Florida Institute of Technology
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Many students or student teams do their formal senior research course projects on campus. by definition, these projects engage many corners of the campus community as they require engagement with diverse campus offices, students groups and other staff or faculty to complete. Specific examples of these occur in part in the sections below. Campus-wide engagement on the processing and final results of these projects is also accomplished by placement of select student campus SUS research posters during the large Northrop Grumman Showcase event and within common areas of the first floor of Evans library for months each year, and by educating students, faculty and staff during in separate events during campus Earth Week.

In the last three years, many students have done their formal senior research course projects in the community. Many of these projects have focused on planning, writing, and implementing first-ever city sustainability plans. These plans have been very successfully completed and implemented in the City of Satellite Beach and the Town of Melbourne Beach. We are now completing these plans for the cities of Pam Bay and Cocoa.

A first-ever GHG emissions inventory of all FIT campus operations developed by a student project team for 2018. They engaged many offices around campus. This project was presented as a research poster at the Northrop Grumman Science Showcase. This work also helped catalyze additional GHG inventory work for 2019 that will be ongoing

For their sustainability capstone projects, students from diverse majors in the Sustainability minor and the Sustainability major have worked with many campus staff to research LEED certification of campus buildings. In recent years, several student teams have completed senior research reports and business plans on alternatives for LEED certification of several campus buildings.

For their sustainability capstone projects, students from the Sustainability minor and the Sustainability major have worked on solar energy design and cost estimates for campus buildings with resulting posters in the large Northrop Grumman Showcase event which engages many hundreds of campus and community members.

In the last three years, two student teams have done their formal senior research course projects working with Dining Services staff on improving and measuring SUS dining practices on campus. These projects have helped redesign the campus grocery to have more organic and green products and to also initiate the first SUS data measurement efforts for the main dining facilities on campus.

Several students have done year to year composting projects for applied sustainability classes that involved both vermiform and tumbler-based compost production. research into scaling up with outside partners is now underway. The compost has been used for soil on campus.

Several student teams have done projects on recycling on campus and also during spring move-out, with multi-year results in terms of waste diversion. With the recycling crisis in the last 2 years that has affected many institutions, student teams through several campus student organizations worked directly with Facilities and other offices on campus to answer questions and develop FAQs to help educate the campus.

Several students via several campus programs have been involved in C&P. The first full campus sustainability plan is being developed currently by a student doing an academic senior research project in conjunction with the campus Facilities Office and SUS Academic Program.

Student projects on the topics above include required capstone sustainability research by all majors and minors in two courses (Sustainability Project Design, ISC 3999, and Applied Sustainability, ISC 4000). Many projects by individual students and teams apply to this credit (guided by faculty course instructors).