Johnson County Community College
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began and campus closed to regular operations, JCCC loaned and donated food, equipment, and supplies to community partners.

Critical medical equipment and supplies used in campus respiratory care and neurodiagnostic simulation labs went use at the University of Kansas Health System. Faculty and staff in the science division donated boxes of face masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and other cleaning supplies to Overland Park Regional Medical Center, Olathe Health, and St. Luke's Primary Care.

The Center for Sustainability and hospitality and culinary arts programs made donations of food cultivated on campus and purchased for classroom use to Cross-Lines Community Outreach, TFI Family Services, Hope Faith Ministries, Harvesters, and After the Harvest.

https://www.jccc.edu/media-resources/press-releases/2020/03/college-donates-medical-supplies.html
https://www.jccc.edu/experiences/2020/harvesting-hope-mareske.html
Photo series here: https://jccc.exposure.co/jccc-and-covid19-1

Beginning in 2018, JCCC Waste Minimization Coordinator Krystal Anton coordinated a data collection initiative designed to help the campus understand its effect on bird populations. After securing funding support from the Student Sustainability Committee, Anton coordinated a campuswide window assay, which included labeling all ground-level windows with a unique identifier, mapped walking paths, and coordinated a call for and training of volunteers, including on species identification and geotagging software. After a call for volunteers, recruits were trained with bird decoys to follow a series of predetermined routes several times a day in search of injured birds or other evidence of strikes. In addition to campus and community volunteer support, Anton put in to place several tools to empower all members of the campus community to participate: signage at known problem areas promoting a text hotline and dedicated email address for anyone who saw a bird strike a window or found a bird in distress. Finally, Anton navigated state and federal permitting and coordinated with Baker and Kansas Universities to collect identified and frozen mortalities for biodiversity and taxidermy classes.

Since the program launched in 2018, a series of campus improvements have been put in to place; they are discussed in Innovation Credit C. Thanks to the broad volunteer base, campus and community stakeholders have embraced the campus’ role as a more bird-safe institution, and JCCC staff and students have been able to present on this work to other local, state, regional, and national groups. Data collection continues, with regular walks throughout the year and expanded data collection work during migration season.

The campuswide bird strike study yielded a robust dataset on which to base window treatments and remediation. Working with ornithologists, JCCC’s Waste Minimization Coordinator Krystal Anton researched best practices for window treatments and proposed several solutions, examples of which she installed in prominent locations on campus. Members of the campus community had several weeks during the winter to experience and consider the solutions in practice, and campus administration, employees, and students - including interior designers, cabinet, and board members - all evaluated the options. Their suggestions in hand, Anton worked with campus procurement to open the project for bid, and remediation was applied to the worst locations on campus prior to Spring 2019 migration.

The first cycle of remediation resulted in a 90% decrease in bird strikes in affected areas and a 60% reduction across campus.

Remediation continues based on new data as collected by volunteers and employees throughout the year.

Press coverage includes:
https://blogs.jccc.edu/campusledger/2018/03/27/sustainability-staff-to-research-catalogue-bird-fatalities-on-campus/
https://blogs.jccc.edu/campusledger/2018/12/07/the-colleges-bird-study-continues-into-2019/
https://www.kctv5.com/news/local_news/jccc-conducts-study-to-protect-birds-from-deadly-collisions/article_51ead8ea-d99a-11e9-9989-d38c7689b5c7.html
https://hub.aashe.org/browse/presentation/25368/A-More-Bird-Safe-Campus-The-JCCC-Bird-Collision-Study-in-Practice-and-the-Classroom

In 2019, in a partnership between the Center for Sustainability, Arts Education, and Student Life, JCCC hosted freestyle rap artist and zero-waste activist Joey Feinstein – performing as Joey FineRhyme – in a series of student events and sold-out, face-to-face shows for area school children. Joey's program, called Be The Change, combines freestyle rap with messages about protecting the environment and leading change for a more sustainable future. We had plans to continue the programming in 2020, but safety concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic made those plans impossible.

During the 2019 shows, Joey had a colleague record several of the live offerings, which he was able to cut together into a recording that featured the educational content of his regular performances. JCCC promoted the free virtual show as an opportunity for teachers to provide a field trip of sorts for their students, complete with an interactive component to address student questions, discuss a variety of topics related to sustainability (including students’ fears during the pandemic) and to recreate some of the feeling of live theatre. To accomplish this, Joey and Kristy Howell, of the Center for Sustainability at JCCC, engaged in a question and answer session with the students, played recycling trivia, and closed out the hour-long presentation with a freestyle rap where students could use the chat feature to suggest sustainability-related words Joey then incorporated into his rhymes.

Since the summer of 2019, nearly 1000 students have participated in the virtual opportunity, and the events were so successful during the early lockdown days of the pandemic that teachers are still asking for the virtual option in 2021. While we all look forward to returning to live theatre, the virtual option afforded students an opportunity to engage with sustainability professionals in a much more personal setting, and many disclosed their fears about climate change and their futures in ways they might not have had the chance to in a bigger venue.