Student Sustainability Fee Funds $238,000 in Campus Projects

May 19, 2014

During its first funding cycle, the Center for Sustainability’s Sustainability Fee Committee has allocated more than $238,000 in funding for 12 projects at Georgia Southern University to be implemented beginning this fall. “This is a very proud moment for the students who worked so hard to put the Student Sustainability Fee in place, and for Georgia Southern University, which has made significant strides in sustainability over the past several years,” said Lissa Leege, director of the Center for Sustainability. Representing a range of sustainable solutions including instant savings with LED lighting upgrades and solar powered service golf carts, education and outreach with a traveling sustainable solutions museum exhibit and interpretive campus signage, the committee received 20 proposals requesting over $432,000. In addition, the projects awarded cover baseline data collection regarding water quality and carbon storage on campus and the application of innovative research with potential to solve sustainability problems in a nanofiber technology and carbon capture grant proposal. The departments awarded and their proposals are below:

• Assessment of Water Quality and Soil Carbon Sequestration to ensure environmental quality - $15,930 Department of Chemistry and Department of Biology
• Nanofiber Based Carbon Capture Technology to Reduce the CO2 Emissions - $30,044 Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Solar Powered Service Golf Carts - $30,425.50 Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Art
• Moth Project - $7,000 Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Solar Energy Potential - $31,424.75 Georgia Southern Museum
• Portable Sustainability Exhibit - $7,450 Division Facilities Services
• LED Lighting Upgrade Parking Lot: Information Technology Building Parking Area - $42,000 Campus Landscape Architect

The Division of Facilities Services also will receive the following:

• Bicycle Repair Station: Student Union - $2,400
• Forest Drive: Bicycle Lane/ Sharrow Markings - $3,700
• Campus Sustainability Interpretative Signage - $8,500
• Bicycle Parking Facility: Stadium Bus Stop - $24,800
• Stormwater Park: Plant & Forest Drive - $34,400

Proposal submissions were received from eight academic departments in five colleges, as well as the Georgia Southern Museum and the Division of Facilities Services. The committee consisted of eight students, representing seven colleges and one college-at-large, as well as one staff member representing the Division of Facilities Services, one representative of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, one representative of Academic Affairs, one faculty member and the Director of the Center for Sustainability. “I was impressed with the quality of the applications and the breadth of sustainable solutions presented in this first request for proposals,” said Leege. “The projects the committee selected for funding represent exactly what students had in mind when they developed the sustainability fee. I could not be more proud of Georgia Southern University’s commitment to sustainability and of the foresight and dedication of the students who have made these new advances possible,” said Leege. Students can expect to see some of these projects up and running in fall 2014 when they return to campus. The $10 Student Sustainability Fee was approved in Fall 2012 by a 75 percent student majority vote, and approved by the Board of Regents in April 2013. The fee was collected for the first time in August 2013. These projects represent the first cycle of funding for Sustainability Fee project proposals.