Carleton University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Carleton hosts a number of projects and initiatives that contribute to increase campus engagement and awareness. This includes regularly taking on co-op and student volunteers to help with research and sustainable practices on campus, such as waste audits, energy audits and preparing and communicating sustainability data. An example of which is sustainability communications which go out to our Business School students on their internal display screens run by student volunteers and staff.

There are also a number of active student clubs and associations that aim to educate students towards sustainability awareness, this includes the WWF living campus program and Fairtrade Carleton which promotes purchasing and awareness.

Every year, the Sustainability Office, also hosts 2 clean up the campus events, which look to promote waste awareness and our campus green space to students and staff.

As part of the SPROTT School of Business sustainability programming, students developed and communicated to all business students a sustainability survey. The survey looked to engage students towards sustainability attitudes, current behaviours and key goals that students wanted to address. Over 100 students where engaged.

Assessing Real Life Environmental Characteristics. Liam O'Brien within the Department of Civil and Engineering Department is teaching to the undergraduate-level Architectural Conservation and Sustainability Engineering program, with a goal is to immerse students in building design process and also to have them reflect on the effectiveness of spaces for comfort and productivity.

All the courses involve some experiential learning, though a few examples include: Assessing daylight quality in spaces on campus and Assessing indoor environmental quality in restaurants.

Students are asked to choose a space, develop a methodology to evaluate the space, and then conduct a field study.

The Human-Building Interaction Laboratory (HBI Lab) strives to understand the two-way interaction between buildings and their occupants to maximize comfort while minimizing environmental impacts. The HBI Lab seeks to understand and influence building design using a multidisciplinary engineering-based, simulation, experimental, and field study approaches. The human-building interaction begins at the earliest stages of design and continues through the entire life cycle. Our experience is that designing buildings to be robust, versatile, and comfortable inherently causes occupants to act in sustainable ways.

Sustainable Building Energy Systems (SBES) is a research group in Carleton University’s Faculty of Engineering and Design that is lead by Professor Ian Beausoleil-Morrison. We conduct experimental- and simulation-based research into a variety of topics and technologies relating to sustainable building energy systems and renewable and energy efficient technologies. Our projects often involve collaboration with Carleton University’s Human-Building Interaction Lab, Solar Energy Systems Lab, and the School of Architecture, and with researchers at other Canadian and international universities, industry, and government.

Carleton students and faculty in Food Science and Biology are developing saffron as a new cash crop for eastern Ontario. This is one of several projects that promotes studies and career opportunities in sustainable food production on the Carleton campus. The initiative is run out of the Biology Teaching and Research Garden and Nesbitt Greenhouses and networks with on-campus food services and regional agricultural start-up companies. The goal of this initiative is to provide hands-on training and practical experience to the next generation of entrepreneurs in sustainable food production.

Carleton University’s Institute for Advanced Research and Innovation in Smart Environments (ARISE) embodies our commitment to university-industry-government partnerships. This hub creates the space for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional thinking to thrive, enabling growth in research and systems thinking. The mobilization of knowledge and ideas across sectors enables interdisciplinary approaches to research that is a priority of Carleton, Ontario and Canada. Partnerships housed in ARISE focus on research in pursuit of technological innovation and commercialization in the fields of Clean Technology, Health Technology, and Information and Communication Technology.

ALL (Abilities Living Laboratory)will make it easier for academic researchers and community partners to develop products that directly address accessibility challenges.

“One of our main themes will be cultural life, recreation, leisure, and sport,” says Chan, a Professor in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering and the Director of Research and Education in Accessibility, Design, and Innovation (READi).

ALL’s two other research themes will explore solutions in personal mobility and rehabilitation, and accessibility and inclusion in public life.

The Transportation Research Centre utilizes the campus as a living Lab. The objectives of the centre are to contribute knowledge and solutions to transportation issues and problems; to foster interdisciplinary transportation research; to provide opportunities for graduate students to gain research experience; and to provide information to the public on transportation issues.

Research interests of the Transportation Research Centre generally focus on policy, planning, management, and technology assessment topics. Intercity, urban, and intermodal transportation systems and their components, including terminals, are of interest as well.

Current research studies include: travel demand management, land use impacts of telecommuting, energy and environmental factors in urban transportation, sustainable transportation, intelligent transportation systems.

Recent studies covered development of nested logic model development, air quality and greenhouse gas emission improvements resulting from advanced traffic control, highway lighting, and intelligent transportation systems for the efficiency of the urban courier movements.

Students are engaged in conducting waste audits as part of course learning. This includes an introduction to the waste program on campus, and then in small groups conducting waste audits of recycling, organic and landfill waste in a number of buildings.

Carleton has a number of courses within Environmental Studies, such as ENST 2001 Sustainable Futures: Environmental Challenges and Solutions, which engage students to address a sustainability issue on campus. Students are asked to research best practice and develop a program for application on the campus. This has included in the past projects such as walking in nature and the zero waste sustainable office.

In addition Carleton also hosts a Student Mental Health Engagement Committee (SMHEC) which looks at ways to create engagement and foster the conversation around Mental Health and Well-being on campus, including continuous improvements to the brand new wellness website, as well as providing some experiential learning for students on campus through promotional campaigns and/or events. An example of a past event has included, a seminar entitled, the benefits of nature on our wellbeing. The initiatives of this committee are entirely student-driven and have access to some funding from the Office of the Vice President (Students and Enrollment).