Two new courses on sustainability are reducing the university’s environmental footprint, as well as cutting costs of facility operations by 10 percent.
Huxley College of the Environment developed Sustainability Literacy, a three-part series of classes to train students to approach sustainability as activists.
Seth Vidana, coordinator of the Office of Sustainability at Western, teaches the Sustainability Literacy III studio course. Vidana took a similar class as an undergraduate at Western and returned to the class as a co-teacher while pursuing his master’s degree. After graduating, he took over teaching the class full time.
In the course, Vidana said students create initiative projects that promote environmental sustainability in various areas of Western's campus.
This quarter’s initiative ideas include a plan for developing a system to use stored storm water for campus irrigation and a proposal for an end of the year swap to recycle useable dorm materials which would have otherwise been thrown out.
Another project seeks to introduce a new system of accounting for the energy costs of academic buildings, which has been seen to lower utility costs by close to 10 percent at other universities, Vidana said.
Western student Erika Redzinak is working on a project that monitors the energy use of campus computer systems in an effort to reduce the energy needed to keep campus computers on throughout the day.
Nicholas Zaferatos, associate professor of planning and environmental policy at Huxley, helped design the new courses and said they are important for students in any major.
“We want students to be literate and educated in what sustainability is,” Zaferatos said. “It can be incorporated into any discipline."
Zaferatos said the hope of the Sustainability Institute at Western is to integrate sustainability as a General University Requirement, major and minor program — eventually into a graduate program at Western.
The literacy courses have not been permanently adopted into Western's curriculum, but the Sustainability Institute will submit a proposal for adoption to President Bruce Shepard this spring.
“It all takes time,” Zaferatos said. “We are very hopeful for the sustainability program’s success here. Students are demanding it."
