Scholarship of Sustainability - Spring 2014

Campus Series on the Scholarship of Sustainability begins Thursday, February 13

The Scholarship of Sustainability is a series of presentations and discussions that welcomes students, staff and the general public to explore the cultural contexts of contemporary environmental problems. The series is generously sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment (iSEE), with contributions from the School of Earth, Society and Environment (SESE), the College of Law and the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics (SLCL).

The nine sessions will be held on Thursdays from 4-5:30pm at Room 149 of the National Soybean Research Center, 1101 W. Peabody Drive, Urbana, beginning on February 13. (There is a one-session hiatus on March 27, which coincides with spring break.) Ample metered parking is available nearby.

The 2014 Scholarship of Sustainability campus series begins with a recognition that human behavior underlies all environmental problems and that our behaviors are complexly linked with cultural patterns and the social institutions based on them. It will probe the root causes of our misuses of nature; consider the tension between animal-welfare and ecological perspectives; take a critical look at market capitalism and its embedded values; consider environmental justice in its broadest meanings; and ask whether and how religious thought can help and hinder environmental reform efforts. The final session will consider new directions for conservation. 

The series leader is Eric T. Freyfogle, Swanlund Chair and Professor of Law. His many relevant writings include Justice and the Earth (The Free Press), On Private Property (Beacon Press), and Why Conservation is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground (Yale Univ. Press). Sessions will also feature other UIUC faculty and community conservation leaders as well as several special guests. All nine sessions are open to the public, and UIUC faculty and graduate students are especially encouraged to participate. The Series is cosponsored by the School of Earth, Society, and the Environment; the College of Law; and the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics.

Readings: Participants can access readings for the series via links at the descriptions of individual sessions below. Readings are also available in spiral-bound form (317 pp.) for $24 from the College of Law Bookstore, 504 E. Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign (basement SE corner; open from 9-12 and 1-4 M-F). They will also be available for purchase by cash or check at the first two sessions.

Three U of I courses are associated with the series:
 

• ESE 311 Environmental Issues Today
• RLST 270 Religion, Ethics, Environment
• LAW 792 - Section JJ Current Legal Problems

Graduate-level students can participate in the series for academic credit by enrolling in Law 792JJ Scholarship of Sustainability; those interested in doing so should contact Professor Freyfogle at efreyfog@illinois.edu

Outline of Readings

Sessions

February 13 :: Beginning the Search.  Environmental ills involve human misuses of nature.  But how might we distinguish between legitimate use and misuse?  How might we best think about the proper human role in nature?  Is sustainability a useful measure, and what alternatives goals have been proposed? Ultimately, what are the root causes–cultural, cognitive, and material–of our misuses of nature? Speaker: Bill Sullivan, Department of Landscape Architecture. 

Session One Readings

February 20 :: The Costs and Possibilities of Capitalism.  Much environmental change is driven by businesses and other market participants. We’ll consider calls for a new, green industrial revolution.  We’ll also consider ecological critiques of capitalism and market competition and calls for major changes in our economic system. Speaker: Eric Freyfogle, College of Law.

Session Two Readings

February 27 :: Fragmentation and Cultural Flaws. According to environmental historians a major driver of our uses and misuses of nature has been the tendency to fragment landscapes and treat nature's parts as market commodities. We'll look at the issue of fragmentation–physically, legally, and intellectually–and its resulting problems while also considering the limits on our knowledge and its implications.

Session Three Readings

March 6 :: Other Forms of Life. A critical modern assumption is that humans are the only species to possess moral value. Is this morally defensible? We'll explore the considerable differences between animal-welfare and ecological modes of thought, while paying attention generally to the many ways we benefit from other life forms and how we might best think about them. As we'll see, our varied reasons for wanting to conserve other life forms can lead to widely differing policies and actions. Speaker: Dale Jamieson, New York University, Environmental Studies Program. Lecture: "Grass Fed Environmentalism: Living Responsibly in the Anthropocene"

This special event is part of campus Ethics Awareness Week. Ethics Awareness Week is an initiative of the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics and is sponsored by the Graduate College and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, with support from the Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society.

Session Four Readings

March 13 :: Climate Change and the Role of Science. Climate change is perhaps the most serious of today's environmental ills. We'll consider the problem and its many implications. While doing so we'll also consider the common claim that environmental policy should be based on sound science. What is science, what are its proper roles, and how and why do we regularly misuse it? Speaker: Eric Snodgrass, Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

Session Five Readings

March 20 :: Seeing and Valuing Nature. Connections with the natural world play a significant role in human well being, and our dealings with nature are shaped by the ways we perceive it and value it. Better ways of living in nature will likely require us to see nature in new, more ecological ways and to appreciate the value of its countless living components and their complex interdependencies. Speaker: Rob Kanter, School of Earth, Society, and Environment.

Session Six Readings

April 3 :: Sharing the Earth. The good use of nature inevitably means sharing the planet in responsible ways. How should social justice enter into environmental issues? How should we divide up the earth's resources and capacities, and what weight should be given to historic patterns of use? Of special interest: sharing the atmosphere and its limited ability to absorb climate-changing gases–the particular topic of this session. Speaker: J. Michael Scoville, Eastern Michigan University, History and Philosophy Department.

Session Seven Readings

April 10 :: Otherworldly Religions. How have religious views affected our uses of nature, and how might religion today push us in good or bad directions? We'll consider historian Lynn White's famous argument and responses to it and also look at how we might evaluate religions–even individual congregations—based on environmental factors. Speakers: Robert McKim, Department of Religion, and Brian Sauder, incoming Director of Faith in Place. 

Session Eight Readings

April 17 :: New Directions for Conservation. Efforts to address environmental ills, off to a promising start in the 1970s and 1980s, have greatly slowed in recent decades, with major problems largely unaddressed and with Congress in political deadlock. We'll look at ideas for a revitalized citizen-led movement to bring about needed major changes and some of the challenges that such a movement would face.

Session Nine Readings

The photovoltaic panels on LEED Platinum certified Business Instructional Facility (BIF) rooftop harvests solar radiation as a clean renewable energy source for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign facility. The solar system has a combined maximum output of 40 kilowatt per hour (kWh), and has an annual production of 60,000 kWh. The system is expected to produce approximately eight percent of the building’s total electricity demand. However, solar panels require unobstructed access to solar radiation for most or all of the day to be effective

The Campus Bike Center opened for business in May 2010, funded by The Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign, a grant from the Student Sustainability Committee, the Center for a Sustainable Environment, and supplementary funding from the Facilities and Services Department at UIUC[1]. The Center offers a hands-on, educational space in which students and community members can have access to knowledge and experience in maintaining and fixing bicycles, as well as all of the necessary tools and products to do so. The Center’s outlined mission is to teach bicycle maintenance, providing access to affordable equipment, support overall safety education, and participate in campus bicycle community outreach2. The Center also has described goals for sustainability; to contribute towards the ICAP goal to reduce transportation emissions by 50% in 2025, support those who use bicycles for transportation, to make bikes a more feasible alternative to motor vehicles on this campus, and to expand these efforts even more through increased outreach and publicity efforts, increased staff capacity, more events outside of the shop to reach new audiences, more refurbished bikes to sell to students, and more courses, workshops, and demonstrations to educate the campus about bikes2.

[1] Neptune, Amelia. Bike Shop Student Sustainability Committee Application. UIUC ICAP Portal. http://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project-updates/102. 11 Nov 2012. Accessed 8 May 2014.

In the words of Valerie Oliveiro, Assistant to the Senior Associate Director of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, KCPA is “dedicated to the advancement of the education, research, and public engagement mission of the University of Illinois through the pursuit of excellence and innovation in the performing arts.”[1] These words exemplify the importance of KCPA to the campus community. A hub of social interaction and innovation, Krannert has a unique role as a leader and innovator in sustainability initiatives at the University of Illinois. This unique importance is what drove KCPA to the idea of implementing LED lighting in its lobby. After more than two years of research and experimentation, consideration to the developing goals of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) and joint funding from the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, KCPA finally decided to pull the trigger on The University’s largest LED lighting project.

[1] Oliveiro, Valerie. ICECF Funding Proposal for the KCPA LED Lobby Lighting Retrofit Project. Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois, September 17th, 2009

from student paper: "For the Spring 2014 semester, I am enrolled in NRES 285 – a field course entitled Performance Metrics and Assessment Techniques for Sustainability Projects. This course utilizes experiential learning in order to gain hands-on experience with sustainability projects on the UIUC campus. In order to assess these initiatives it is necessary to evaluate effectiveness of the project, means of improvement, methods of communicating results, and suggestions for the future. In particular, a project I found particularly appealing is the solar thermal system at the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) used to heat the indoor and outdoor pools...."

The goal of this project was to assess the success of the electric vehicles and solar panels on the Student Sustainable Farm (SSF). In 2010, through Engineering 298, the farm received a 1960 Allis-Challmers G Cultivating tractor that has been retrofitted to contain an electric powered motor. The following year, the same course began a new project to install 8 PV cell solar panels and charging station to service the SSF’s tractor. In 2012, a new course, Engineering 315, proposed and developed a project that would give the farm a delivery truck powered by an electric motor and a set of 24 PV solar panels and charging station to supply enough electricity for the truck’s daily use. As of now, all projects have been installed and are currently being used on the SSF except for the delivery truck, which has taken longer to construct than previously thought. The goal for all three projects is to offset the farm’s fuel costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While these projects have been funded and constructed with the intent they will make significant reductions to the farms energy cost and reduce emissions, they have not been appropriately assessed after implementation to measure if these goals have truly been achieved. With the help of Zack Grant, the SSF manager, the expertise of my professors, and extensive research, I have developed measures reflecting the performance of these projects and the impact they’ve had. I’ve measured water savings, carbon savings, and cost savings in order to express how the Student Sustainability Committee’s (SSC) money has been spent. With this information, I hope to provide honest feedback to the SSC so they can maximize their investments and provide our campus with projects producing the greatest energy savings for the cost. My intent for this paper is to teach people what sustainable really is, not to suggest that this or any other SSC funded projects are bad. I truly believe the work of the SSC is essential to our campus for guiding our students to become stewards of sustainability.

"The results here indicate that the changes to the UIUC network do in fact improve connectivity over the existing network. Moreover, the planned network lowers the average shortest-distance path between libraries, dormitories, and the Union by nearly the same amount as a control scenario without paths at all. While we may assume that a bicycle master plan will address and improve connectivity as a matter of course – and the language in the plans claims that they do – it seems counterintuitive that this simple test not be included in the research process to confirm that this is so. Ultimately what these accessibility and connectivity analyses show is that while planners and bicycle advocates may seek to improve bicycle infrastructure, we need a way to quantify and subsequently verify that any changes will improve the functionality of the network and the ease with which a rider can travel from one location to another." -- Pildes, Russell. (2014) "Connectivity and Accessibility of UIUC Campus Bike Paths", B.A. Honors Thesis, Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

_____________________________________________
From: Dempsey, John Garrett
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:01 AM
To: Roesler, Jeffery Raphael; Mestre, Jose; Johnston, Morgan B; Schideman, Lance Charles; Schmidt, Arthur R; Liu, Liang Y; Somaratna, Jeevaka I
Cc: Stratman, Allan; Andrechak, Michael J; Wise, Phyllis M; Adesida, Ilesanmi
Subject: RE: CEE398

I want to thank each of you for allowing me to be part of the first offering of CEE398. I have learned so much from each of you and developed an real appreciation for the work faculty do. I only wish I had made the connection between F&S and the academy earlier.

Jeff’s presentation yesterday about the second offering this fall and the discussion surrounding it demonstrated just how far he has brought the concept in such a short time. There is no doubt that with Liang’s leadership, Jeff’s hard work, Al’s support and Morgan’s involvement this CEE initiative will continue to blossom. In fact, during a conversation with Ben McCall yesterday, it appears that what you have done is directly translatable to a course being developed by Prof. Madhu Khanna for iSEE. I have asked Morgan to introduce her to the team when appropriate.

As my time here is short, I need to focus on some remaining projects so I will not be attending the bi-weekly course planning meeting, but leave you in Morgan’s capable hands.  Again, thanks for letting me be a part of this.

John Marlin is teaching a course about the Mud to Parks project.  It is NRES 285: Beneficial Reuse of Sediment: The Mud to Parks Field Experience.