Lafayette College
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

A multi disciplinary group of students is working on an ongoing project to calculate the Nitrogen footprint at Lafayette--it measures Nitrogen use from utilities, transportation, fertilizer, and food. The project goal is to understand the greater complexity of the campus' environmental footprint by looking at emissions and use beyond just carbon emissions.

As part of the EGRS 480 Sustainable Solutions class in the Spring of 2012, taught by Julia Nicodemus, a group of 4 students majoring in Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Studies and Policy Studies participated in an energy audit of an off campus student house, Reeder House. As part of the project, the students gathered data (windows, insulation, layout, energy use, etc) on the house and from this data created an energy model on E-Quest (an energy building modeling program). The students compared the model to existing utility data, used the model to evaluate potential energy saving building techniques. They then made recommendations to the college based on data they collected and based on the costs and benefits of the alternatives.

EDIT Lafayette College has a Sustainable Food Loop through its community garden led by Sarah Edmonds, which uses the campus as a living laboratory by providing space for the production of food which is then consumed in the dining halls, which then give waste which is composted again on campus for use on the farm. All aspects of this have provided room for student learning and research into growing food, food recovery, composting, and sustainable land management. Furthermore, this Sustainable Food Loop program and the very existence of LaFarm, our campus sustainable farm, came out of student research projects in civil engineering and geology. Additionally, there is an ongoing student research project into sustainable small-farm infrastructure. Lafayette senior Joe Ingrao recently presented his work at the AASHE conference in Minneapolis. Several students in the Engineering Studies capstone class investigated and designed a sustainable greenhouse for their senior capstone project, while others investigated and designed a Vegetable Wash Station for LaFarm. Professor Dave Brandes is running a Grand Challenges project in Spring 2016 to build that wash station as an independent study with 7 students.

Lafayette College has a small solar PV array and a small wind turbine at the fields that include athletic facilities and LaFarm. Acquiring these renewable energy generation technologies and then working on getting them to output data to recordable, easily accessible locations has been an ongoing project carried out by several students from multiple majors over the last several years. Students in the Engineering Studies capstone in previous years have identified and promoted a solar umbrella for phone charging and a potential solar charging station for electric vehicles.

The pollinator garden is a completely student-run project through the campus organization SEES, the Society of Environmental Engineers and Scientists, advised by Arthur Kney. It came about after a series of Earth Month programs in the spring of 2014 centered around the implications and degree of pollinator decline. The garden will be about 500 square feet and planted with 9 different types of plants native to this region including wild geranium, red columbine and orange cone flowers. The garden will better educate the community about pollinator decline and native landscaping. SEES foresees the garden as a research opportunity and a centerpiece of Lafayette's ambitious sustainability initiatives.

As part of the EGRS 480 Sustainable Solutions class in the Spring of 2014, taught by Julia Nicodemus, a group of 4 students evaluated the parking plan, shuttle plan and other transportation systems on campus. As part of the project, the class surveyed students on their perceptions of how the parking/shuttle system worked and what sort of policies they would/wouldn't like to see on campus. The class performed a policy analysis, through which they evaluated alternatives based on existing criteria and made recommendations to Lafayette's Sustainability Committee.

As part of the EGRS 480 Sustainable Solutions class in the Spring of 2014, taught by Julia Nicodemus, a group of 5 students (consisting of those majoring in Engineering Studies, Mechanical Engineering, Math and Physics) evaluated the existing recycling program on campus. They monitored bins on campus to track their contamination and surveyed students for current recycling behaviors and what they did/didn't like about the system. They did this in order to assess alternatives and make recommendations to the sustainability committee, which are being implemented around campus.

In 2013, study of water use in Lafayette's residence halls was done by two students and led by David Veshosky. Through this study, a survey was conducted of student water usage habits and water flow rates were measured. Using this data, a typical student's daily water usage profile was created to show that a typical student's daily water usage is 36.7 gallons, which is less than the US national average per capita of 60 gallons per day. This suggests they Lafayette students are more conservative than the national average. This study also showed that per capita water usage decreases as the occupancy in a residence hall increases and that about 30% of water consumption is due to sink usage. Therefore, this study was able to show where there is room for improvement in water conservation.

In January 2008, Lafayette College set out to minimize its effect on the environment by signing the American College and University's President's Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). This is a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases emissions and protect the environment by incorporating sustainability into research, operations and the curriculum. The most significant goal of of this commitment is the Lafayette College Climate Action Plan, which outlines specific strategies that the College will employ to reduce GHG emissions by 2021. In a fall 2015 Environmental Studies captstone class taught by Ben Cohen and Kira Lawrence, students took on a four pronged approach to "greening Lafayette"--marketing and communications, short term implementation of a first year experience program, planning of long term eco-certificate program, and improving organizational structure and college support of Eco-Reps. The students proposed exciting initiatives that the college intends to implement. The overall purpose is to infuse an environmental ethos in Lafayette through the Connected Communities Program.

Landis, Lafayette's community outreach center, led by Amber Zuber, conducted a study of participation in their volunteer programs. Participants were broken up by gender, race and student involvement on campus (athlete/non-athlete, a part of Greek Life/not a part of Greek life, etc). This study was able to tell the Landis center which demographic groups they needed to target in order to have a more diverse volunteer workforce.

An Engineering and Public Policy course, EGRS 251, taught by Professor Nicodemus, used a policy analysis to determine how best to make a street that runs next to their campus, safer for pedestrians and drivers alike. As part of this class, students talked to members of the community and researched methods of traffic calming, in order to assess the best alternative. In this way, students were able to use their studies to suggest alternatives to make their community a safer place for all. The college has numerous Community Based Learning classes that fit this criteria as well. https://news.lafayette.edu/tag/community-based-learning/

Professor Ben Cohen's spring 2016 Sustainable Solutions class is designing a children's musical playground along the Karl Stirner Arts Trail, a walk and bike path along a local creek that cuts through the campus. The class includes engineering, art and film, Spanish, and music students.

The classes and projects listed above are individual examples, but they do not even begin to represent an exhaustive list.