Sustainability News

Rajesh Buch, a practice lead with Sustainability Solutions Extension Service under the  Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, graduated from the School of Sustainability last year. He is now applying his background in mechanical engineering, energy systems, and business in the Extension Service, a unique consulting group that pairs student analysts with faculty members who guide sustainability projects.

As a practice lead, Buch organizes the student groups and collaborates with the faculty to implement projects such as greenhouse gas inventories, waste recycling programs, and biofuel evaluations.

"Sustainability is a way to correct our way of developing," he says. "We can start by taking baby steps. I contribute by assisting those private and public organizations that are willing to recognize the importance of sustainability."

Katja Brundiers, ASU's School of Sustainability community-university liaison, led educational sessions at Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions Living Learning Lab workshop. Teams of university administration, facilities, and education members developed their own ideas of a Living Learning Lab on their campus—a place where research turns into campus and community projects that improve sustainability.

"We took a very outcome-oriented approach and facilitated conversations among the three key groups that were represented in the room—faculty, operations and students," Brundiers said. "Some universities were small, some were big, and all were at different levels of developing their Living Learning Labs."

The workshop was presented by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and drew attendees from national universities including Penn State and University of California, Santa Cruz.

Bruce Rittman, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and the director of ASU's Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, is a 2013 Water Environment Federation Fellow. He joins 15 other recipients who have made impactful contributions to the water industry and water quality research.

"WEF is very pleased to recognize these truly outstanding water quality professionals," said WEF Executive Director Jeff Eger. "The 2013 Fellows are among the worlds finest in service to water quality, the environment and public health."

Dr. Rittman is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is well known as developing biofilms used to clean contaminated drinking water. He is a leader in the Membrane Biofilm Reactor project that uses bacteria to get rid of water pollution. As director of the Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Rittman leads teams investigating renewable bioenergy, biofuels, and human health.

Clean Air Cab, a local sustainable taxi cab company, has awarded two School of Sustainability students with scholarships to fund their education in the upcoming year. Incoming freshman Maria Eller plans to study diversity and sustainability while senior Sean Martin plans to explore sustainable consulting.

"We designed our scholarships to reward individuals who share our same values in conserving our ecology and creating sustainability within their thinking as it pertains to their actions, community projects, and future business structures," says Steve Lopez, founder and owner of Clean Air Cab.

Both Eller and Martin say the scholarship will take some pressure off and allow them to focus more on their studies.

Bradley Baker graduated from the School of Sustainability in 2012. Now, he works as a hazardous waste compliance officer at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) Waste Programs Division. He learned at a young age that our resources are finite, and taking care of them takes personal and group responsibility.

In his position, Baker inspects local businesses and facilities to make sure they are following hazardous waste regulations.  Baker says his real-world experience from internships helped him gain his position.

"Find an internship, whether it is paid or unpaid," he tells fellow students. "I have well over a year's worth of experience doing unpaid internships, and I would not have been able to apply for the jobs I did without them."

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By Mick Dalrymple

Note: Mick Dalrymple is a LEED-accredited professional and co-founder of the Arizona Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. He is the ASU project manager of Energize Phoenix, an initiative that aims to save energy, create jobs, and improve local neighborhoods along a 10-mile stretch of Phoenix's light rail. Recently, Dalrymple has been promoting the Global Institute of Sustainability's 2013 Energy Efficiency Idea Guide for Arizona.

Imagine what would happen if an array of stakeholders made a concerted effort to cool the overnight low temperature of downtown Phoenix by one degree. For starters, more people would spend their evenings outdoors, increased economic activity would boost local businesses and tourism dollars, and roughly 21 million kilowatt hours (nearly $2.1 million) of energy would be saved per year.

But most importantly, Phoenix would become a real example to the world that we all can work together to positively change our climate.

Such is the power of One Degree, a simple concept that describes a tremendously complex and ambitious (but doable) challenge to create concerted change that improves community sustainability.

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Arizona State University's School of Sustainability hosted its year-end open house and project showcase on April 24 where students and faculty got to show off their innovative course assignments and partnerships. For example, students in Professor David Manuel-Navarrete's Sustainability Leadership and Social Change course introduced their video highlighting ASU's transformation towards university-wide sustainability.

"Since the School was first established, we have put value on diverse learning and teaching strategies that simulate professional team settings, address real-world sustainability issues and involve community members as project partners," says Katja Brundiers, the School's university-community liaison and the event's organizer.

The event created new collaborations as part of the School's Project-and Problem-Based Learning. Students and faculty interacted together one-on-one as well as with members of the public. The event was part poster session, part mixer, part lecture, and part discussion.

Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability Alumni Chapter won first place in the Sparky’s Membership Mania Competition for the second consecutive year. This competition provides a $500 cash award to the ASU Alumni Chapter with the largest increase in membership each year. Thank you to the many School of Sustainability graduates who have joined the School of Sustainability Alumni Chapter. We appreciate your talents, expertise, and connection to your alma mater! Pictured left to right: Alissa Pierson (ASU Alumni Association), Brigitte Bavousett (School of Sustainability Alumni Chapter President), Dr. Christine Wilkinson (ASU Alumni Association).

Omaya Ahmad, a fellow with Arizona State University’s Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program and a School of Sustainability doctoral student, integrates sustainability in Greenway Middle School's curriculum and established courses.

Particularly, Ahmad teaches environmental sustainability to seventh-graders and societal sustainability to eight-graders. Through Greenway's partnership with the Phoenix Art Museum and the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Ahmad was able to use local artwork to give her students real-life lessons outside the classroom.

“I wanted to do my fellowship in the Paradise Valley Unified School District because I graduated from a school in that district,” says Ahmad. “They matched me to Greenway, because of the opportunities with the honors core there. It was such a great match. It was gratifying to watch the students learn, and I learned a lot, too.”

For his new professor of practice position at ASU's School of Sustainability and ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Peter Byck will be teaching a new "Sustainability Storytelling" course this fall.

Students from the two schools will learn how to produce and direct their own five-minute documentaries about issues surrounding clean energy and climate change. Byck is a seasoned documentarist; his first film, "Garbage," won the South by Southwest Film Festival and his second documentary, "Carbon Nation," is gaining worldwide attention.

“Working with a large university like ASU will allow us to amplify stories out into the world because we need to educate the American people on clean energy,” says Byck.

Natalie Fleming graduated from the School of Sustainability in 2012 and a month later, she obtained a position at a Utah startup called EcoScraps. The company collects food waste from grocery stores, food banks, and farms and turns it into eco-friendly and sustainable gardening products. Working remotely in San Francisco, Fleming is the district sales manager responsible for training EcoScrap employees and representatives.

She gives some advice to graduating sustainability students on how to enter the job market:

"Tell everyone you meet how excited you are to graduate and how much you love sustainability," Fleming says. "Let them know you’re on a job hunt. Share your interest with people and you never know where that connection is going to come from. It will help you get your foot in the door."

Move-out topics like packing, cleaning, and textbooks are covered in The Green Register's "The Green Minute."

For instance, you can collect recycled boxes from local companies instead of buying brand-new boxes. Be sure to sell back your old textbooks, too, or donate them to local schools. And have leftover furniture? Sell it online or host a garage sale.

For more tips, learn about Arizona State University's Ditch the Dumpster program.

Outstanding graduate and Fulbright winner Jill Brumand is an honors student and a double major in sustainability and geography. She started her academic career at Arizona State University in 2009 and will begin her graduate career as a Fulbright master's student at Lancaster University in Northwest England.

During her sophomore year, Brumand partnered with Sustainability Scientist Kelli Larson to do some undergraduate research work on people's landscape choices in Phoenix and the sustainability implications. Throughout the rest of her undergraduate career, Brumand worked with Dell and Maricopa County. She was also a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student with the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) program. Brumand credits her success to the School of Sustainability.

"The School of Sustainability has a network of people who care and check up on you," she says. "The support and encouragement of the faculty and staff at the school has been invaluable."

For the fifth consecutive year, Arizona State University made The Princeton Review's "Green Honor Roll," a list that includes universities across the nation that promote sustainability in education, practices, and partnerships.

ASU has the largest collection of solar panels of any public university and numerous LEED-certified buildings. Sustainability is a core goal across departmental curriculum. The university is also pursuing carbon neutrality by 2035.

As part of the recognition, ASU will appear in The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition, the only free publication that offers information on the top colleges focusing on sustainability.

As part of  Arizona State University’s Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program, engineering graduate student Shawn Fink organized Mountain Pointe High School's Earth Day celebrations. He also partnered with the high school's teachers to create sustainability lesson plans and student projects.

The Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program, part of ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, recently won the 2013 President's Award for Sustainability. Since the program's inception, ASU has partnered with more than ten local K-12 schools. Graduate students at ASU can learn how to interact with students, plan lessons, and gain real-world experience in teaching.

“High school students will face real, complex sustainability challenges in their lifetimes,” says Monica Elser, a principal investigator for the Sustainable Schools program. When students learn about sustainability in their classrooms and through real projects implemented in their schools, she says, “it helps them see how sustainability applies to them, and how they can make a difference in the future.”

A recent School of Sustainability alum, Andrew Krause, and his mentor, Sustainability Scientist George Basile, and two former classmates have launched the website, eEcosphere in an effort to make sustainability actions easier to adopt among everyday people.

The website is based on years of research done by Basile and other sustainability scientists. The research they compiled outlines how people and corporations have undertaken sustainability efforts. This research is now on eEcosphere in an easy-to-read, interactive format with social capabilities.

“A person may already be saving energy but might need help with water conservation; someone else might need help with both,” Krause elaborates. “eEcosphere helps people identify and adopt ideas that match their personal sustainability goals. It embeds a scientific approach in the decision-making process and encourages people to take action as a group using the social web.”

For their demonstrated excellence in fostering the successful development, implementation and promotion of sustainability, three programs at ASU were awarded the President's Award for Sustainability:

Facilities Management Grounds Services – Grounds for Grounds

The program recycles coffee grounds into fertilizer, working towards Arizona State University's zero waste goal.

Materials Management Recycling

The recyclable items list has grown thanks to ASU's Materials Management, which also helps ASU Recycling staff.

Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools

Graduate students, professors, high school students and teachers, and researchers team up to work on a project to make a local Arizona school more sustainable.

Women & Philanthropy, a group committed to supporting and investing in Arizona State University, awarded $286,541 to six promising programs this year, the highest amount of total annual funding in its 10-year history.

While this year’s grants recognize ASU’s commitment to science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM), they also include programs that support ASU’s commitment to connect with communities through mutually beneficial partnerships.

The School of Sustainability, part of the Global Institute of Sustainability, received $30,200 to work with the journal, "The Sustainability Review," to produce public videos highlighting current research in an easy-to-understand format.

Visit the Farmers Market @ the ASU Tempe Campus on Tuesday, April 23 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to celebrate Earth Day 2013. This will be the last market of the spring season.

This market will feature guest vendors, Medicine Take-Back Day, prize drawings and extra tables and chairs for lunch dining.

Visit Farmers Market Special Events to learn more or email FarmersMarket@asu.edu.

Emily Allen, a sustainability and English major and student in Barrett, The Honors College, has been named a 2013 Udall Scholar by the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation. She will receive a $5,000 scholarship to use toward tuition for her senior year at Arizona State University.

Allen hopes to follow in the footsteps of the scholarship's namesake, Morris K. Udall, a U.S. congressman who established legislation in Arizona to expand national parks and create the Central Arizona Project.

“My career goal is to work with local governments in the state of Arizona to protect fragile water resources from the pressures of overuse and rapid urban development. I plan to accomplish this goal as an attorney with a water law specialty, either in a private firm or a local municipality,” Allen stated on her scholarship application.