Big Ten & Friends Quarterly Meeting 10-21-22
See the attached presentation for the quarterly Big Ten & Friends meeting held on 10-21-22.
See the attached presentation for the quarterly Big Ten & Friends meeting held on 10-21-22.
The following email describes an online session about various Green Lab Certification Programs.
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From: Vandenbergh, Lydia Bodman
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2022 8:35 AM
To: Vandenbergh, Lydia Bodman
Subject:BTAF Sustainable Lab Programs Presentation and Discussion - Feb 24th
As Higher Education Institutions develop their Climate Action Plans, one opportunity repeatedly arises: culture change in our approach to research. The US Department of Energy estimates that lab buildings consume anywhere from three to ten times the energy and water of administrative and classroom buildings and generate high amounts of single use plastics and hazardous wastes. One question is, how to change the culture without compromising the integrity of the science?
Members of the Big Ten and Friends Network are encouraged to join together on February 24th at 11am EST to learn how three universities are promoting change in their campus labs using three variations on a green lab certification program.
The session will conclude with time for discussion with the panelists. Please register to join in this inspirational presentation and exploration of culture change.
Register here
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information to join meeting. We are purposefully limiting the invitation to BTAF’s members to encourage a fruitful discussion, but we will record the session and make it available to share with other colleges and universities.
Lydia
Lydia Vandenbergh (she/her)
Associate Director of Employee Engagement and Education
Sustainability Institute
Penn State University
The Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.
Check out our programs:
sustainability.psu.edu/greenteams
sustainability.psu.edu/greenpaws
From: Anya Dale <anyadale@umich.edu>
To: Leciejewski, Mary <leciejewski.8@osu.edu>
Cc: Moore, Meredith Kaye <mkm0078 at illinois.edu>; White, Morgan <mbwhite at illinois.edu>; Kokini, Eugenie Jenny <jkokini at illinois.edu>
Hi all,
If interested, please fill out this short survey on your property reuse programs/initiatives. (FYI: Purdue, Penn State, U of Texas - Austin, and U of Minnesota have already submitted a survey response.) If you plan to participate in the survey, it would be wonderful if it were done by the end of the business day Wednesday so I can update the data for sharing at the Thursday meeting (see below). I will also send the updated information along with the notes from the discussion to this email group by the end of the week.
As mentioned, the survey really only gathers high-level data. We are hoping to get more into the interesting and in-depth discussion in our follow-up meeting this Thursday from 9-10:30 am EST. Please email me if you'd like to be invited! The more the merrier for this conversation.
Anya Dale, MUP (she/her/hers)
Manager, Waste Reduction and Engagement
Office of Campus Sustainability
University of Michigan Facilities & Operations
734-936-5238
The Annual Meeting for Big Ten & Friends (BTAF) will be held on July 22, 2021. Inviting all members, this meeting will discuss the following, as outlined in a message from Lydia Vandenbergh, the Associate Director of Employee Engagement and Education at Penn State University (See the attached file to view the agenda:)
Greetings Big 10 and Friends Members,
I hope you all have been able to take some time off after such a chaotic and challenging year. It is times such as these that we need to come together and support each other, sharing best practices and brainstorming solutions to barriers. Thanks to all who completed the pre-meeting survey in June to help us plan our July 22nd annual meeting, from 9am to noon EST, that will pursue those two goals, concentrating on several topics that the respondents highlighted:
Please register for the Annual Meeting by July 21st. We recognize there may be some who cannot attend, and we encourage you to designate an alternative representative if possible. We will record the session and send out the recording and abbreviated notes to all on this list.
One of our first items for discussion will be BTAF leadership, specifically whether we should have term limits for co-chairs, to encourage rotating the responsibilities among the BTAF universities. Lydia will be stepping down next summer as co-chair and Amy is willing to step down this August to enable the staggered transition of co-chairs. Please consider volunteering for this role. It does not require a significant amount of time and involves acting as coordinators for our network, specifically:
We will keep the nomination form open until July 21st and hope that someone will join the fun of supporting the Big Ten and Friends group. Also, if anyone has any changes for the BTAF membership list, you can find it on our Google Drive.
We have scheduled the meeting for three hours and based on your responses, are changing the format this year to emphasize brainstorming sessions on the above topics, rather than updates from each campus. All participants will be able to self-select one of three brainstorming sessions in two rounds and we hope that each group can select a note taker who will report-out for the group. The full agenda is attached.
At the end, we will have time to explore other topics that members highlight.
Looking forward to connecting with you all and learning from your experiences.
Lydia and Amy
The Annual Meeting for Big Ten & Friends (BTAF) will be held on July 22, 2021. Preliminary details for the meeting were outlined in a message from Lydia Vandenbergh, the Associate Director of Employee Engagement and Education at Penn State University, and Amy Butler from Michigan State University:
Hi everyone,
When we last convened in February, there was interest in holding a half-day annual meeting this summer. We are scheduling the annual meeting for July 22 from 9 am - 12 pm EDT and will follow up with a calendar invitation.
At this meeting, we will address administrative business, including voting on chairs and creation of a BTAF website. We will also have ample time for discussion. We are seeking your input on what would be of most value to you for discussions:
Please complete this short pre-meeting survey by June 18 to nominate chairs and provide your input on discussions topics will be of most value to you.
Please let us know if you have any questions. We appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Amy and Lydia
A couple of updates were sent out on March 29, 2021 regarding Big Ten & Friends Sustainability (BTAF.)The following are two messages sent on behalf of Lydia Vandenbergh, the Associate Director of Employee Engagement and Education at Penn State University:
Message #1:
Friends,
Great to see many of you at our last call and despite the pandemic, sustainability is progressing at our campuses. The minutes (prepared by MSU's Laura Young) are evidence of that fact. Emanating from the two-hour discussion are a few obvious next steps.
Message #2:
Greening Athletics, Sports for Climate Action/UNFCCC
Tree Policies and the roles they can play in branding, ghg reduction strategies, and conservation
SDGs in the curriculum and Times Higher Ed reporting - the latter is similar to STARS, but emphasizes research and curricular activities more than AASHE.
Reusable Containers - lots of interest in this topic
At the ECBS SWATeam meeting on October 17, Big Ten and Friends Mechanical and Energy Conference was discussed. Meeting with Jill Maxey, Associate Director for Space Analysis on Zero Growth for UIUC campus occured on September 26. Green Labs program is currently in progress. Illini Lights Out project is expected to be approved on October 21 by Student Sustaibability Committee with $1000 funding.
The Big Ten and Friends Sustainability group is collaborating on a Prospectus about how sustainability helps the universities accomplish several of their missions. Each participating school was asked to note their high-level and visionary goal for the Prospectus and the Big Ten group as a whole. Sustainability staff at UIUC offered the following goals:
What are your goals for using the outcomes of the Big Ten Prospectus at your institution? “The University of Illinois Provost Office (budgetary authority) is interested in evaluating the appropriate funding model for our sustainability efforts, and we hope to use the outcomes from the Prospectus to help inform them about the importance and benefit of the overall sustainability efforts, and how it ties directly to the campus mission.”
What potential (think big!) do you see for our network as a whole? How can this work help us leverage regional impacts, move all of our institutions forward, etc.? “We have been making great strides in sustainability, but campus continues to elevate other mission priorities over sustainability when achieving these goals is considered cumbersome or unfeasible. We hope that through this Prospectus, the Big Ten and, subsequently, campuses across the nation will see that sustainability is a mission-critical goal, and will not proceed with any action until it can be made sustainable. Could we also partner on various efforts, from Carbon Credits to recycled paper purchases to RECs, etc. to save money and effort? We should also update the website at http://greenbigten.msu.edu/index.html and https://wikispaces.psu.edu/display/Big10EnvStew/Big+Ten+Environmental+St....”
Today, iSEE reps joined a call with the Big Ten & Friends Sustainability group, to check in on the data collection efforts.
Dear all, Happy Friday! A couple of updates:
Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about the process.
Best,
Emilie (and Denice and Michael)
Stephanie Lage, Assistant Director for iSEE, will work with the Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group to fulfil the data collection effort from the Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group.
Dear Partners, We hope this finds you well. After several conversations with the Metrics Working Group (see below for previous email detailing this process), we’ve developed a list of metrics aimed at measuring sustainability’s contribution to identified executive leadership priorities. We have framed the data request below with the following in mind:
With these conditions in mind, we are asking each partner institution to do the following:
Again, you will find the metrics options attached. (The second tab lists definitions of all important terms.) Tomorrow, we’ll be holding a call from 2-3 PM EST to field initial questions. RSVP here to join. Emilie will be reaching out to each institution individually beginning next week. You will also find a calendar below roughly outlining the remainder of the project.
We look forward to hearing your questions and feedback about this evolving process. And, please remember to RSVP for the Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group Meet-up at the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference on April 3, 2016.
Best,
Denice, Michael, and Emilie
TIMELINE:
Dear Partner Institutions, We hope this email finds you well. We’re writing with updates about several ongoing/upcoming projects:
Please let us know if you have any comments, questions, or concerns about the above. We hope to see you in Baltimore this April!
Denice and Michael (and Emilie)
This project was previously called "Big Ten & Friends Environmental Stewardship Group" and had the following description:
"Big Ten & Friends Environmental Stewardship Group began in 2009 as a group of individuals working together to discuss challenges and to work toward solutions to common environmental problems. The group meets in the spring and fall by video conference. Topics of discussion include energy conservation, financing strategies, transportation, renewable energy, and efficient laboratories. In addition to the schools of the Big Ten Conference, the University of Notre Dame, University of Chicago, University of Texas, University of Nebraska, and the University of California schools were also represented."
Dear Colleagues:
We hope this email finds you well. We are writing to provide you an update on the Big Ten Prospectus. Based on conversations with individual partner institutions, Metrics Working Group members, and progress made over the last month, we’ve determined we need to expand the metrics development process to allow for:
We’ve summarized these modifications in the attached graphic.
Given these modifications to the process, we’ve extended the timeline for the project with the pre-AASHE meeting in Minneapolis now serving as a midpoint check-in for the project, and a potential meeting at the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference serving as the final project deadline. A summary of key dates can be found below.
We will be touching base monthly to inform you of progress on the project, but we encourage you to reach out any time with comments or questions about the process.
To-date, nine (9) partner institutions have committed to the Prospectus project by paying the invoice that was distributed by AASHE on our behalf. We have a verbal commitment from several of the remaining institutions and hope that you can get the invoices paid by the end of the month. Thank you for your continued support and participation.
Best,
Michael, Denice, Liz, and Emilie
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REVISED PROJECT TIMELINE:
Please find definitions for each stakeholder group at the bottom of the timeline.
STAKEHOLDER GROUPS:
Michael J. Gulich, AIA, LEED
Director of University Sustainability
Purdue University
We are writing with an update on the Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group’s effort to develop a prospectus with the working title “Aligning Sustainability with Leadership Priorities”. We are pleased to inform you that AASHE has agreed to handle financial arrangements for project, including invoicing all partner institutions and paying the consultant. We have reframed the original memorandum of understanding document into a scope of work, which we are attaching here for your review.
~ Michael Gulich, Director of University Sustainability, Purdue University
The Big Ten Sustainability Group created the attached presentation about aligning sustainability metrics with leadership priorities.
From: Shane Stennes <stennes@umn.edu> Date: November 6, 2013 at 11:37:26 AM CST To: "Johnston, Morgan B" <mbjohnst@illinois.edu>, Lydia Vandenbergh <lydia@psu.edu>, Matan Gill <matan.gill@unl.edu>, Jennifer Battle <Jennifer@msu.edu>, Tamm Hoggatt <tjhoggatt@purdue.edu> Cc: Chris Kelleher <kelle847@umn.edu>, Stacey White <whit0691@umn.edu>, Elizabeth Spotts <ehspotts@umn.edu>, Emily Kossila <kossi002@umn.edu> Subject: Re: Campus Conservation Nationals I'm glad to hear that there is interest. We've corresponded with the folks at CCN a bit about how to facilitate this and it sounds like they have a process that we can start working through in the next few weeks. Have any of you conducted an inter-university competition through CCN (or other means) before? If yes, any insights on how that went or what you'd recommend to make it successful would be appreciated. As a starting point, I thought it might be helpful for all of us to identify the scope of our campus competitions and that might inform what we do for a competition among our schools. Here's what we are planning right now at the U of Minnesota: 11 residence halls participating, possibly 12 if we can figure out how to get their data into the system (leased property). We are currently planning to report electricity data only. Dates of competition will be February 17 - March 17. Baseline data would be gathered two weeks prior to competition. This may change a bit in the coming weeks, but it shouldn't shift much. What are all of you planning on your campuses? Thanks, Shane Shane Stennes Interim Chief Administrative Officer, Facilities Management Sustainability Coordinator, University Services University of Minnesota 300 Donhowe Building 319 15th Avenue SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 (612) 626-2588 http://www.facm.umn.edu/ http://italladdsup.umn.edu/ On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Johnston, Morgan B <mbjohnst@illinois.edu> wrote: I agree. Sent from my mobile device On Oct 31, 2013, at 11:18 AM, "Matan Gill" <matan.gill@unl.edu> wrote: Absolutely! UNL is already working with MSU's USGBC Student Chapter to arrange a competition. I think having all Big 10 schools compete is a great idea. How do we move forward? From: Shane Stennes <stennes@umn.edu> Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:13 AM To: Matan Gill; Lydia Vandenbergh; Jennifer Battle; Tamm Hoggatt; Morgan Johnston Cc: Chris Kelleher; Stacey White Subject: Campus Conservation Nationals I see that all of our schools are registered for CCN. Any interest in having a little friendly competition among the Big 10 schools participating? Or maybe some head to head match ups? Shane Stennes Interim Chief Administrative Officer, Facilities Management Sustainability Coordinator, University Services University of Minnesota 300 Donhowe Building 319 15th Avenue SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 (612) 626-2588 http://italladdsup.umn.edu/