Bucknell University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Students have completed greenhouse gas inventories every two years since 2006. Since 2008 these inventories have served to fulfill the requirements of the ACUPCC, and have helped the university develop greenhouse gas reduction strategies.

In 2010, as the result of a student internship by Rebecca Shopiro '12, the university installed its first green roof on the Dana Engineering Building. In subsequent years the roof has been used in research conducted by Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Kevin Gilmore with several other student interns. The research has been focused on documenting and quantifying the benefits of green roofs. As a result of the success of this first green roof, two others have been built on the campus, a second green roof on the Dana Engineering Building, and a third on Academic West, the university's first green academic building.

For the past three years, students in the Mindful Consumption foundation seminar, in conjunction with the director of dining and visiting scholar Jonathan Bloom, have conducted food waste weighs in the Bostwick Dining Hall. The students have also created informational posters for the dining hall to raise awareness of the issue of food waste.

Since 2006 students have participated in the installation and monitoring of renewable energy infrastructure on campus, including several photovoltaic arrays, a solar thermal unit, and a wind turbine. The Renewable Energy Scholars group, which includes students, faculty, and staff, host a Renewable Energy Workshop each year to educate the campus and the community about the benefits of these renewable energy projects.

Since 2007, the Campus Greening Initiative has maintained a native plants garden on the grounds of the Bucknell University Environmental Center. The garden began as a student internship, and several other student interns have been involved in studying and maintaining the garden, creating educational garden guides, and organizing garden education events for the Center.

Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Michelle Beiler has used the campus as a living laboratory for several student projects in her Sustainable Transportation class. Through an introductory course in transportation engineering, elective courses in transportation planning, as well as civil engineering senior design projects, the campus is used as a living learning laboratory, specifically with regards to laboratory exercises as well as course projects. Laboratory exercises typically involve students dividing up into teams and applying course material to transportation infrastructure on campus such as through a pavement assessment or a speed spot study. Course projects provide students the opportunity to synthesize course material and apply it to real world transportation needs on campus as well as throughout the surrounding community of Lewisburg. Examples of projects include a safety study of Moore Avenue (which led to infrastructure improvements), design of the Buffalo Valley Rail Trail extension, a pedestrian mobility analysis of Market Street, and an evaluation of ped/bike travel demand on campus.

In 2010/2011 a comprehensive waste audit was conducted on 10 different types of university buildings, resulting in an honors thesis by Environmental Studies student Hallie Kennan '12. The results of the audits helped guide the decision for the university to move towards single stream recycling. In 2013 student intern Zach Berliner '15 worked closely with associate director of operations Merritt Pedrick to study and develop signage for single stream recycling on campus. New signs were widely distributed across campus, leading to better results in the separation of trash and recyclables.

In 2013 student intern Josh Berliner '15 completed a comprehensive audit of water-consuming fixtures on campus in cooperation with associate director of utilities maintenance Greg Koontz. The study was used as the basis for a successful Green Fund proposal to replace old fixtures with water conserving alternatives.

Managing for Sustainability professor Neil Boyd has used the campus as a living laboratory for his managment classes. He uses the university as a teaching-laboratory for MSUS 300 (Fundamentals of Managing for Sustainability), an upper-level management course in the School of Management that is a required course for completion of a major in Managing for Sustainabilty. The class engages the student as if they are a manager in a variety of sustainability-related roles. For example, during the course of the term, students are asked to consider being in the role of a sustainability VP, a Human Resource Director, a President, a VP of Marketing, a VP of Finance, etc... They consider these roles in two ways: 1) they are asked to engage in reading, field trips, and interactions with experts in particular functional units of Bucknell, to learn a variety of content issues that a manager faces in these particular roles. Then, 2) they are asked to engage in open discussions, produce oral presentations, and complete decision-making reflection papers that require assimilation of a variety of sets of information into cogent arguments about what needs to occur in those roles in order to design effective structure and change processes that move an effective sustainability agenda forward.

In 2011 students from the Bucknell Environmental Club, in cooperation with the Campus Greening Council, established the Green Fund, a revolving fund in which students have continued to participate both through serving on its advisory committee, and creating proposals for funding consideration. To date, several student proposals involving energy conservation investments have been accepted and executed, resulting in a return of over $50,000 to the fund.

The University uses the campus as a living laboratory for Public Engagement in a few ways. One, the green roof displays have been the center of public events. So too has the native plants garden. Both of these spaces on campus have been used for public talks about the sustainability merits of each. Signage associated with the Grove, the collection of trees across all of campus, have proven to be useful for educating members of the public about tree species and plant diversity. Finally, the ongoing Miller Run project will create a network of public displays and data monitoring devices which members of the public can access to see how restoration of the stream which goes through campus has aesthetic and environmental impacts.

In 2011 the university received a Growing Greener grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to restore the headwaters of its campus stream, Miller Run. Since receiving this grant, dozens of students, faculty, and staff have been involved in projects relating to the restoration. The restoration is expected to be completed within the coming year.

Since the performance year, some significant changes to sustainability programming have occurred at the University. Most notably the Bucknell University Environmental Center has changed to the Bucknell Center for Sustainability and the Environment, and the Campus Greening Initiative has changed to the Sustainable Design Program. As a result, the content of the associated websites may reflect these changes.