Sustainability at Wake Forest

Student demand, institutional commitment, and faculty interest are all inspiring the integration of sustainability themes into higher education curricula and research agendas. The complex and interdependent nature of solutions for a more sustainable future call for inter- and trans- disciplinary teaching and research.

Institutional support for collaborate endeavors varies from campus to campus. Questions and challenges arise around tenure track and promotional requirements, funding, budgeting, and academic/disciplinary homes for faculty and students. This conference will explore the ways in which institutions of higher education are adapting to support the collaborative endeavors of faculty and staff and the roles that chief academic officers and deans can play in the evolving arena.

Where: Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.

When: March 22-23, 2010

Who: Chief Academic Officers, Deans, Faculty leaders, Sustainability Officers

What: Day 1 of the conference will consist of several panel discussions:

• Career training and development in an era of green jobs
• Creative approached to meeting the Presidents’ Climate Commitment educational goals
• Integrating sustainability across the curriculum
• Co-curricular opportunities for experiential learning

Day 2 of the conference is a workshop on the opportunities and challenges to integrating inter- and trans- disciplinarity:

• Chief academic officers, deans, faculty, and sustainability coordinators will work together to discuss the roles each can plan in supporting the development of this learning environment for students
• Participants will explore reward systems for faculty who engage in inter- and trans-disciplinary work, as well as the institutional barriers that discourage this engagement.

There is no registration fee for this conference. Participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging.

Registration site coming soon.

Contact the WFU Office of Sustainability at sustainability@wfu.edu for more information.

“The world is ours to lose,” concluded Applied Anthropologist, Dr. Duncan Earle at his lecture titled “2012: What’s the Story?” on November 11. This was the second of two lectures Earle delivered at the university on the 11th. His first lecture, “Micro-Financial Alternatives to Rain Forest Destruction in the Congo,” addressed the question of creating financially viable alternatives to environmentally destructive activities that lead to tropical forest loss including alternatives such as carbon-credit offsets and sustainable enterprises for local economies.

Earle has spent the last 25 years studying the environment, international development and Mayan culture in Guatemala. He speaks three dialects of the Mayan language and was initiated as a calendar diviner by a village of Maya in the river valley region of Chiapas. He brought his unique perspective to the discussion of the impending apocalypse that is supposed to occur on December 21, 2012.

“The Maya assure us that the climatic and geological imbalances with nature will bring this crisis on,” Earle said. “Things are changing in ways that they have never changed before.” There are currently over 10 million Mayan descendents in the world who speak and understand some language based on ancient Mayan. These modern descendents continue to keep a Mayan calendar that is based on 260 days and cycles which repeat at regular increments, some days long, others two decades, and still more thousands of years. The cycle of importance in the discussion about 2012 is a baktun, a period of 5,125 years, the end of which coincides with the Christian calendar date, December 21, 2012.

“They (the Maya) don’t think of disasters as fast things,” Earle said. “2012 is a slow disaster. The dangerous nature of it is that we deny it and displace the blame for it and even worse, some of us don’t even recognize that it exists.”

“We are actually experiencing significant and potentially irreversible climate change. Planetary disasters do not happen in a day, but they do happen,” he said. But hope is not lost, according to Earle. As the source of the problem, humans can take steps to become the solution. The end of a cycle signals the end of a period of creation in the Mayan faith, Earle said. The end of a cycle is the end of one creation, but the beginning of the next creation.

“December 21st, 2012 is the end of a baktun, it is a time for reflection on the last 5,125 years of our creation. What have we accomplished in this time? For us, the answer is the building of civilizations as we know them. How well have we done in civilization?” The answer to Earle is, not very well. The construction of huge civilizations has not been good to the planet, according to Earle. This is a problem. “It is predicted that humanity would have to come to a point of decision making to put an end to our current creation to start a new creation that is friendlier to nature.”

Earle currently works to promote environmental sustainability through Jadora International, an organization focused “on fiscally viable methods of forest restoration and protection,” according to its Web site.

The Lenovo T400 is the first Wake issued laptop with an LED backlight.

The new ThinkPad T400 laptop computers issued to incoming freshmen and juniors this year meet the highest standard of environmentally sound design according to the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). EPEAT, a not-for-profit, environmental procurement tool is designed to help purchases evaluate, compare, and select computers and monitors based on their environmental attributes. Products are ranked on 51 criteria in eight categories ranging from material selection to end-of-life management.

There are currently 29 Lenovo Notebook computer models on the market in the U.S. that meet EPEAT certification standards. All of these meet at least silver standard and more than half qualify for the gold standard.

By receiving the gold standard for many of its products, Lenovo demonstrated a commitment to environmental design above and beyond the 23 mandatory criteria. The ThinkPad T400 meets 22 of the 27 optional criteria for certification, excelling in the reduction and elimination of environmentally sensitive materials such as intentionally added cadmium, mercury, and lead. Even the batteries in the notebooks do not contain these poisonous chemicals. In addition, at least 90 percent of components from the T400s can be reused or recycled into new computers. This feature and more contributed to a full compliance with all of the optional criteria for end of life design.

The T400 series is the first ThinkPad issued at the university to feature an LED backlight. Laptop displays constitute a significant portion of the energy consumption of a notebook computer. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are far more energy efficient than the fluorescent tubes that have been used in all past Wake issued laptops, including the T61, according to Rick Matthews, Associate Provost of Information Systems. Not only does this save energy when the computer is plugged into a power outlet, but it greatly improves the battery life of the T400 model.

Looking for ways you can increase the energy efficiency and battery life of your ThinkPad? The notebooks automatically enter sleep mode if not used for several minutes in order to preserve battery life, but they still use some energy in this mode. If you are looking to extend your battery life even father, shut the computer down if it will not be used for several hours. You can also try lowering your screen’s brightness and turning off your wireless card to save energy when you are plugged into the school network.

Starting in September 2008, Jim Alty, associate vice president for Facilities & Campus Services, began phasing out old service trucks from the facilities service fleet and replacing them with entirely electric vehicles from Miles Electric Vehicles.

To date, seven MILES ZX40ST trucks supplement the Facilities squad and Alty plans to purchase five more before the end of the 2009-2010 academic year. All of the service vehicles will be replaced by electric trucks in the next seven years.

Director of Sustainability, Dedee Delongpre Johnston explains the replacement process as “similar to the Cash-for-Clunkers program. Vehicles will be replaced based on age, serviceability and fuel efficiency.”

These vehicles greatly reduce the university’s carbon footprint because they run solely on battery power, they produce no CO₂ as the old, gas-powered vehicles did. Each vehicle is powered by a battery that takes 4-6 hours to charge and is expected to last for 25,000 miles according to the Miles Electric Web site.

In addition to eliminating CO2 emissions from service vehicles, the trucks are designed to save the university money over their lifetime. The estimated total annual energy cost of running a MILES ZX40ST truck for one year is $161. The total cost of a comparative truck running on gasoline is $2045. That’s an average savings of $13,188 per year for the seven vehicles currently in the fleet.

The university was also attracted to the compact size of the vehicles. The small white trucks do not require a full-size parking space which means that they can access any part of campus without worrying about the already tight parking situation.

“My house is my toy,” Rick Matthews, associate provost of information systems, said. His Faculty Drive home, built in 1984 may well still be the most energy efficient structure on the block over 20 years after its construction. Matthews uses super insulation to make his home comfortable year round.

A former physics professor and chair of the WFU Physics Department from 1998-2007, Matthews wanted to build his home to be as energy efficient as possible to minimize cost and maximize comfort. Matthews considered passive solar heating but rejected the popular method because of the hot Carolina summers. “The problem is that it tends to work all the time and we have some very hot summers. Plus, passive solar uses glass, which is your biggest heat leak,” he said.

The solution? “Simple, inexpensive, highly predictive, super insulation,” he said. Matthews simple designed a home that has thicker walls, wider studs placed farther apart, and twice the amount of insulating material of standard homes. This keeps his home cool in the summer, but warm in the winter.

Other more scientific features of his home include an air-to-air heat exchanger that allows his very tight home to receive fresh air without losing heat. The warm air from the interior passes through a narrow hole where it warms the cool air that is entering the home from outside, minimizing heat loss by as much as 80 percent with a more commonly-used exhaust fan.

Matthews also has a special energy meter from Duke Energy that enables him to take advantage of time-of-day rates for energy. During peak energy hours (7 am-noon in the Winter and 1 pm-7pm in the summer), power plants meet an increased demand for energy by firing up the coal plants to supplement nuclear reactors.

This makes energy not only more expensive, but less environmentally friendly as coal produces CO₂ and other pollutants when burned. Because his home is hyper-insulated, he can turn the heat of the house off during peak energy hours and his overall household temperature will decrease by only a few degrees, even if the temperature outside lingers in the teens. This amounts to an overall monthly energy cost of 2.6 cents per square foot of his home.

Matthews frequently preached the benefits of a well-insulated home to his physics classes throughout his teaching tenure at the university.

“So often people think of living sustainably as having to sacrifice something, but this doesn’t feel like a commitment,” Matthews said of his home’s forward-thinking construction. “The only sacrifice we (he and his wife) make is that we don’t wash clothes during peak hours. We don’t even notice if we turn the heat off for five hours.”

“It’s nice to be able to be virtuous without having to sacrifice,” he said.