It’s been a busy semester for the Office of Sustainability.
With four open houses, three departmental presentations and two campus forums finished, director Myron Willson said the ideas and questions that have come out of discussions with the members of the U community have “exceeded our expectations.”
Willson said the forums have helped his office fine-tune the way it does things, especially since sustainability is new to everyone involved.
“Each university is doing it for the first time,” Willson said.
Getting questions from the public allows the sustainability office administrators to ask themselves what they need to work on and what needs to be improved, Willson said. With one more open forum scheduled for December, Willson said the office is focusing on laying out the ideas it has received so far and evaluating them to see which will rise to the top.
“Basically, we are trying not to filter any ideas just yet that are coming into our office,” Willson said.
Willson said they don’t yet have a lot of specific ideas to work with, but at least one of them sounds workable. The office could cooperate with research professors to buy more energy-efficient refrigerators for them to store study samples, since research buildings end up consuming a lot of energy on campus because the equipment has to run 24 hours a day.
The office also has a group of more than 80 volunteers made up of students, faculty and staff who are working on teams to generate a list of ideas related to their team’s focus, ranging from recycling to energy consumption, Willson said.
The teams are also working on gathering as much information as possible about how and where sustainability initiatives might fit at the U.
Willson said that in addition to the information the office is gathering, the forums have served as a great way to get people engaged and have allowed the public to see what the office is doing. However, only about eight people have attended each forum.
Still, Willson said he believes his office has been successful because it was specific in what kind of information and ideas it was looking for, and adjusted to what its audience presented.
When the forums were first scheduled, they were hoping to just get ideas, Willson said. What they got instead was a heated political debate about the point of sustainability, rather than a slew of possible sustainability initiatives. By the second forum, tempers calmed, and more time was spent brainstorming.
The office is inviting members of the community to participate in the last forum of the year, scheduled for Dec. 3 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at The Crimson View. The forum will recap what the office has done so far as well as serving as a place, like the previous forums, for community members to share their input.
Beginning next semester, Willson and his office will present the ideas to the U administration and begin analysis to make a decision on which ideas will be implemented.