Oregon State University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Campuses Take Charge is run by students who receive internship credit for their efforts to help the university and surrounding communities take charge of their carbon emissions by pledging to take three carbon-reducing actions for a month. Students gain experience in marketing, outreach and visual arts; information technologies, social sciences, environmental sciences and other areas by being involved for a least a quarter in CTC planning and implementation.

The Oregon BEST Green Building Materials Laboratory includes research activities from the Schools of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering and Civil and Construction Engineering and the Department of Wood Science and Engineering. Equipment housed in this Oregon BEST Signature Laboratory will allow OSU researchers to characterize, develop and test high performance sustainable materials for a wide variety of applications including buildings and transportation infrastructure. The GBML interfaces with the Capital Planning and Development civil engineering group to examine best practices within campus infrastructure. Numerous courses have conducted survey-based projects during pre- and post-occupancy period for new and renovated buildings. Additionally, student workers in Capital Planning and Development gain real work experience with increasing questions about sustainability in the built environment.

Students enrolled in the Food in Culture and Social Justice Graduate Minor began collaborating with University Housing and Dining Services staff in Spring and Fall 2012. Two students began the process of mining paper and electronic invoices determine a starting point for the first round of food assessments. They determined that a 2-month comparative snapshot of a single dining hall was most manageable given their workloads. They synthesized and calculated the food purchasing data for Marketplace West, one of the largest volume dining halls, for the months of October 2011 and May 2012. In the Spring and Fall terms of 2013, two undergraduate students worked with Robert Asinjo on advancing the baseline survey. There has been substantial faculty and staff support, as well as student interest in furthering the project.

The OSU Energy Efficiency Center and Industrial Assessment Center, both part of the school of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, use student labor to offer Rural Energy Audits, OSU facility assessments, and other customized assessments. The center focuses on mentored energy efficiency training, performs related research, data accumulation and analysis and offers other related services. The EEC has the goal of developing and sharing a knowledge base of new and common efficiency opportunities in a range of sectors, including industrial, agricultural, municipal, institutional, commercial and residential. The center is built on student management with faculty mentorship and oversight.

The Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture is a six acre site on OSU's main campus. It's easily accessible to students and an excellent learning laboratory for sustainable horticultural practices in both rural and periurban landscapes. Current projects include a mushroom log fence, annual trials, green roof research, a student-run organic garden, permaculture and restoration of Oak Creek. Oak Creek restoration has been an ongoing point of student learning on campus. The Oak Creek Riparian area has been the focus of numerous studies and restoration efforts over the past decades. One significant outcome was a restoration document created by students participating in the ecological restoration class FOR-FW 445/545.

Each year, civil engineering professor Kate Hunter-Zaworski dedicates at least one full course to analyzing and making recommendations for alternative transportation systems/transportation options on and surrounding the Corvallis campus. In most years, the focus of the Public Transportation Class is OSU transportation options. Students gain practical, applied experience with OSU systems and make presentations to OSU administrators each year. A major focal point of these recurring studies has been the OSU Shuttle, in which students can interact in the most direct way through system analysis and providing recommendations to Transit and Parking Services about shuttle route, timing, safely and other considerations.

In the FY13 performance year, OSU Campus Recycling supervised an student intern from the Environmental Science program who assessed the need for recycling in classroom buildings and prepared a proposal based on her findings. The student put together a data collection plan to assess which classroom buildings would be best to implement a hallway recycling program, audited and collected data, analyzed results, researched other universities implementing a similar program, and prepared a report that laid out the specifics of how to implement the pilot program in 4-6 classrooms buildings. The student earned 2 academic credits while gaining experience in data collection and analysis, planning, and writing technical reports. The proposal is being implemented by Campus Recycling in FY14.

Biological and ecological engineering students have worked with a group of community water stakeholders to look at stormwater flowing through campus. They designed a water model to show the water moving through different storm watersheds, which allows for the model to be used with any set of parameters. Another project designed a wetland/bioswale project for OSU discharges onto City of Corvallis property and streams. The group is awaiting City funding to implement the project. More info on these and other water projects can be found at http://oregonstate.edu/sustainability/blog/2013/09/corvallis-sustainability-coalitions-three-waters-project/

Many students in the College Student Services Administration program are using OSU's Division of Student Affairs to examine diversity and diversity-related issues. Many work within Diversity Development, Intercultural Student Services, a part of Student Affairs. In fall 2013, a Transgender Lives course complied a resource list for transgender students at OSU. An internship is currently underway cataloging every campus restroom to inventory gender neutral restrooms and will create an interactive map. Finally, OSU's women, gender and sexuality studies graduate program requires students to complete project or thesis.

We have several students receiving credit for work related to our healthy campus. Most recently related to Smoke Free evaluation, research and programming. With the Healthy Eating team interns provide counseling & support campus events. In addition, we've had several practicum students from exercise and sports science/college of public health and human sciences involved in a variety of projects.

OSU Divest is a campaign to have the Oregon State University Foundation sell off its investments in fossil fuels industries and replace these with investments in socially responsible stock holdings. At least one student leader is writing a thesis based on the work with OSU Divest and its associated campaign, meetings, and community action, but this level of work may not directly result in positive outcomes. This item is marked as "unknown" above for that reason.

In spring 2013, Dr. Hilary Boudet’s class of public policy graduate students embarked on a partnership with the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition to help answer the following question: How can the Coalition encourage local businesses to implement more sustainable practices? The class also addressed questions of defining what a sustainable business practice looked like. A primary purpose of the study was to identify the incentives and criteria that will support the Coalition’s goal of fostering sustainable practices in the local business community. With OSU being the major economic driver, and given the large purchasing power of the student body, the outcomes of the study have impacts not just on campus but in the local community.