University of Washington, Bothell
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Students are recruited for quarter-long internships, and often classes in interdisciplinary subjects partner with the Sustainability Office to work on sustainability-related events and initiatives. This includes work on the Campus Farm, developing programming and workshops related to sustainability, as well as research around sustainability initiatives and their success.

In addition to hosting the annual Campus Climate Dialog 2020, students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate in sustainability activities on- campus. Students are recruited for quarter-long internships, and often classes in interdisciplinary subjects partner with the Sustainability Office to work on sustainability-related events and initiatives. This includes a community partner tabling event and other sustainability-related movie screenings, restoration projects, plantings, workshops and other activities during our annual joint campus Earth Week celebration and throughout the year. In 2021, a class helped create a geocache for the campus to engage visitors in a socially-distanced sustainability tour.

Dr. Daniel Jaffe is an expert in Atmospheric Chemistry and works on many research projects related to air quality and climate. His research includes: VOCs and Oxygenated VOCs in Houston, Flask and In-Situ
Observations at the Mt. Bachelor Observatory, and Wildfire Impacts on O3 and Particulate Matter in Urban Areas of the Western US. Students in Jaffe's classes as well as other volunteers are encouraged to participate in and contribute to this research.

One of our buildings, Discovery Hall, is LEED Gold Certified and provides the students with opportunities to engage in the design and operation of a "sustainable" building. Tours are provided to classes upon request featuring sustainability elements, with facility access to energy and water-saving design of the building.

One of our buildings, Discovery Hall, is LEED Gold Certified and provides the students with opportunities to engage in the design and operation of a high-energy efficient building. Tours are provided to classes upon request featuring sustainability elements, with facility access to energy saving building design and function.

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Our campus is blessed to have a 58-acre restored Wetland that serves as a true functioning living laboratory that students benefit from through real-time data collection and evaluation.
Wetlands are an invaluable and integral resource in the global landscape. Because wetland formation and ecology are vastly influenced by climate, geographical location affects the size and type of wetland found at specific global locations. As such, students will examine the unique ecology that evolves when the presence of water on terrestrial systems is pervasive enough to create changes to the soil and biotic community. Students explored the large wetland restoration project located on-campus through ‘hands-on’ field labs assessing soil and water quality as well as other ecological and botanical elements.
In addition, the grounds are certified Salmon-Safe, Wildlife Habitat Certified and the institutions are a Bee Campus USA Affiliate. The CCUWBee Research Initiative is a cross-campus group of students, staff and faculty working to research and support native bee populations on campus. We do this through studying their diversity and abundance, and inform our campus Grounds Team of bloom gaps and management practices that would help advance these efforts. We work with the Grounds Team to plant and maintain pollinator plantings across campus as well.
The campus grounds have been managed pesticide free since 2006, allowing the campus to have multiple areas to engage students in growing food, including the Food Forest, Campus Farm, Herb Walk, and Orchard.

The Supply Chain Business Degree option provides students the ability to manage suppliers across globally distributed locations, to procure the right materials, at the right time, at the right quality, and at the lowest cost to meet company objectives. Students have access to sustainable business practice courses through their degree requirements.

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Classes have partnered with the Sustainability Office to conduct waste audits on-campus and learn about waste diversion and education around waste sorting.

We offer the following courses that have a focus on water sustainability issues: Water and Sustainability, Hydrogeology, Water Quality, Introduction to Oceanography, Marine Diversity and Conservation, and Environmental Monitoring Practicum. Modules from the Water and Sustainability course are published on the Science Education Resource Center site as part of the NSF-funded InTeGrate collection. Two of the modules developed at UWB, Water Footprints and What is Sustainability in the Context of Water, have received exemplary status for online teaching modules from the On the Cutting Edge program of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. Environmental Monitoring Practicum is designed to help students master the methods of water quality sampling and analysis and has launched many students in careers in water science and management. In addition, many students in our environmental majors have been engaged in water-centric projects to fulfill their capstone research requirement.

Students in Hydrogeology, Environmental Monitoring Practicum, and other environmental courses learn about the low impact development features on campus including rain gardens, green roofs, bioswales and permeable pavement. Even more students engage in field work in our 58-acre restored wetland. The wetland is bisected by North Creek, which flows into the Sammamish River at the south end of campus. This waterway is 303d listed for being in exceedance of fecal coliform bacteria. UWB students have long monitored water quality in North Creek, as well as the runoff from campus and surface water in the wetland. This monitoring has become more critical over the past 10 years as the wetland has become a roost area for approximately 16,000 crows during the winter months and roughly half that many the rest of the year. The high loading of crow feces on campus and the wetland has spurred student-driven, grant funded research that explores the potential for mushroom mycelium inoculated installations to knock back pathogen contamination in our campus and wetland runoff before it discharges into North Creek.

Students host an annual campus wide event in sustainability and climate change that engages students, faculty, and staff on the need to reduce carbon emissions. Known as the Campus Climate Dialog, this event seeks to identify specific strategies that can be deployed on campus to reduce carbon emissions and work to focus on climate resilience for under-served communities in equitable ways. The results of the Dialog are reported to the campus community and executive team. In addition, all students, staff and faculty are invited to engage multiple college committees such as the Chancellor's Advisory Committee for Environmental Sustainability (CACES) and Commuter Services Advisory Committee (CSAC).

The UW Bothell Sustainability CBLR program allows students from all interests and disciplines to explore any and all concepts related to sustainability, including a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and affordability. Students research concepts related to the triple-bottom line as well as SDGs.

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Nursing and Health Studies students have the opportunity to work in the Sustainability Office through the CBLR program, creating materials related to wellbeing including podcast mini-series, promotional materials, events, etc. focused around connecting wellbeing as part of the societal/social component of sustainability.