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An update on OWU\u2019s\u00a0Environmental Studies Program<\/strong> as the summer of\u00a02017 starts.<\/p>\n This is a followup to a\u00a02015-2016 update<\/a> and 2016-2017 update<\/a> posted on\u00a0the OWU Environment & Sustainability Blog.<\/p>\n First of all, the Environmental Studies Program is no longer a thin after our proposal for an expanded Environment and Sustainability Program<\/strong> was voted into existence at the May 2017 faculty meeting.\u00a0The proposal was compiled by a group of faculty, Laurie Anderson,<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Ellen Arnold<\/a>,<\/strong> Amy Downing<\/a>,<\/strong> Chris Fink,<\/strong><\/a> and John Krygier<\/a>,<\/strong>\u00a0drawing from 5 years of efforts. Additional work on the Environmental Science major was done by Bart Martin<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Information about the program has been added to the OWU web pages:<\/p>\n Our proposed OWU Campus Sustainability Plan<\/strong> created by students, staff and faculty over the last few years is just about in its final form and should be heading to the administration this summer.<\/p>\nSustainability_Plan_OWU_March_2017<\/a>\n Student Emily Howald<\/strong> has spent the year gathering feedback and making adjustments to the plan.\u00a0The Sustainability Task Force<\/strong><\/a> (STF), initiated in 2008, has overseen the development of the plan. Contact Nathan Amador<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and let him know if you want to be added to the STF mailing list. The STF is open to all.<\/p>\n Student Emily Howald<\/strong> and faculty member John Krygier<\/strong> wrote a paper which is to be published as a chapter in\u00a0the book\u00a0Sustainable Communities Design Handbook<\/strong><\/em> edited by OWU Alumni Woody Clark<\/strong> (OWU 1967). The book should be published by Elsevier in 2018. The chapter is an overview of OWU’s approach to sustainability, called “Scrappy Sustainability at Ohio Wesleyan University.” Clark was recently presented with\u00a0an OWU Alumni\u00a0Distinguish Achievement Award<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The 2017 May Move Out<\/strong> was another success. Students donated tons of items to Goodwill as they moved off campus last month. The event, first held in 2012, is\u00a0at this point relatively easy to manage and does not cost the University any money (the cost of additional storage pods for donations is offset by the need for fewer trash dumpsters).<\/p>\n Our reusable carryout food container program<\/strong> is also relatively stable after some ups and downs over the last year. We have added drop off locations for the containers, increased their size, and decreased the size of the paper, throw-away containers (thus an incentive to use the reusable containers). Students Izzy Sommerdorf<\/strong> and Sarah Hanes<\/strong> have developed a proposal for making the program even easier for students, and our campus food service, Chartwells, is evaluating their proposal.<\/p>\n Sustainable food<\/strong> on campus has moved forward on several fronts. Our campus food service has recently worked out an agreement to purchase\u00a0local produce<\/strong>\u00a0from the Seminary Hill Farm<\/strong>, just south of campus, beginning this fall. This outcome is based on the efforts of student Ellen Sizer.<\/strong><\/p>\n Student Emily Howald<\/strong> is working on a proposal for quarter-credit OWU<\/strong>\u00a0Activity courses<\/strong> focused on gardening. Students would work with a skilled gardener in a course held during the first half of the fall semester, and second half of the spring semester, to maintain our campus community garden.<\/p>\n Students Maddie Coalmer<\/strong> and Larynn Cutshaw<\/strong>\u00a0generated\u00a0a proposal\u00a0to plant perennial crops (asparagus, mint, raspberries), which require minimal maintenance,\u00a0on a few\u00a0out-of-the-way locations on campus.<\/p>\n Another successful Green Week<\/strong> was held at the end of the 2017 spring semester:<\/p>\n We have expanded the number of hydration stations<\/strong> on campus with a half-dozen new stations being installed this summer. Most of the new hydration stations are in or around athletic facilities on campus. Athletes have tended to be one of the more significant users of bottled water. Student Dominic Orsini<\/strong> wrote a grant and received funding for promotional water bottles. These will be used to promote the new hydration stations to athletes when they move on campus late this summer.<\/p>\n Nathan Amador<\/strong>\u00a0will take a group of 12 students to Costa Rica as part of a Travel Learning course. This will be the second time the class will travel to Costa Rica. The students will learn environmental data collection and analysis methods, then implement those methods while in Costa Rica over the semester break (January 2018). Amador and the students are working with\u00a0Amy Work<\/strong> (OWU \u201904) and her Geoporter organization. More info on Amy\u2019s efforts are here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Again, thanks for all the\u00a0efforts on what has been a great cross-disciplinary collaboration between faculty, students, staff and alumni over the past five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An update on OWU\u2019s Environmental Studies Program as the summer of 2017 starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":1103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,27,13,35,16,17,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-campus-life","category-courses","category-recycling-reuse","category-sustainability-task-force","category-sustainable-food","category-travel-learning"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sustainability.owu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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