UMass Chan Medical School
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

The Student Climate Coalition is a group of students on campus who organize climate teach-ins and climate-focused electives. They meet on a regular basis to discuss ongoing initiatives and set new goals. One of their most recent projects was to identify the landscaping techniques on campus, and so the Student Climate Coalition met with other interested students on campus to approach the Office of Sustainability with a proposal to use more sustainable landscaping techniques. In the end, we discovered that the campus uses delayed-release fertilizers, no pesticides, and strategically timed sprinkler systems.
Students regularly share resources for learning with one another, schedule guest speakers who are subject matter experts in sustainability, and collaborate with the Office of Sustainability to meet and discuss ideas with various departments across the university, including Grounds, Facilities Engineering and Construction (FEC), and others. These constitute learning experiences for participants of the coalition.

Our students submit the Planetary Health Report Card, which requires them to interview with various departments around the University and learn about their practices and operations. These interviews serve as learning experiences for these students to understand what goes on "behind the scenes" at our university.

In 2021, two UMass Chan students received scholarships to conduct research on the effects of air quality on pregnant women in Guatemala. They worked in conjunction with the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial, a multinational and multicentric study that analyzes the impacts of household air pollution on health outcomes, specifically on pregnant women and infants. The HAPIN trial has research sites in Guatemala, India, Peru and Rwanda. The trial is enrolling 3,200 households; half of the participants will be given gas stoves and propane, and half will remain as a control group using customary cooking practices. Households will be assessed and monitored based on their stove use and exposure to pollution. With this data, the two students will analyze outcomes such as preterm birth, birth weight, growth and respiratory infections in children; and respiratory function, blood pressure, inflammation and other indicators of heart disease in adults. The nature of this opportunity is educational in that it counts for credit at UMass Chan Medical School and has a research compoenent.

The Office of Sustainability, after the Green Labs Summit in April of 2023, will be organizing an experiment in the Albert Sherman Center, which is submetered for electricity usage by floor. Students and interested parties will plan for behavioral change campaigns and measure the energy reduction by floor. In addition, another student purchased a kilowatt meter to begin estimating energy reductions for specific pieces of technology based on usage times. These results will be shared out regularly at the Buildings and Energy working group for the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan.
These experiments and results will serve as educational opportunities for participants to learn more about how to measure, monitor, and reduce energy in UMass Chan buildings. These inform initiatives that the Office of Sustainability regularly checks in with and consults our students and other community participants on.

The Green Team is a combination of students, staff, faculty, and health professionals from Memorial Hospital and UMass Chan Medical School. The Green Team works together to share news and resources about sustainability and to combine efforts to support sustainability initiatives such as improving energy savings and recycling. The Green Team recently became a partner of Practice Greenhealth, giving them access to helpful resources for establishing, benchmarking, and improving sustainability strategies. These resources are shared with the Green Team, who has invited subject-matter experts from Practice Greenhealth, to help the team learn how to incorporate sustainable best practices into a health setting. The Practice Greenhealth team regularly attends Green Team meetings and supports their efforts and knowledge, serving as a learning experience for students, faculty, and staff across the University and Memorial Hospital. The Green Team collaborates with the Student Garden Group to plant and harvest the campus' Student Garden and also contributes to volunteering opportunities to plant and harvest Memorial Hospital's community gardens. These hands-on opportunities help participants learn how to implement and maintenance projects at the university. In addition to this, the Green Team is currently working with Practice Greenhealth to begin measuring the carbon footprint of Memorial Hospital, and the team is identifying energy projects throughout the hospital. The group has created a forum for hospital users to identify prospective energy projects as well.

Accessible to all students, the Max Baker Resource Center is a response to mitigate the prevalence of food insecurity in higher education at UMass Chan. As a testament to the prevalence of food insecurity, there have been approximately 3,000 food pantry visits since April of 2022. The food pantry offers foods and sanitary products free of charge to any student of UMass Chan. Donations to the pantry are coordinated in conjunction with students.

The students managing the Max Baker Resource Center learn about forging and maintaining community partnerships, and collaborate with the Office of Well-being and the Office of Sustainability on evaluating metrics and measuring usership of the Center. In addition to this, the students managing the group are newly collaborating the the Office of Well-being's Community-Supported-Agriculture program (CSA) to bring unclaimed produce to the Center for distribution, teaching students the importance of cross-pollination and partnership between departments.

The UMass Chan community garden is a student-led initiative that began in 2019. Totally student run, the Student Garden Club meet every week to garden together in the spring, summer, and fall. Produce grown goes to the Max Baker Resource Center. Students use the gardens, which has since expanded to include a total of 6 raised garden beds and 7 blueberry bushes, to learn about the importance of preventing diseases related to food insecurity and nutrition. Students learn how to garden and care for plants, how to collaborate with Regional Environmental Council and coordinate pick ups and drop offs of compost, bedding, and plants, and how these contribute to a successful garden. Students see the fruits of their labor by getting to take home produce and donate the rest to the student food pantry. In collaboration with that group, there are many lessons learned, with much relating to human health and healthy food.

The Electric Vehicle Stakeholder Group consists of all registered EV drivers on campus. This group meets as-needed to discuss EV charging station etiquette, rules, and policies surrounding charging electric vehicles. The EV Stakeholder Group will be meeting once again soon to weigh in on a new charging station policy for the campus. Participants learn about the latest EV models, best practices for charging station usage, and maximizing the use of their vehicles.

The Office of Sustainability offered a hands on course to a student in 2021 that supported research to find ways to safely divert used animal bedding from the solid waste stream. After presenting to the Institutional Biosafety Committee, the student was given permission to provide a test load to a local composting company to determine if the bedding could be composted or used for biofuels. The results of this study are shared out through regular Sustainability and Climate Action Plan implementation meetings. Being involved in this program has helped the student learn the process for creating an experiment, managing multiple partners in the project (the IRB, EHS, EL Harvey, composting companies, etc.), and monitoring project outcomes and progress.

In 2022, a student intern working at UMass Chan approached the Office of Sustainability to investigate the state of our landscaping services and their impact on water usage and water quality in the area. Together, we investigated the current state and assessed alternatives that could reduce the amount of watering conducted on our green spaces, and to reduce the runoff into the local waterbody. The student reported progress to the Student Climate Coalition, who drafted an email in support of organic fertilizer to send to the Vice Chancellor of Facilities. This served as a learning experience in understanding the pros and cons of our landscaping program, particularly organic fertilizer versus traditional fertilizer. The student presented to the student Climate Coalition the challenges of using traditional fertilizers near bodies of water, teaching about the effects of runoff and pollution. In addition, the group learned how to engage leadership for change in an effective manner.

The Decarbonization Task Force is a group of students, faculty, staff, and state workers who have partnered to provide input and direction to the UMass Chan Decarbonization Planning process. This group meets about monthly to discuss and weigh in on progress on the planning process, including setting priorities and being a barometer for community response. The Task Force has been involved in engagement events with the campus community so that we can spread the word of this important process. The group also gets to learn about the complexities of energy planning in a challenging healthcare setting. They also learn how to set priorities, and took part in a three-part webinar series about the technologies under consideration for the Decarbonization Plan.