University of Missouri
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Peter Motavalli, professor of soil science, has two active grants for promoting campus as a living lab. There is a weather station on Sanborn Field equipped with an environmental monitoring system for urban location that records temperature, water content, wind speed and direction at different heights. Recently, sensors have been added as student projects developed, some especially looking at air pollution. The station is part of a statewide network of weather stations. The Environmental Science Club maintains some of the data on their site: http://envsci.missouri.edu/.

From Michael Goldschmidt, assistant professor in architectural studies:

The Department of Architectural Studies includes a class that uses living laboratories for sustainability and ecological design. In ArchSt 4323 Sustainable Technologies, students are required to complete the following class assignments:
- Students are required to collect and sort paper, glass, aluminum, and other materials from Gwynn and Stanley Hall and document the quantities of each and prepare a timeline that follows each type of material from origin to final destination. Students are also required to produce a chart of alternate reuse strategies for each material in lieu of recycling.
- Students are required to create an interior furniture item out of local, free recycled cardboard and a 1 square foot section of recycled material, useable as a wall or ceiling panel.
- In class assignments include:
a. work with a wind turbine and photovoltaic panels
b. document and study campus rainwater control systems and green roofs
c. Use an infrared camera for energy auditing of buildings and use software to estimate energy use of one of their studio projects.

These lab assignments assist students in understanding fundamental concepts and details of comprehensive sustainable strategies for building design and construction.

Information from Gregg Coffin, associate director of energy management at MU:

University of Missouri’s Campus Facilities - Energy Management department has a long history of collaborating with students, faculty, and campus researchers to support both education and research efforts in the areas of energy production, energy conservation, and the use of renewable energy technologies. A sampling of activities at MU over the last few years include:

Energy Facility Tours – Energy Management tours 800 to 1,000 students annually through the campus energy facilities. The facility tours are customized per the request of the instructor or campus organization to enhance the topic they’re learning or have interest. Tour requests have increased recently for those wanting to see and learn more about the biomass energy system in the plant.

Class Room Guest Lectures – Department energy professionals are routinely invited into the class room to provide presentations on various energy topics. Most presentations in the past few years have been topics related to biomass energy, wind/solar energy, and energy conservation.

Senior Class Capstone Projects – They support senior level design projects referred to as Capstone Projects when requested. Most recently they helped a Capstone Project Design group by providing them information resources which helped them complete a schematic design of a bio-digester combined with a micro combustion turbine using food waste as the fuel source.

Energy Related Internships – Two years ago they hired a PhD candidate in Bio-Engineering as part of an internship program to support his research thesis to demonstrate that a dynamic computational model could be used to accurately model and analyze a biomass supply chain. The student effectively modeled the biomass supply chain for the Campus’s new biomass boiler as part of his research.

Student Employment – The Energy Management department employs MU students on a part time basis to supplement the projects and activities of the department. Typically 6 to 10 students, mostly engineering undergraduates, work in the department part time. This gives these students “real world” experience in the energy industry to prepare them for their future careers.

Energy Related Research Support – Energy Management engineers get engaged in energy related research activities; many of the campus researchers seek input from the department engineers on the viability and applicability of their research to the energy industry. Most of the recent focus has been with the campus Forestry Department with researchers who are researching sourcing of various biomass feed stocks and their applicability as fuel in the energy industry.

On Campus Renewable Energy Projects – In the past couple years, Energy Management significantly increased the campus’s renewable energy portfolio which included the installation of three on-campus projects providing students, faculty, and staff resources to learn about and experience renewable energy technologies. The projects are accessible to classes and campus organizations through scheduled facility tours, as well as access to the energy production data via a web based dashboard. The projects include:
-Solar PV – A 34 KW solar photovoltaic system was installed at the campus power plant in late 2012
-Wind Turbine – A 20 kw wind turbine was installed near the campus General Services Building in late 2012
-Solar Thermal – An evacuated tube solar thermal heating system at the power plant to preheat boiler make up water installed in early 2014

A PhD student (Esma Birisci) who graduated in Fall 2016 examined inventory, production and leftover usage strategies for CDS, aiming to minimize waste and embodied GHG. This was the topic of her thesis.

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/62476

A group of engineering and sustainability students entered the SEC Campus Water Matters Challenge in early 2016, This contest was part of the SEC Academic Conference in March 2016. Working with Campus Facilities and Environmental Engineering Assistant
Professor Enos Inniss, the students chose to focus on stormwater at Lowry Mall and created a proposal for managing campus stormwater issues.

Biological Sciences Professor Candi Galen had her students use the MU Botanical Garden as part of their capstone research. Seniors spent time getting to know one of the many plants, motoring changes. They also gave tours to Friends of the Garden.

Landscape Services worked with Dr. Xi Xiong, an associate professor in the Division of Plant Sciences, to provide outdoor lab sites for horticulture and landscape design students to studyfertilizer, seed and pesticide applications. Landscape Services also facilitated turf equipment demonstrations for these students.

Researchers in the Division of Plant Sciences are conducting a study on ways to control the hunting billbug in the zoysia fairway on the MU A.L. Gustin Golf Course Hole #11. The hunting billbug is a destructive weevil that resides in warm-season grasses such as zoysia, a grass common on golf courses.

In Fall 2015 MU Civil Engneering Professor Tim Matisziw and graduate student Ashkan Gholamialam conducted a study about bikeability in the City of Columbia. Abstract copied below.
"In recent decades, there has been considerable planning for development of bicycle friendly infrastructure in urban areas in support of increasing bicyclists as well as efforts to facilitate a greater mode shift to bicycling. Various studies have indicated a direct relationship between presence of bicycle friendly designs and the level of bicycle transport within a community. In this respect, there are characteristics of infrastructure that are thought to influence use by bicyclists given their effect on perceived safety, comfort, efficiency, and other concerns. To better understand how these characteristics of urban infrastructure may affect prospects for bikeability, a new approach for modeling bikeable routes is proposed. In particular, a multi-criterion shortest path approach using a label correcting algorithm is used to evaluate the trade-offs between two objectives thought to be important for facilitating bicycling – minimizing route cost and maximizing route quality. Network-based metrics are then developed to evaluate the extent to which bicyclists’ routing opportunities have been enhanced due to infrastructure improvements over time. The proposed methods are applied to an urban area in the Midwestern United States to illustrate the types of insights that can be used to support bicycle planning efforts."

The Sustainability Office conducted an audit of waste bins in buildings under the supervision of the Sustainability Manager with students from the Environmental Science department.

A group of engineering and sustainability students
will enter the SEC Campus Water Matters
Challenge, which will be part of the SEC Academic
Conference in March. Working with Campus
A group of engineering and sustainability students entered the SEC Campus Water Matters Challenge in early 2016, This contest was part of the SEC Academic Conference in March 2016. Working with Campus Facilities and Environmental Engineering Assistant
Professor Enos Inniss, the students chose to focus on stormwater at Lowry Mall and created a proposal for managing campus stormwater issues.
https://masterplan.missouri.edu/masterplan/sites/masterplan/files/pdf/2017_annual_report_web.pdf

http://mizzouadvantage.missouri.edu/news/mu-engages-students-community-with-new-high-tech-interactive-game/