Northwestern University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

In addition, sustainNU has work study positions available where students analyze the University's GHG emissions and make suggestions for reductions. As part of the Sustainability Council coordinating the Sustainability Strategic Plan, students, faculty and staff have also been working together to make a series of recommendations for how Northwestern might reduce its carbon footprint, after analyzing current practices in the areas of air and climate and prioritizing solutions.

Students have been gathered to serve on a sustainability council that will advise the administration in the construction of the new Norris University Center, set to be completed in 2018. The council will include students knowledgeable about sustainability and building design who can provide feedback and give input to architects and administrators on what sustainable features the building should include that would be best received by the student body. Students were also involved in the sustainable building process for a new Kellogg building, and Engineers for a Sustainable World has been consulted on ways to make new construction green.

Students have also been invited to tour the University's most recently commissioned sustainable buildings, Kresge Centennial Hall. Kresge was designed to meet high standards for energy efficiency, indoor air quality, use of sustainable materials, and other green building practices. This building is vying for LEED Platinum recognition from USGBC, which makes it a perfect place for our students to have a hands-on experience with sustainable building and energy efficiency right here on campus.

sustainNU has also partnered with CLEAResult, a utility efficiency company, to perform energy efficiency walk throughs of the buildings on campus to search for ways that the University can increase our efficiency. Students were able to walk through the mechanical rooms of some of the largest buildings on campus and help Facilities Management staff identify ways the buildings could improve our energy use.

Interns in the Northwestern Dining office are focused on promoting the office’s brand and educating students about dining promotions, events and initiatives. Several students serve specific sustainability roles and are in charge of promoting Northwestern Dining’s efforts to minimize its footprint in dining halls. Additionally, students engaged with the Real Food Challenge have been working with Northwestern Dining to run the Real Food Calculator, which inventories sustainable food purchases made by Northwestern. As a result of their work, Northwestern has now signed onto the Real Food Campus Commitment, pledging to purchase 20 percent “real” food by 2020.

Wild Roots garden also focuses on sustainable food systems by teaching students about organic and urban gardening. The garden provides produce to the Norris University Center, offers workshops to NU students and presents to community schools on urban agriculture. Wild Roots is a student-directed garden which grows fresh produce for the Northwestern and Evanston communities using sustainable practices. Wild Roots serves the evolving educational and social needs of the Northwestern community by inspiring students to think critically about the food we eat and by starting conversations about sustainability, social justice, and our food system.

Engineers for a Sustainable World led the creation of a 17 kW solar array on campus and is currently evaluating the feasibility of wind turbines on several roofs across campus. The group is also planning to construct a “Solar Tree,” which will provide seating and charging stations shaped like a tree that will help students charge their technology outdoors with solar panels as the canopy.

Another project on campus worth noting is House By Northwestern (HBN). This project will serve to be a model for sustainability living lab concepts. Comprised of students from diverse disciplines including engineering, design, sciences, and the arts, the HBN team is designing and building a house that will blend technology, market potential, and design excellence with smart energy production and maximum efficiency. The result will be a sustainable home that is well-adapted for the extreme seasons of the Chicago climate and minimizes its impact on the surrounding environment. House by Northwestern will be 90% more energy efficient than the average home in our community.

The HBN team will spend the winter finalizing the designs for our home so that they can begin construction in Spring 2017. During Summer 2017 they will have public tours and run tests of the house to ensure it will operate successfully at the Solar Decathlon.

In September 2017, the team will load the house onto several trucks and ship it to Denver for the competition. After the competition, they'll bring the house back to Evanston, where it will continue to be open for public tours as a demonstration of sustainable living in our local community.

Students for Ecological and Environmental Development partnered with our Open Space Planning committee to analyze the possibility of bioswales at various locations on campus. Students also serve on the Tree Campus USA committee, to learn about sustainable tree and landscaping practices at Northwestern. In spring 2015, a Northwestern professor led a group of students in a maple tapping project in conjunction with the American Indian Center of Chicago. The project taught students about the types of trees on campus and the value of maple trees to the American Indian community.

Students in the "Introduction to Sustainability" course, directed by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern, have used Northwestern's dining purchases to examine emissions. They conducted a life cycle analysis of dining purchases to see if local purchasing was really more sustainable than distance purchasing.

Additionally, students in the Real Food Challenge have gained experience in inventorying dining purchases and making suggestions for improvements to be more sustainable and community-based. They've been analyzing the percentages of dining purchases that meet the qualifications as "real food" and lobbying the administration to channel purchasing into sustainable options.

In conjunction with the City of Evanston, engineering students at Northwestern have been commissioned to analyze bicycle and pedestrian traffic across the city, which informed the city in the development of its new transportation and bicycle plan. The work of the students was used to evaluate the best locations for bicycle lanes and bicycle sharing stations.

This year, two student groups have worked on projects to study the feasibility of increasing the number of electric vehicles in Northwestern's fleet, as well as increasing the infrastructure on campus for electric vehicle charging stations. These two student groups produced financial models and plans for future electric vehicle purchases and infrastructure improvements. These two projects helped tackle sustainNU's goal of converting the University's fleet to electric vehicles while simultaneously teaching students how to create a feasibility study with a financial model to determine the payback period and timeline for fleet conversion. We hope to utilize the models the students created to inform our updates on campus and within the University's fleet.

Engineers for a Sustainable World’s Pura Playa project is addressing plastic waste on campus, through its “Beyond the Bottle” campaign. The group is aiming to make Northwestern plastic water bottle free, and is also working with research teams at Northwestern to investigate innovative possibilities for the recycling of plastic bottles.

ASG’s Sustainability Committee is also focused on reducing the waste generated at Northwestern by working to make Ryan Field a zero-waste football stadium. The team conducted waste audits in the fall of 2015 and is working with concessions to switch purchasing to recyclable and compostable alternatives. They’ve also instituted volunteering programs for students to monitor and direct the waste stream at tailgates and during games, making sure everything gets disposed of properly.

The Northwestern Center for Water Research formed in September 2015 to link the University’s water research efforts in basic sciences, technology development, law and policy, and systems analysis and simulation. The Water Center will enable the Northwestern community to achieve:
- Fundamental advances in water science, enabling new water technologies and improved prediction of water systems.
- High‐performance discovery, design, and commercialization of materials for water monitoring and processing technologies.
- Efficient, robust, and durable solutions for water reuse, low‐purity water sources, and resource recovery from wastewaters.
- Integration of theory, data, and models to predict large‐scale, long‐term outcomes in complex water/energy/food/ecosystems, and enable safe, efficient, and sustainable management of water.

The Water Center will develop global solutions for regional problems by engaging diverse industrial, governmental, and community partners to apply the highest levels of science and engineering to solve water challenges in the Chicago region and throughout the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley. NAISE (Northwestern University-Argonne National Laboratory Institute of Science and Engineering) fosters collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and other regional research powerhouses. Partnerships with conservation organizations including the Chicago Botanic Garden and The Nature Conservancy engage students and the public in sustainable water solutions.

Students have served on the Sustainability Council, convened by sustainNU, to shape Northwestern’s strategic plan for sustainability. In the council, the students work with faculty, staff and administrators to examine Northwestern’s sustainability practices, identify room for improvements and make suggestions to the University about how to comprehensively integrate sustainability into our University. The research and planning done in this Council will shape the future of sustainability at Northwestern for years to come.

The Associated Student Government Analytics team is responsible for surveying the entire student body to gauge what initiatives and projects are most important to students. They then analyze their data to prioritize causes students care about and develop their results into a budget proposal for the following year, which is presented to administrators to be considered. In 2015, many of the items students prioritized in their proposal were funded, and the Analytics team received positive feedback from the administration on their presentation and hard work.

Students in Associated Student Government have been focused on diversity, affordability, and accessibility across the Northwestern experience, and lobbied the administration for change. In 2014-2015, ASG partnered with the Quest Scholars Network at Northwestern to propose a resolution that would make the university more accessible to students of all income levels. The resolution included suggestions like increasing the number of Pell Grant recipients and making course materials available online instead of printed for purchase. The student senate passed the resolution, and students have been working with the administration to implement the proposed changes. In addition to this resolution, the Accessibility and Inclusion committee has worked on other initiatives, like providing support for undocumented students, establishing social justice and advocating for underrepresented students on campus. They conduct their work through meetings with student leaders, surveying the campus climate as it pertains to diversity, and coordinating with administrators to find solutions to identity issues.

Mental health has been a huge topic of conversation at Northwestern, and students are actively pursuing projects to prioritize mental wellbeing in the student body. Associated Student Government's Student Life committee has held a series of focus groups with students of various identities across campus to determine how perceptions of mental health and stress level differ between students. The committee has made a series of recommendations to the administration for how to best support mental wellbeing on campus. Students interested in mental health advocacy also launched NU Listens recently, which is a peer-to-peer listening service aimed at giving students a confidential outlet to express stress or struggles. Mental health work on campus is particularly prominent during exam weeks, where groups actively try to reduce stress levels on campus and work with the administration, student center, and library to bring in program centered on mental health. Cranes for Courage, for instance, help students make paper cranes as a therapeutic break from studying and then delivers the cranes to other students at Northwestern and across the country. In Fall 2016, students launched a Wellness Chair program in student groups, which will dedicate one person in 50 student groups to coordinate education and resources for both mental and physical wellbeing.

Three divestment movements on campus (Fossil Free Northwestern, NU Divest, and UnshackleNU) are focused on implementing sustainable, socially responsible investment strategies at Northwestern. Fossil Free Northwestern is focused on eliminating investments from fossil fuels. NU Divest aims to divest from 6 companies complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. UnshackleNU calls for divestment from private prisons. The groups have conducted research on socially responsible investment models, fiduciary duty, and past divestment movements. NU Divest has also led student lobbying for the creation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investment, which was a success. As a result of their work, the campus has become more concerned with issues of responsible investment and financial transparency.

The Brady Scholars program in Ethics and Civic Life is a three-year program centering on civic engagement in and around Northwestern. Students in the program complete a senior service project which is meant to have a lasting impact in the Evanston community. They identify a problem or an area for improvement in Evanston or in the Northwestern-Evanston relationship and spend their year implementing solutions to that problem. Past projects include bolstering local food systems through gardens and supporting at-risk youth through mentorship programs.

Each year, a class run thru the School of Education and Social Policy, “Learning Philanthropy,” covers “the history and practice of philanthropic giving.” After learning about philanthropy in the US and its “social and cultural meanings, motivations and effects,” students examine about 50 local non-profits in the Chicagoland area. They make visits to many of the non-profits and in the end choose several to donate to, between $50,000 and $100,000. The class is meant to teach students the importance of and process of charitable giving and emphasize the challenges of choosing worthwhile causes to support.

Entrepreneurship: Students at Northwestern have the opportunity to participate in many student-run start-ups, as part of Northwestern Student Holdings (NSH) and the Garage. NSH runs several businesses with students and the Northwestern community as their main clientele. Their initiatives include DesignWorks, a marketing and design company; NU Tutors, which provides tutors to local middle and high school students; and RezEssentials, which sells and delivers residential furniture and accommodations. Through their work, NSH aims to add value to their clientele, prepare students for leadership and business roles, and give back to their community.

"NSH is a launch pad for opportunity, a training ground for ideas, and a chance to make your vision a reality."
-Liz Huizenga, Director

The Garage -
Every invention, product and company starts with an idea. But what ultimately distinguishes good ideas from great ideas is execution, not the idea itself. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a budding entrepreneur, The Garage at Northwestern is the place on campus to build and execute your ideas. https://thegarage.northwestern.edu/

http://segal.northwestern.edu/programs/undergraduate/design-thinking-communication/
http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring2017/feature/from-the-ground-up-the-garage-provides-resources-student-startup-founders.html