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

The Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC) - formerly known as the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC) - was established at OSU in 2008 and is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to facilitate the development of wave, tidal, in-river, and offshore wind energy technologies. Public engagement and K-12 education are a significant part of PMEC's mission.

PMEC has hosted weekly educational forums on campus and has developed hands-on educational materials for K-12.

https://pmec.oregonstate.edu/

Student teams led by OSU assistant professor Chad Higgins of Biological and Ecological Engineering have for two years conducted research into solar panel impacts on field crop production, grazing and other productivity factors. Chad has been using space at OSU's 6 acre 35th Street solar array. Initial findings from the research indicate that shading of growing area actually increases grazing crop productivity and nutrition, because of water limitations late in the growing season, and NOT the sunlight limitations early in the season.

Research and student activity will continue, and Chad is working with the Sustainability Office to offer students a wide variety of short and longer term academic experiences at the site. These include:

1. Weed management, 1 day, can reoccur
2. Cultivation and planting, 1-5 days, would be in the late winter early spring
3. Plant sample collection, 1 day, can reoccur as desired
4. Plant sample analytics, multiple weeks (because it would require some training)
5. Ecological observation (monitoring pest and plant disease outbreak (weekly)
6. Data collection (physical), 1 quarter commitment can do for research credit if students wish to also write a report on what they have done, can extend to multiple terms, possibility of hourly wage in summer
7. Modelling: 1 quarter commitment, likely research credit or research project
8. There are at least an additional 6 research topics/hypotheses, these would each require 1 full growing season of commitment (May-September) Possibility of hourly wage in summer/research credits.
9. Multi-year projects also possible
https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/users/chad-higgins

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 allows 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 OSU buildings.

Additionally, student workers in Capital Planning and Development gain real work experience with increasing questions about sustainability in the campus built environment.
https://cce.oregonstate.edu/green-building-materials-lab

The OSU Energy Efficiency Center (EEC), a U.S. DOE Industrial Assessment Center and part of the school of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, uses student labor to offer Rural Energy Audits, industrial and campus facility assessments, and other customized energy analyses. 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.
https://eec.oregonstate.edu/

The Food Pantry is a student-led program for a sustainable and equitable OSU community food system. It strives to increase OSU student’s access to locally, sustainably and organically grown foods as well as provide ample opportunities for the OSU community to become engaged with all parts of the food production and distribution system.
https://studentlife.oregonstate.edu/node/2361/

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.
https://horticulture.oregonstate.edu/oak-creek-center-urban-horticulture

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, known as the Beaver Bus, in which students can interact in the most direct way through system analysis and providing recommendations to Transportation Services about shuttle route, timing, safety and other considerations.

Plastics to fuel research using OSU waste as feedstock

In Skip Rochefort’s chemical engineering lab, he and his students are testing a novel use for a well-established chemical process to tackle the challenge of plastic waste. Pyrolysis uses very high temperatures to break down plastic hydrocarbon chains in the absence of oxygen to create an alternative diesel fuel. Their goal is to install a pyrolysis reactor in remote and underserved communities, where it’s difficult and expensive to dispose of plastic waste. Those plastics, converted to fuel, could then be used for boats, tractors and other diesel-powered equipment in those communities. For their research, Dr. Rochefort and his students use plastic waste from the OSU Corvallis campus, collected in partnership with OSU Campus Recycling.

https://today.oregonstate.edu/story/campus-recycling-conducting-waste-audit-corvallis-campus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1yqt021Qu0

Biological and ecological engineering students continue to work with a group of campus and community water experts 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.

More info on these and other water projects can be found at https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/ecologue/category/water/

In FY19, the OSU Sustainability Office participated in the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee on the OSU Carbon Commitment to advance OSU towards the goal of carbon neutrality. The goals of the committee are:
1. Conduct an annual assessment of the current status at OSU of meeting the goals of the American College and University Presidents’ Carbon Commitment (the OSU Carbon Commitment).
2. Seek and gather data, in collaboration with the OSU Sustainability Office, relating to the state of progress towards the goals of the OSU Carbon Commitment.
3. Support the OSU Sustainability Office in advancing towards the objectives of the OSU Carbon Commitment.
4. Develop recommendations for advancing the objectives of the OSU Carbon Commitment at OSU.
5. Inform the OSU community of OSU’s carbon neutral status

The Coordinator of Environmental Affairs from the Executive Branch of the Associated Students of Oregon State University, as well as a graduate student from the Coalition of Graduate Employees are voting members of this committee.

In FY22, the committee transitioned from an Ad Hoc Committee to a Standing Committee.

https://senate.oregonstate.edu/carbon_commitment_committee

Oregon State University Food Security Study
This report summarizes findings from the second formal study of the prevalence and patterns of food insecurity among OSU students on the Corvallis campus, run in Spring 2022. The project was conducted by Amy Wolcott
Master of Nutrition – Professional Dietetics candidate in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

The OSU Division of Student Affairs and the Oregon State University Policy Analysis Laboratory (OPAL) provided funding for this study. OPAL student researchers led data collection by a team of volunteers from the College of Public Health and Human Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts.

The report summary is at https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/sites/liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/files/2022-10/oregon_state_university_food_security_study_spring2022.pdf