Campus as a Living Lab (CLL) 2019-2020
Highlighted Projects
UCI Physical & Environmental Planning: Green Labs Program
UCI Green Labs launched in 2017 to help facilitate sustainable practices in campus laboratories. The program consists of a comprehensive self-assessment of sustainable practices, including energy use, water use, green chemistry, field work, and waste management. Laboratory staff work collaboratively to complete the assessment, identify sustainable practices to implement, and complete the certification process. The intern will take on projects such as updating the UCI Green Labs inventory, identifying/recruiting new labs, assisting with the certification process, and creating education and outreach materials.
UCI Housing: Green Room Certification and Energy Efficiency Programs
The goal of this project is to develop a green room certification program. Living spaces will be audited to check for energy efficiency and other resource-saving practices. By participating in the program, residents will gain a foundational understanding of best practices for conserving energy and accomplish quantifiable energy savings by making small changes in their daily habits. Interns will analyze the data collected from room audits and behavioral surveys to see if participants showed an improvement in making energy-conscious lifestyle decisions. In addition, interns will design educational competitions to launch in 2019-2020.
UCI Housing: Little Ants Nature School
Our mission is to inspire children and their families to connect with the natural world and with each other within the UCI Community, all while having a fun, interactive time together. Little Ants provides safe, active, and engaging experiences for children and their caregivers to learn about the environment and sustainability, and to sow the seeds of environmental stewardship, wellness, and care for the community. Interns will create an annual curriculum and develop a procedural manual, resource guide, and training materials for future use. In addition, they will coordinate weekly lessons in graduate and family housing, train additional volunteers, and provide hall programming and community outreach.
UCI Housing: Verano Place Garden and Orchard
The Verano Place Community Organic Garden offers plots to community members to encourage them to grow their own food. We need help to establish working guidelines and strategies for our existing community orchard and garden and get the orchard back in shape. Projects include planting and maintaining “example plots,” developing a procedural manual and/or guidelines to keep the garden and orchard a viable resource, and conducting monthly service days with garden stakeholders and quarterly training events open to all residents.
UCI Dining: Zero Waste Dining Facilities
UCI Dining aims to achieve 95% or greater solid waste diversion in campus food courts and to maintain zero waste in the dining halls. Interns will conduct outreach to student organizations to build a network of volunteers, host “Trash Talking” and “Wiping Out Waste” events, and conduct weekly waste audits of the campus food courts to assess the impact of education and outreach efforts. In addition, interns will plan and execute creative educational waste displays at The Anteatery and Pippin.
UCI-Nature: Natural Lands Management
Students will participate in one quarter of training by UCI-Nature staff. The remaining two quarters would be devoted to leading activities such as docent-led interpretation of natural and land use history and research activities; organizing and conducting stewardship activities such as native planting, weed control, and trail maintenance; participating in or leading citizen science projects involving data collection; and leading a social media campaign to increase awareness of local conservation issues.
UCI Facilities Management: Waste Diversion
UCI Facilities Management needs help determining the waste diversion rate for individual campus buildings and schools. This data will allow us to tailor our education and outreach activities to the needs of different segments of the campus community. Interns would also collect data on solid waste and recycling to help determine how UCI can best pursue goals such as reducing single-use plastics.