University of Minnesota, Morris 2006 Campus Sustainability Achievement Award Application
Category
Four-year and graduate institutions 1,001 – 10,000 student FTE
Contact
Troy Goodnough
Campus Sustainability Coordinator
University of Minnesota, Morris
Morris, MN
(320) 589-6303
good0044@morris.umn.edu
Governance & Administration
The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) has aggressively pursued the university's responsibilities to produce engaged citizens and act consistently with our commitment to sustainability and stewardship.
- UMM's Strategic Positioning Task Force Final Recommendations, issued in March 2006, articulate a campus mission statement reflecting our commitments:
"The University of Minnesota-Morris provides an undergraduate liberal arts education of uncompromising teaching and learning, faculty scholarship and undergraduate research, genuine outreach and engagement. Our small, residential academic setting fosters authentic relationships, and the University serves as an educational and cultural resource for the region, nation and world. A personalized educational experience prepares graduates to be global citizens who are interculturally competent, civically engaged, and effective stewards of their environments.
Developing thoughtful well-rounded critical thinkers is a task especially suited to one of the few public liberal arts colleges in the US.
- Adopted through the Campus Resources and Planning Committee, one of UMM's four primary campus governance committees, the report referenced above includes the campus strategic plan. The plan, created through broad campus participation, strongly supports UMM's "green campus" leadership and expands this work with the following goals:
- "Leverage our strong green campus initiatives and partnerships to integrate environmental issues into the curriculum and campus opportunities, while becoming an energy self-sufficient campus…These initiatives have become nationally recognized and will be aggressively pursued."
- "Achieve energy self-sufficiency through wind generation, biomass heating and cooling, local foods initiative, green vehicles, recycling, and conservation." (Note: Work is underway to attain energy self-sufficiency within 5 years.)
- "Aggressively pursue nontraditional revenue sources to provide scholarships, limit tuition cost increases, and enhance operating funds. These include the wind farm initiative to generate energy for resale, increased UMM summer programming, and increased facility rentals."
UMM's Associate Vice Chancellor for Physical Plant and Master Planning leads much of the visionary work in on-site sustainable energy generation. A new position - Campus Sustainability Coordinator - was filled in Summer 2006 to advance our commitment to sustainability and outreach. A Green Task Force provides campus leadership for these efforts.
UMM is a member of several organizations and participates in sharing our activities, programs and educational progress. In 2005-06, a $5,000 annual fund was created by UMM Plant Services from energy savings to support student, faculty, and staff travel to regional and national sustainability, green energy, and environmental education meetings. UMM is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), the Society of College and University Planning (SCUP), the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability. UMM faculty, staff and students presented at recent meetings for many of these groups.
Minnesotans trust the University of Minnesota to be a good steward: fiscally, environmentally, and educationally. UMM is proud of the holistic approach we have developed to create and enrich the citizens of Minnesota, the nation and the world.
Operations
UMM has helped to change the landscape. Passionate students, The Green Task Force, visionary administration, and committed faculty and staff have advanced this vision.
An on-site 1.65 MW wind turbine, powered up March 2005, meets more than 50% of campus electricity needs. We were chosen by the US Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Energy Partner and member in the Green Energy Leadership Club for our leadership in on-site energy production. UMM and the University of Minnesota's West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC), worked together on this effort.
CREB bond applications are pending to add 2 additional wind turbines near campus. With these turbines, UMM will meet 100% of campus electrical needs through on-site wind generation and WCROC will conduct cutting edge research in converting wind-to-hydrogen-to-fertilizer.
CREB bond funds are also being sought to build a wind farm near campus that will be used to provide sustainable power for the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
UMM has won state and federal dollars to build a gasification plant for steam heating and cooling. By year's end will be gasifying corn stover and agricultural residue in UMM's own biomass gasification reactor. This reactor is expected to meet 80% of the campus heating and cooling needs at UMM, commensurately displacing 80% of the campus's natural gas consumption.
The groundwork for this radical change in energy production was laid during the past two years. Its fruition will be almost complete renewable energy dependence in two years, and production of excess green energy in five years.
UMM is a founding member of the Pride of the Prairie program (POP). POP is one of the longest running local food initiatives in Minnesota higher education. Each spring this program features a local foods exposition and farmers market. Hundreds of community members experience a dinner of locally produced food and interact with some of the people who produced it. UMM works with her food service provider to provide local foods on students' plates on a regular basis. It is a part of UMM policy that our provider gives preference to local food when it meets menu requirements and price expectations. UMM and Chef Chris were amongst fifteen chefs recognized in Minnesota for fabulous locally sourced foods. Food Alliance Midwest recognized Sodexho Campus Services with a partnership award in 2005.
In addition, the campus has worked to pick the low hanging fruit in other areas of sustainable campus operations. Recent examples follow:
- Ongoing water conservation initiatives save 2 million gallons of water per year
- Increased recycling and recycling awareness
- A fleet of hybrid cars
- Green roof project added to upcoming renovation plans
From the roof over our head to the food we eat, UMM is thinking green. We celebrate the physical changes taking place. UMM's wind turbine, prominently nestled along the ridge of the Pomme De Terre River, is a high point of pride for everyone in the community.
Curriculum & Research
Some examples of our recent scientific research demonstrate the commitment to the campus vision of sustainability.
UMM's turbine is the first large-scale wind research turbine ever constructed at a U.S. public university, commissioned on Earth Day 2005 by Minnesota's Governor. Part of the University of Minnesota's Renewable Energy Research and Demonstration Center, it is designed as a community-scale project to combine local production, use of renewable energy, and research to develop new opportunities.
In April 2005, the Minnesota Legislature approved a bonding bill that allocated $6 million to construct a biomass gasification demonstration and research facility at UMM. It will model commercial application of biomass in heating and cooling systems and conduct research to address important collection, processing, and storage issues, enable improved permitting, establish Best Management Practices to ensure environmental sustainability of biomass systems, and provide valuable information on the economic impact of using biofuels on rural economies. The Agricultural Utilization and Research Institute (AURI), and MN Corn Growers are partners in this project.
Several UMM liberal arts faculty conduct research related to sustainability. Dr. Timna Wyckoff performs comparisons of antibiotic resistant bacteria in conventional vs. organic (non-conventional) dairy farms. Dr. Peter Wyckoff examines the impact on biodiversity by invasive tree species in Minnesota. Campus chemists have examined environmentally friendly catalysts.
Many UMM students are active in these green research projects through Undergraduate Research projects, directed studies, class projects, internships and student employment.
An Environmental Studies Area of Concentration for students offers in-depth academic exploration of green issues. Sustainability is being integrated across the curriculum to develop critical-thinkers responsive to their environments.
UMM's Service Learning: Regional/Sustainable Agriculture Initiative matches academic course goals with community needs. During the past two years, students worked with the POP Local Foods Initiative to ensure: fewer resources are used on our foods' journey from farm to table, increased access to sustainably-produced local foods, more people learn about the benefits of locally grown foods.
A new, Introduction to Conservation Biology course for non-majors, is broadening interdisciplinary participation. An evolving, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics class is bringing economics, biology and other students together. To strengthen its curricular commitment to sustainability, all biology majors at UMM are required to take Ecology.
The Chemistry Club and Chemistry discipline have taken on initiatives to make laboratory experiments greener and attend Green Chemistry conferences. Mercury thermometers have been rounded up and disposed of properly.
Freshmen take a First Year Seminar (FYS) course of their choosing. FYS was developed to improve students' critical-thinking, challenge perception and assess sources of information. Several seminars have sustainability related themes, one seminar titled, "Why We Eat What We Eat" examines many issues in food production. For faculty, FYS is voluntary, allows many sustainability-minded faculty at UMM to be creative, have fun and share their passions.
Community Service and Outreach
UMM partners with a multitude of organizations, neighbors and friends on the prairie; and they have been essential in this work.
A large number of agriculture producers, citizens, and University of Minnesota faculty are also key partners in the Renewable Energy Research and Demonstration Center at Morris.
In collaboration with the West Central Research and Outreach Center, UMM coordinated a "Home Grown Energy Conference" and "Advanced Wind Energy Workshop" for all interested leaders in wind and community based energy development in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest in 2005 and 2006. The campus also hosted the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota annual meeting in 2004.
UMM hosts excellent speakers to address the community on a wide range of sustainability-related topics. Some recent examples are: world-class scientist and atrazine opponent, Tyrone Hayes, world-renowned explorer Will Steger to address his observations and concerns about global warming, and Winona LaDuke to address the Native land issues and the dangers in a proposed University wild rice genome project. These are just a few of the many who have spoken in Morris about the many sides of stewardship.
Many fine UMM student groups have reached out to grab students' attention.
- Recently, the UMM Chapter of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG), and the locally inspired Movement for Animal Rights by Concerned Humans (MARCH) and others put on a successful Hunger Banquet that demonstrated world disparities poignantly by feeding people various amounts of food depending on where they were born; many people sat of the floor and ate a handful of rice despite paying full admission to the event. The banquet encouraged reflection and conversation.
- This year MPIRG students went through the garbage bins on campus pulling out recyclables and then stringing them up in the student center to show people what was being disposed of improperly.
UMM is working with our regional partners to form a strong coalition through the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability, sharing ideas and developing benchmarks.
Students, faculty and staff at UMM have presented throughout the year at several local and regional conferences, like UMACS, EMSU, and COPLAC. Presentation topics included:
- Local foods, biomass gasification, wind turbine data, coordinating campus transformation, changes to UMM curriculum, and new classes
Perhaps most significantly, the UMM community is leading by example. Many members of the campus community are active in the local food co-op, purchase their summer vegetables through a subscription program with a local farm, drive hybrid cars, walk and bike to work, compost, and implement green-planning into their home and landscaping. This summer, campus and community volunteers assisted in a shoreline restoration project developed by a UMM professor featuring many beautiful prairie plants. This project will be available as an example of good stewardship of lakefront property.
The ethics of sustainability and stewardship are deeply engrained as Minnesota common sense. UMM intends on fostering, nurturing and developing that sensibility in the years to come.