenya and a stint living in UCSC's own sustainable community. Through her globalization studies, known as the Global Information Internship Program, Roper gained videography skills that she put to work in Kenya. She produced a six-minute video documentary on the supporters and opponents of an invasive tree whose growth is providing fuel but compromising the African nation's fragile water supply.

Her experience with UCSC's Program in Community and Agroecology seems to have been equally challenging: PICA students are required to grow, harvest and cook as much of their own food as possible.

Roper was graduated in December and she already has her next step in hand. Next month, she starts work at production assistant for filmmaker Alicia Dwyer.

Photo credit: Jim MacKenzie/UC Santa Cruz

Knox Gets $1M For Earth Science Chair

Microsoft money is funding a fast-growing major at Knox College. The Galesburg, Ill.-based college, whose initial charter was approved by an Illinois legislator by the name of Abraham Lincoln, announced late last week that it had received $1 million from an alumni who had retired from Microsoft to endow a faculty chair in earth sciences.

The money comes from Douglas L. and Maria Bayer of Bellevue, Wash. Douglas Bayer was graduated from Knox in 1966 a bachelor's degree in physics. He had worked at Microsoft since 1994, and held the title of software security architect before his retirement.

At Knox, earth sciences are part of its interdisciplinary environmental studies program. Although the major was created just seven years ago it is currently one of the top 10 majors at the college. The chairman of the environmental studies department said the college is now reviewing applications for the position and hopes to fill it later this year.

Ferrum Fund Seeks To Grow Green Majors

The scholarship outlook for green majors gets greener every day.

Ferrum College, a small institution in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains has announced that it has gotten backing for a scholarship fund for high school students who plan to be environmental science majors there.

The funding comes from West Development Group, an Ohio-based maker of eco-friendly roofing materials. But WDG has also committed to pulling some of its business partners into the fund, which is called the “Scientia Terrae Causa” Environmental Science Scholarship.

Ferrum, which was founded in 1913, claims to have the second-oldest environmental science program in the United States. For more information, check out the major's description here.

Rutgers Seeks Environmental Stewards

Rutgers University offers 25 undergraduate majors through its School of Environmental and Biological Sciences alone, ranging from partially to fully green in outlook. It has a center that looks at the role of biotechnology in agriculture and the environment, another that explores quantitative modeling of environmental systems and an institute that looks at changing energy policy and technology.

But what if you don't have time for a four-year degree? Rutgers is now recruiting students for an environmental stewardship program that combines classroom learning with service learning. The Rutgers Environmental Stewards program aims to give ordinary New Jerseyans the science background they need to become involved with environmental issues in the state. Students will spend 60 hours in a classroom or field study, and then another 60 hours volunteering on an environmental project.

Classes will be held at four locations around the state. For more information, or contact the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station by clicking here.