Syracuse University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Smart Stormwater Management: Student Research Project that benefits students, faculty, and staff - Utilizing the campus and our facilities to create a hands-on course component on Smart Stormwater Management: increasing awareness within the campus community about environmental sustainability by offering technical trainings for understanding campus hydrology to university students and staff. Implementing green infrastructure on campus benefits facilities by making them more resilient to changing climate over the long-term. Improving on-site treatment of stormwater and reducing total runoff from campus facilities also directly contributes to the community goal of improving Onondaga Lake and other local water resources.

Campus Light Mapping: Analysis and Visualization of Sustainable Smart Lighting for Reducing GHG Emissions and Improving Campus Safety: Analyzing areas of excessive or inadequate lighting can pave the way for smart lighting design to improve energy efficiency while maintaining a safe campus environment. However, one of the challenges Syracuse University faces is that existing light levels on the campus’ pathways have not been measured to support smarter exterior lighting. The objectives of this research are to collect, analyze, and map illumination across campus and surrounding areas using GIS and energy simulation tools. These mappings would be used to 1) locate zones of excessive or inadequate lighting; 2) identify opportunities for smart lighting through renewable solar technologies; 3) develop and distribute a mobile mapping application that communicates safely-lit routes and highlights areas for improving energy efficiency.

Heat Mapping Campus using Drones: Accurate energy audits are widely-used resource to quantify energy loss and enable targeted energy retrofitting. While building materials, methodologies, and energy sources become more accurate, futuristic and dependent on technology, the practice of energy audits has remained limited. The use of drones and thermal imaging frees energy auditors from accessibility, time, and monetary restrictions that allows for temporal readings that accurately quantify and visualize energy loss.

The University joined Bee Campus USA - Thinking globally and acting locally, Bee Campus USA provides a framework for campus communities to work together to conserve native pollinators by increasing the abundance of native plants, providing nest sites, and reducing the use of pesticides. Bee Campus USA affiliates make commitments to conserve native pollinators. Students, faculty, administrators, and staff work together to carry out these commitments and make their campus a better place for pollinators.

Pete's Giving Garden, a garden for all faculty, staff, and students to volunteer and work to grow vegetables, herbs, and wildflowers. The vegetables and herbs are all donated to the food pantries on campus.

Energy and Environmental Analysis for a South Campus Dormitory

The interdisciplinary project, led jointly by the Schools of Architecture and Engineering, will engage students in data collection design, data logging, analysis activities, and visualization in collaboration with the I School. The proposed project aims to increase awareness about environmental sustainability by utilizing data already collected by SU Facilities and obtaining the additional data necessary to present clear linkages between energy use, air quality, carbon footprint, and the potential impact of a Net Zero Energy + Zero Carbon Campus. It also aims to promote reductions in GHG emissions directly by increasing energy use and environmental quality awareness for members of the campus community.

Use of Sustainability Managements space, The Carriage House, as a senior design project for Environment and Civil Engineering students who were designing a Net Zero space The structural, geotechnical, and environmental engineers reviewed the existing structure and performed an energy audit to determine the best equipment and repairs need to ensure the space is net zero.

Students in the Environment and Civil Engineering school helped design several projects around energy for their Capstone Projects.

Student Group 4 worked on developing a plan for Sustainability Management space, the Carriage House, to become Net 0 by incorporating solar shingles to our roof. As there is no natural gas in the facility, they did not have to worry about negating natural gas. The group analyzed the building energy use, the building site location, the building occupants work and scheduled, to determine the total amount of solar need to reduce our electric grid needs to zero.

Student group Citrus Energy worked on a project to determine how much solar energy the University would need to ensure the South Campus housing would be net zero.

A for credit internship was created to work with Sustainability Management and Food Service to help navigate and determine if our food services qualified for any credits using the Real Food Calculator. This also included locating local food sources for events, working with a Chef to determine ingredient lists, work with Supervisor to determine budget, research local farms and distributors that meet the ingredient and quantity need within budget, contact local producers and vendors to discuss arrangement, secure interest from at least five local sources for ingredients.

The student also participated at various food service locations to understand the food service operations, including a understanding of how food service employees interact with the food and recipes and how food is ordered and stored.

The student was also challenged with researching and making recommendations on how to incorporate the Real Food Challenge into our operations.

University Sustainability Management, Falk College of Sports & Human Dynamics and Hendrick Chapel partnered together to work with staff and students to install and maintain a vegetable garden. Students helped with the garden design, spring plantings, and maintenance of the garden. Students learned how to grow, plant, maintain, harvest, and winterize the vegetable garden.
The garden also became an outdoor classroom for professors who hosted their classes in the space for either tours or community service hours.

Sustainability Management partnered as a customer with Whitman’s School of Management Green Supply Chain class. Ten projects were developed, and students had to meet with their clients on finding local, with in NY or North America, made from recycled material or sustainable material items the office needed. Working with ten groups of students.

Ten green purchasing products were determined, and ten groups of students worked on sourcing, vetting, ensuring the manurfaturi9ng was sustainable, the items were sustainable, etc.

A Green Supply Chain can be defined as “the process of using environmentally friendly inputs and transforming these inputs through change agents - whose byproducts and products can improve or be recycled within the existing environment”. The premise behind having a green supply chain is to reduce costs while helping the environment. This course examines the impact of converting to a sustainable supply chain, what companies are doing within the supply chain to become green and how supply chain processes are changing to become “environmentally friendly”. The Green Supply Chain is a very intriguing subject and is quickly becoming a prodigious focus for countless industries.

Students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Capstone program, work on the details to design bicycle routes on Syracuse University (SU)’s campus using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in Syracuse, NY. SU has an insufficient amount of bicycle lanes and requires improvement of the campus bicycle infrastructure to meet the needs of cyclists. SU lacks publicly accessible bicycle resources, safety information, and maps for cyclists.

To address these challenges, new bicycle lanes and maps of campus were developed to include places of interest relevant for cyclists. Information was collected directly from bicyclists through a survey to directly address the needs of cyclists on campus. GIS data was created using Esri software to accurately document the current bike infrastructure on campus which informed the design of the additional bicycle lanes and racks that are needed.

The Esri software was used to develop the new bicycle lanes and racks by incorporating factors such as aesthetics, topography, obstacles, and weather conditions. The bicycle lanes are designed as separate paths, part of the existing sidewalks, and on the campus streets. They are also designed to accommodate at least two people walking side-by-side and bicycle traffic on the same sidewalk. The bicycle infrastructure developed by Esri software is integrated into Google Maps, to allow for easily accessible interactive maps of campus that can be accessed on the SU website or app. To meet public outreach goals, informative pamphlets and flyers about cyclist safety and resources was designed to foster a stronger biking culture at SU. Improving and expanding the bicycle infrastructure using geospatial technology will benefit the cycling community at Syracuse University for years to come.

Waste Container & Recycling Study
Students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Capstone program worked on determining if the University had sufficient trash/recycling containers outside and inside of all our buildings.

The focus was to assess trash/recycling disposal habits of students to determine optimum location of recycling and trash receptacles on Main Campus.

The students surveyed the campus community during, before, and after classes to help determine the demographics, high traffic areas, marketing, containers, and best placement for them.

A student utilizing the Campus as a Lab grant funding opportunity was awarded funding to work on Storm Water Management Project. The student project looked at how green infrastructure could be used to manage stormwater runoff.

Green infrastructure could be used on campus to manage stormwater, reduce nutrients in runoff, and mitigate erosion. Implementing green infrastructure would improve the university’s localized environmental impact and mitigate its carbon emissions by extending the usable lifespan of expensive campus drainage infrastructure. Before widespread green infrastructure can be installed on campus, university planners and engineers need to determine optimum locations for installation and understand the potential risk that green infrastructure poses to campus structures. We propose to use emerging geophysical technologies and drones to map near-surface campus hydrology and use the information gathered to look for locations that would be good for green stormwater infrastructure installations or retrofits. We will also use this specialized equipment to understand how existing green infrastructure sites affect the water table around them. We plan to involve both university students and staff in the collection of this data by offering on-site technical trainings in geophysical methods including ground-penetrating radar, time-domain reflectometry, electrical resistivity tomography and drone surveillance

Our Community Development Law Clinic (CDLC) is one of the oldest community development law clinics in the country. Founded in 1988, it provides representation for not-for-profit organizations and businesses involved in improving low-income communities.

Healthy Monday Syracuse is a major initiative of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.  The Lerner Center works in partnership with citizens, students, researchers and public health professionals to develop Healthy Monday programming on campus and in the community to make meaningful change in the health of Onondaga County residents