Sustainable Campus Initiative
A Sustainable Campus Initiative Committee, formed in 2000, includes staff, faculty, and students. The committee hosts and facilitates discussions that will lead to innovative partnerships between the operational and academic elements of the University. The results will be a more environmentally sustainable campus and a process to use the campus and its physical facilities as a tool for environmental learning.
Through continued student involvement and hands-on projects, the hope of the initiative is to engage students to be active citizens of the University and, at the same time, increase teaching opportunities and achieve a more environmentally sustainable campus. One of the pilot projects is the Sarita wetland restoration on the Twin Cities campus. The wetland restoration began with a cleanup during Beautiful U Day in September 2000. Implementation of the restoration began in the spring of 2001 and has continued through the last three years. On September 25, 2001, students, faculty, staff and community volunteers built the first rain garden on the University campus as a part of Beautiful U Day 2001. The rain garden reduces the stormwater and runoff pollution that flows to the Sarita wetland and eventually to the Mississippi River. The rain garden project was developed out of a student research paper done for a water quality class. More rain gardens and other pollution preventing landscape stormwater management projects will be championed by the Committee as future new construction and building renovation projects provide opportunities to change the landscaping of the campus.
http://www.cnr.umn.edu/sci
http://www.nwf.org/campusecology
http://www.stormwatercenter.net |
