Students develop sustainable impact solutions for a greener campus

academics 1:32 Students develop sustainable impact solutions for a greener campus

By:

Lee Friesland

23 Apr 2025 31

The Sustainable Impact Academy is bringing together 15 faculty and staff from across College of Natural Resources and Environment, Pamplin College of Business, and Green Engineering, creating a unique opportunity for students to work in cross-disciplinary teams to tackle sustainability challenges using campus as a classroom. The faculty work as mentors to the students and help them develop a green Request For Proposal.

It's almost like a treasure hunt where students can look around on campus and identify the problem, right, and then work to develop a solution to the problem. The Sustainable Impact Academy brings together students, faculty, and staff to engage in problem based learning using campus as a classroom. Students learn how to assess water and energy efficiencies and how to account for the payback period for implementing changes. We checked out some old faucets and equipment in Patton Hall, and we also compared that equipment to Holden Hall, which is a newer building that is more resource efficient with water, and we're just trying to replicate that in the older building to try to decrease water consumption while increasing efficiency. The biggest advantage for this particular Sustainable Impact Academy is that it exposes the students to so many different areas of expertise. It engages students to help develop sustainability projects on campus that have not only necessarily a good financial payback, but also environmental impact. The green RFP or a green requests for proposals is something that we've used as a structured way for students to bring together the data they've collected, the cost associated with implementing changes, and what that would look like in terms of the total costs and benefits that we could implement on campus.