| Overall Rating | Gold |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 67.31 |
| Liaison | Rob Andrejewski |
| Submission Date | Dec. 23, 2024 |
University of Richmond
PRE-2: Points of Distinction
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
N/A |
Daniel
Hart Associate Director of Sustainability and Environmental Justice Office for Sustainability |
Name of the institution’s featured sustainability program, initiative, or accomplishment:
A brief description of the institution’s featured program, initiative, or accomplishment:
The Eco-Corridor is natural area restoration project on the southern portion of the University of Richmond that includes four key components: construction of a multi-use recreational trail, removal of invasive plants, management of storm water, and restoration of Little Westham Creek. This project is a prime example of campus stewardship that will improve the health of Little Westham Creek and the surrounding area for years to come.
Little Westham Creek and the land surrounding it perform critical functions in our watershed. Improvements made through the Eco-Corridor project align with a vision first described in the Campus Master Plan. Since opening in 2020, the Eco-Corridor has been home to dozens of student projects and served as the focal point for the faculty Eco-Corridor Think Tank, which resulted the area being integrated into future coursework for a number of classes.
Study of Little Westham Creek and the effects of its restoration are a prime example of engaged scholarship with potential to inform real-world practices. See https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8658c8f7b03e4ecc8b6d41d0b95a63ba for student-engaged work. Some of the topics are below:
• Restoration of Little Westham Creek
• Realignment and paving of 10-foot-wide Gambles Mill Trail with planting of shrubs, buffer trees, and ground cover along trail
• Creation of a pollinator meadow walk with native plantings
• Siting of an outdoor classroom
• Planing of native trees, shrubs, perennials, and grasses
• Historical investigation of a wastewater remnant site and Earthen Dam
• Design and installation of gates, bollards, and signage at the north and south ends of the trail
• Improvements to the Community Garden with new water bibs
• Stormwater management demonstration areas, including a bio-swale, rain garden, and level spreaders
The stream restoration and water quality changes have been monitored and are available for study. Features of the stream restoration include the following a small, main channel through a wide, well-vegetated floodplain;
installation of riffles, pools and wood habitat structures along the main channel; installation of stone steps and pools along the tributaries; seeding and planting of native species throughout the stream banks, floodplain, and uplands. See https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2427b955b205496d9bed20d7bf5d0afc for more or to learn more about the scope of the project, visit this link:
https://public.imaginingamerica.org/journalcontent/2022/7/1/572/index.html
Which of the following impact areas does the featured program, initiative, or accomplishment most closely relate to?:
Grounds
Water
Optional Fields
STARS credit in which the featured program, initiative, or accomplishment is reported (if applicable):
A photograph or document associated with the featured program, initiative, or accomplishment:
Second Point of Distinction
A brief description of the second program/initiative/accomplishment:
The University of Richmond has recently formed a "Humanities Center", foucsed on integrating questions of being, philosophy, and the humanities into the UR student experience. This year's topical theme of "How and Why Do We Represent Nature"? encourages meta-cognition and self-inquiry about the relationship to humans and the natural world around us - a fundamental quality of what it might mean to create a more sustainable world.
This question invites us to consider “representation” in both its political meaning and its aesthetic meaning. “Nature” is represented in paintings, poems, scripture, music, dancing, novels, laws, regulations, equations, activisms, advertising campaigns.
This question asks how environments—and often their relations to human concerns—are represented across media, geographic and cultural contexts, and different historical moments.
It invites us to self-reflexively ask how humanistic practices—especially artistic, scholarly, and pedagogical ones—have been sites of resource use and accumulation, and how experimental texts and events across many media and embodied performances might disrupt and re-envision those ecological entanglements.
The question invites us to look at “nature” again, go over its history as a concept and field of aesthetic and philosophical knowledge, to learn, perhaps, how to see and feel it differently in a moment of unfolding climate catastrophe
Theme Courses for 2024-25
In addition to serving as the theme for Humanities Connect and the Humanities Fellows Program, there are also courses addressing the theme. Some of these are open to any student, and some are not. While we hope this list is useful to students (and advisors) in crafting plans for 2024-25, we also think it’s exciting to be able to see where this question is being asked, and we hope that seeing that gives us a new understanding of who we are, what we do, what we might yet do together.
AFST201 Rumours of War Seminar (Jillean McCommons) [AIHS, IFPE]
CLSC302 Roman Art & Archaeology (Elizabeth Baughan) [AIVP, FSVP]
CLSC329 The Ancient World in Cinema (Erika Damer) [AILT, IFWC, FSLT, IFWC]
CRWR313 Creative Nonfiction (Libby Gruner) [Prerequisites] [IFWC]
ENGL215 Reading Science Fiction & Fantasy (Kylie Korsnack) [AILT, FSLT, IFWC]
ENGL312 English Literature of the Romantic Movement (Thomas Manganaro) [Prerequisites] [AILT, IFWC]
ENGL325 Age of the American Renaissance (Kevin Pelletier) [Prerequisites]
ENGL330 Victorian Experiments in Fictional Form (Libby Gruner) [Prerequisites]
ENGL367 Indigenous Film in North America (Monika Siebert) [Prerequisites]
ENGL400 Indigenous Literature (Monika Siebert) [Senior Seminar]
FREN305 Writing in French through Literature and Culture (Sara Pappas) [Prerequisites] [IFWC]
FREN327 The Question of Modernity (Lidia Radi) [Prerequisites] [AILT, WC, FSLT]
FREN471 Francophone Studies (Kasongo Kapanga) [Prerequisites]
FYS100 Human/Nature (Nathan Snaza) [FYS, Endeavor]
FYS100 Dances for Everybody (Alicia Diaz) [FYS]
FYS100 Buckwheat & Caviar (Yvonne Howell) [FYS]
FYS100 Tao of Leadership (Jane Geaney) [FYS, Endeavor]
GEOG210 Planet Earth: People and Place (David Salisbury) [AISO, FSSA, IFPE]
GEOG250 What's Hot in the City? (Todd Lookingbill) [Endeavor] [FSNB]
GEOG333 Amazonia Connected (David Salisbury) [SSIR]
GEOG370 Global Climate Investment (Mary Finely-Brook) [Prerequistes]
HIST199 Maps, Indigenous Dispo in Latin America (Juan Ardila Falla) [AIHS, FSHT]
HIST260 Colonial Latin America (Juan Ardila Falla) [AIHS, FSHT]
HIST291 History of Public Health & Biomedicine in the Global South (Carol Summers) [AIHS, FSHT, IFPE]
HS101 Global Health (Kathryn Jacobsen, Nigel James)
HS331 Planetary Health (Jeremy Hoffman) [Prerequisites]
JOUR222 Turning Science into Stories (Karen Masterson) [IFWC, AILT]
LAIS332 Introduction to Latin American Literatures II (Mariela Méndez) [Prerequisites] [AILT, IFEB, FSLT]
LAIS432 True Lies: Fiction and Truth in Don Quijote [Prerequistites]
LAIS467 Stories Matter/Telling and Listening in Medicine (Karina Vasquez) [Prerequisites]
LDST210 Justice and Civil Society (Lauren Henley, Thad Williamson, Ekrem Mus) [Prerequisites] [IFPE]
LDST305 / PLSC379 Law, Native Sovereignty & Treaties (David Wilkins) [AIHS, IFPE]
LDST306 Sex, leadership, and the Evolution of Human Societies (Chris von Rueden)
LDST350 Killers & Cults (Lauren Henley) [AIHS, IFPE]|
LDST390 / SOC379 Leadership in the Digital Age (Bo Yun Park)
LLC335 Bombs, Bolsheviks, Ballet (Cultural History of the Soviet Union) (Yvonne Howell) [AIHS, FSHT]
MUS213 Recording, Transforming and Organizing Sound (Ben Broenin) [Prerequisites] [AIVP, FSVP]
PLSC362 Environmental Law and Policy (Chris Miller) [Prerequisites]
RELG206 Leadership Ethics: Early China (Jane Geaney) [AILT, FSLT]
RHCS353 Rhetoric and Law (Mari Lee Mifsud)
SUST101 Introduction to Sustainability (Rob Andrejewski and Daniel Hart)
THTR207 Text and Performance (Anne Van Gelder, Dorothy Holland) [AIVP, FSVP, IFEB]
THTR239 Latinx on Stage: From Barrio to Broadway (Patricia Herrera) [AIVP, FSVP, IFEB]
VMAP279 Documentary Art Media (Jeremy Drummond)
WGSS200 Intro to WGSS (Dorothy Holland, Julietta Singh) [AISO, FSSA, IFPE]
WGSS490 The Art of Friendship (Julietta Singh) [Senior Capstone]
Which impact areas does the second program/initiative/accomplishment most closely relate to?:
Research
Campus Engagement
Website URL where more information about the second program/initiative/accomplishment may be found:
STARS credit in which the second program/initiative/accomplishment is reported (if applicable):
A photograph or document associated with the second program/initiative/accomplishment:
Third Point of Distinction
A brief description of the third program/initiative/accomplishment:
Burying Ground
The University of Richmond is working toward a permanent memorial to honor those enslaved and laid to rest on the land that became this campus.
University-sponsored research published in 2019, “Knowledge of This Cannot Be Hidden": A Report on the Westham Burying Ground by Shelby M. Driskill and Dr. Lauranett L. Lee, revealed that a site on the southeastern side of Westhampton Lake was once a burying ground for those enslaved by former landowners and that remains were discovered and desecrated by the University multiple times in the early to mid-twentieth century.
A Burying Ground Memorialization Committee was formed and charged with identifying appropriate means to memorialize the burying ground and enslaved people who lived and labored on this land prior to the University’s arrival. Based on that work, the Committee forwarded a final report with design principles that reflect lessons learned through meeting with and listening to the descendant community and campus stakeholders.
Since the Burying Ground Memorialization Committee completed its work in December of 2021, the University retained Burt Pinnock from Baskervill architects to develop, evolve, and finalize a design with input from descendants and the campus community. Construction on the site is began in early 2024 and commence for 12-14 months.
https://www.richmond.edu/burying-ground/burying-ground-report.html
https://www.richmond.edu/burying-ground/committee.html
https://www.richmond.edu/burying-ground/committee-final-report.html
.
Which impact areas does the third program/initiative/accomplishment most closely relate to?:
Diversity & Affordability
Website URL where more information about the third program/initiative/accomplishment may be found:
STARS credit in which the third program/initiative/accomplishment is reported (if applicable):
A photograph or document associated with the third program/initiative/accomplishment:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.