San Jose State University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

The College of Humanities and Arts created the Sustainable Futures Initiative that focused on the current state of both the nation and the state of California, the question of what a sustainable future looks like is one we all must face, and that the arts, design and humanities are some of the best avenues to explore. The initiative offered engaging, community-oriented workshops, performances, talks, and art exhibits that address NFTs, poetry as performance, life of water, and food insecurity. The college partnered with many departments on campus including
- the Office of Sustainability to create assignments and curriculum that engages with issues of sustainability
- Environmental Studies
- School of Film and Theatre
- School of Philosophy
- School of Art and Art History
- School of Music and Dance
- School of Linguistics & Language Development
- School of English and Comparative Literature

The GreenTalk Speaker Series is offered every semester where practicing engineers, scientists, and technical experts deliver up-to-date briefings on how engineers deal with environmental issues. More than 500 engineers a year study environmental issues via a live guest speaker series. This is a required course (ENGR 100W) for all Engineering students, so 100% of students that college graduate with a sustainability learning outcome. The class is open to the public and is included in campus events such as Campus Sustainability Month and Earth Month. Applying knowledge gleaned from these industry experts, multi-disciplinary engineering teams design solutions to regional and campus-based environmental problems.

Classes from the Engineering and Science colleges regular tour of the plant to learn about the technology used here, instilling in students the knowledge that better technology exists for making cleaner electricity giving an overview on how SJSU provides its main campus with all of its electrical, heating and cooling needs using a much more efficient method and cleaner method than a traditional power plant.

A campus as a living lab module was developed using the King Library. The Sustainability at the King Library module reviews the major LEED categories that buildings applying for LEED certification are reviewed by. The goal of the module is to provide a basic overview of criteria used for each LEED category. The module’s goal is to have students’ rate the library’s features via a physical tour and an online tour to discover sustainable features. The module asks the students to explore the building, discover how people use it, and to apply their understanding of LEED’s categories to sustainability in their own lives and living environments. The module consists of a pre-tour class session and the information for this session is found in the MLK King Library LEED Certification Research Guide at http://libguides.sjsu.edu/King_Library_Leed_certification. Next, students take a physical tour of the Library to explore its sustainability components. Then, students come together with the instructor for a post-tour discussion of what they found. Finally, the instructor can assess student learning in a number of ways through the Research Guide.

Classes from the Engineering and Science colleges regular tour the plant to learn about the technology used here, instilling in students the knowledge that better technology exists for making cleaner electricity giving an overview on how SJSU provides its main campus with all of its electrical, heating and cooling needs using a much more efficient method and cleaner method than a traditional power plant.

The SJSU Campus Community Garden was established as a result of a student-led initiative. The garden was created to provide students a space to gain access to healthy food, learn about sustainable organic garden practices and earn service learning hours.

The garden is on a quarter acre of land and it includes multiple fruit trees, compost and gray water system, and many more. The garden exists to provide the SJSU students, staff and faculty with an opportunity to participate in food justice, accessibility to fresh and healthy food while engaging in cultural exchange and cooperation. While at the garden, SJSU members learn the ins and outs of a maintaining a small garden. SJSU members learn how to harvest, prune, water and seed vegetable starts in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. SJSU members would be able to bring home their produce after a workday!

The community garden is a place where students can learn and participate in the process of growing food sustainably, but it does not end there! Students can also harvest and enjoy organic, free and locally grown produce. This space provides a place for student initiative, cooperation and cultural exchange using the growing of food as an exploration of community involvement.

Washington Square Hall contains a sustainable agriculture garden that not only teaches about the garden itself but also about what makes food sustainable. It teaches students that not only is farming possible using sustainable methods but economically and physically feasible.

Spring 2021, the Environmental Resource Center, a service learning class focused on sustainability, SJSU undergraduate students toured the College of Science Botany greenhouses and shade house on the roof of Duncan Hall with the Greenhouse Manager, Lars Rosengreen. The students in attendance of the event were enrolled in the Environmental Resource Center (ENVS 181), a student run service learning elective course open to all majors that operates out of the Environmental Studies Department (College of Social Sciences). The purpose of the tour was to pick plants from the greenhouse and convert a large landscape area on the south side of Morris Daily Auditorium to a native plant and pollinator friendly garden.

“Campus as a Living Lab” will also be incorporated into the garden. Ben Carter proposed to install a particular set of stones into the garden design to study moss for academic research. Specific details to be determined.

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SJSU is home to the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), founded in 1991, as an organized research and training unit in partnership with the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business at San José State University (SJSU). The institute increases mobility for all by improving the safety, efficiency, accessibility, and convenience of our nation’s transportation system.

Current research projects using SJSU infrastructure include:

1) 2022 Mineta Summer Transportation Institute at San José State University - to introduce high school students to a career in transportation and environmental studies.

2) Robots Among Us: An Analysis of Community Perspectives and Reactions toward Sidewalk Delivery Robots in the City of San José - The City of San José engaged graduate students from San José State University to collect observational, survey, and interview data to examine potential challenges and opportunities of sidewalk delivery robots from various stakeholders and community members.

3) Solar-Powered Automated Transportation: Feasibility and Visualization - A solar-powered automated transportation network (ATN) connecting the North and South campuses of San José State University with three passenger stations was designed, visualized, and analyzed in terms of its energy usage, carbon offset, and cost.

The central plant includes cooling towers that was the first in the Bay Area to convert to recycled water from potable water. Being the first to pilot this process has contributed to the acceptance of many in California and Silicon Valley to also convert their cooling towers as well as educate new engineers that the technology is viable.

In 2018, the Central Plant converted the steam make-up water from potable water to recycled water, piloting again a relatively new process. The plan is to show the surrounding industries that the process is viable and to increase usage of recycled water in non-potable uses.

Engineering courses regularly tour the Cooling Plant every semester to see how the process works and to highlight the recycled water usage.

The department of Facilities Development and Operations regularly host students doing semester projects on how the campus is saving water by converting many non-potable water uses to recycled water such as 100% recycled water usage for all landscaping and using recycled water for toilet flushing in new buildings (starting from the construction of Martin Luther King Jr. Library).

Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) is funded through the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and seeks to improve retention and to enrich the academic experience at SJSU by engaging students in research, scholarly, and creative activity during their first and second years. Through UROP students will work up to 10 hours per week with a faculty mentor on research or scholarly projects including:
- exploring the differences in perceptions of mental health among Korean immigrants living in the Bay Area

“WHISK” or Wellness & Health Inspired Student Kitchens was created to provide a vetted resource for hands-on nutrition programming for the San José State University campus community. Encouraging people to take “WHISKS” in the kitchen, the program aims to give members of the community the tools needed to promote healthy food behaviors and establish healthy relationships with food. SJSU nutrition students are recruited and trained to lead the programming, providing additional practical application opportunities to complement required academic coursework. Utilizing the peer-to-peer model, WHISK emphasizes budget-friendly plant-forward recipes that are quick and easy to prepare in order to reduce barriers to cooking and encourage fruit and vegetable intake. Developing relationships with campus community partners has been key to the development and implementation of WHISK programming. Prior to COVID, WHISK Ambassadors could be found leading demonstrations at the SJSU Campus Community Garden, hosting nutrition education presentations at the Timpany Center, running cooking classes in the residence halls in collaboration with Faculty in Residence, providing recipes and samples of food prepared from pantry ingredients for Spartan Food Pantry participants, tabling with Fresh Approach on the Paseo, among other activities.