Environmental studies class spreads the word about ways that campus is going green
“The University of Richmond has been implementing sustainability initiatives that the campus community isn’t even aware of,” said Brittni Parris, ’09. “We wanted to highlight some of the ways our school is going green and share them with our fellow students.”
Parris is a member of geography professor Mary Finley-Brook’s environmental studies spring seminar, which hosted the University’s first alternative energy festival on April 2, 2009.
The idea for the festival started in the classroom. As part of the coursework for the seminar, which focuses on global climate change and energy conservation, the students researched how colleges around the country were “green-ing” their communities. Finley-Brook invited journalism professor Steve Nash to talk to the class about the steps Richmond was taking toward energy conservation—specifically, the University’s new energy monitoring system.
The Campus Resource Monitoring System is a Web-based hardware and software system designed to encourage student energy conservation by showing how much energy is being used around campus, especially in dormitories, in real-time. Nash appealed to Finley-Brook’s class for ways to get students informed and excited about this initiative. The class decided to host a festival that would both help to launch the new system and creatively share other ways for the University community to conserve energy.
“We figured that a festival would be the perfect setting for people to interact with the system and see how it works,” said Parris.
With help from the Class of 1992 Environmental Awareness Gift, the Department of Geography and the Environment, the University of Richmond Sierra Club (RENEW) and the Virginia Clean Climate Action Network, the students were able to invite local vendors to set up in the forum outside Gottwald Science Center.
Over 250 students, faculty and staff visited the festival. The University of Richmond jazz ensemble and student A capella group Off the Cuff performed alongside the vendors and against the backdrop of Westhampton Lake. Among the vendors was Molly Harris, owner of the local sustainable restaurant Edible Garden, who gave out free samples of her farm-grown, gourmet food. The solar division of City Space Construction set up a solar panel display, while another local environmental group gave a demonstration on natural fuels, showing how vegetable oil could be recycled for use in vehicles. Representatives from the Richmond office of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network gave out information pertaining to climate change.
Members of Finley-Brook’s class gave presentations of their own: some of the students set up demonstrations of microbial batteries, which produce energy from muck. Parris and others stayed busy drawing students to the main attraction: the energy monitoring system.
“Students would come up and ask how much energy their dorm was using,” Parris said. “They’d compare dorms with their friends and laugh at each other for how much energy they were using. The system puts energy in understandable terms and I think a lot of people walked away inspired to find ways to conserve energy in their dorms.”
Festival-goers walked away from the event with more than just a wealth of knowledge—everyone who visited the event received a free Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulb and Richmond’s Sierra Club, RENEW, gave away free t-shirts and bumper stickers along with recycling tips.
“There were a lot of positive reactions about the festival in our guestbook—it seems like this is something the community wants to continue next year,” said Parris. “Our class is really glad to see all that Richmond’s sustainability working group is doing to make this a greener campus, and now even more people are aware that our school is moving in the right direction.”