| Students get green |
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| Written by Sebastian Edgerton - Argonaut | ||||||
| Thursday, 05 November 2009 | ||||||
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 Ryan Beitz and his team have been awarded funding to build a bike shelter at the Living and Learning Center. Along with the bike shelter, grants have been passed out to multiple clubs and organizations at the University of Idaho. Steven Devine/Argonaut Sustainability Center distributes $15,000 for projects
The University of Idaho Sustainability Center announced at the
beginning of this semester that $15,000 would be awarded to students to
pursue their own projects and help promote sustainability on campus. UISC began giving grants to student projects in 2006, Gerhardt said. She said the grants are given with three focuses: campus culture shift, waste reduction and climate change. Gerhardt said there was a grant-writing workshop, in which 11 grants were written and submitted to a review board of faculty and students from around campus. They chose six of the grants to fund. The grants include a Vandal community garden, which will be planted in the Living and Learning Community’s courtyard and will provide food for the garden workers. $1,050 was awarded to their project. John Boyd and a few other students who call themselves, “The Green Machine,” got a grant for $3,000 to start a campus-wide composting program. They are working on their grant through a three credit course to recycle all the food and animal waste on campus. Another grant that is being funded is the Green Living Workshop series, organized by Michael Hazel and the Student Organization for People and the Environment. They were awarded $1,400. The other three grants include $3,000 for a bike shelter at the LLCs, $1,950 to install motion sensor lights in the College of Law building and another $3,000 to study Idaho soils’ potential for using biochar — a type of charcoal — to increase fertility in the soil, among other things. Danie Merriman, one of the organizers for the Vandal Garden, said the UISC knows the organization of UI and can provide better advice and resources to make the grants possible and successful. “Other projects may be based on a larger scale, and may not take the time to really work with us and try to create substantial change on the campus,” Merriman said. Merriman said the Vandal Garden is only going to be successful if there are the people to make it so. The UI Environmental Club wrote the grant with Merriman for the garden. She said they hope there’s a good turnout of interested people. Carman said organizations like the UISC are important for dealing with environmental issues like pollution and aquifer depletion. Carmen said it only takes one person to make a difference. “But…one faculty member, one event, one student’s willingness to serve, to dig in and ‘git’ er dun’ at a time,” Carman said.  Add as favorites (28) | Views: 751
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