We will be setting up a few meetings starting after Labor Day to meet our upcoming deadlines, with our final report due by November 15. Please review the attached Word file and supplemental attachments ahead of the meetings. Please feel free to post comments/thoughts to our Teams site.

Thanks

Jeremy

----------------------

Good morning, everyone,

I have put the files Jeremy sent on Aug 18th into teams. They are under “files” in the “General” channel. You probably saw the invitation to meet virtually on Sept 20th. Hard to get a busy group together. This is a long time from now and we were hoping to meet sooner. Since we can’t meet sooner, we ask that you review these new documents in the next couple weeks. Add comments to the documents, track changes, or put comments in the file called “COMMENTS Aug-Sept.” We need to spend more time working on this outside of the meetings.

We will use our Sept 20th meeting to make some semi-final decisions on the recommendations from the committee to leadership. October can be used to fine tune.  

I will send reminders up until Sept 20th to makes sure no one forgets to dig into these.  Please don’t wait until the final day. Your comments could help others produce ideas/additional thoughts. Also, please check back on those documents to see what others are saying as well.

Here is a screenshot of the highlighted documents I’m referencing. If you look at some of the other documents and have thoughts on those, it might be good to put them in the “Comments” doc too. Please let me know if this doesn’t make sense.

Best,

Stephanie

---------------------------

Good morning all,

An updated version of the report based on your feedback has been added to Teams, titled GR Committee Report 10.13.2023, for one final round of comments. With the third charge being so different from the first two we think it is best to provide two separate reports. Both reports are included in the same file for ease of review.

We are working to get our preliminary meeting scheduled with Susan, Ehab, and Madhu. We hope we can present to them in the next few weeks so please take a few minutes in the next week or two to review.

Thanks

Jeremy

--------------------------------

Good afternoon

Steph and I are scheduled to present the committee’s recommendations next Tuesday afternoon. We would like to send the final version of our recommendations to leadership no later than Friday so they have a few days to review in advance. If you have any final comments please add them to the document in Teams by noon tomorrow.

Thanks

Jeremy

Stephanie Hess, Jeremy Neighbors, and Paul Foote collated document outlining the green research committee’s brainstorming efforts

Green Research Committee,

Jeremy and I met with Susan, Ehab, and Madhu last week to give them an update on our progress over the past few weeks. I have attached the topics discussed. Here is a brief summary of that meeting and how we propose to move forward.

• The October deadline can be extended. However, if there are requests for campus funding, it is a good deadline since all the budget meetings with the Provost happen in the Spring. As long as we continue making progress, we will update them in October with what we have done by then.
• When we write recommendations, we should consider the financial impact. Cost to implement and money saved following implementation.
• Jeremy is going to put together a single document that includes the information Paul shared on Teams and more details for the topics discussed in the meeting. That will be shared with the committee.
• Next meeting, we will discuss that document. Please read it before the meeting and write comments.

I will try to get something on the calendar soon.

Thanks,

Stephanie

--------------------------------

Hi Morgan,

I am helping Jeremy write the combined document and am looking for your perspectives on 4 main items in this list, do you have 30 minutes to chat about these between now and the end of the week?

Thank you 

Paul Foote

-------------------------------

Hi Morgan,

My edits for the Research committee working documents and included and in green font.

Jeremy is going to combine these documents for our next meeting on Tuesday.

In addition to reviewing my edits in the brainstorming document would you please also comment on the greater campus collaboration sections in the draft document?

• Robust and equitable scoring system for prioritized building/space renovation funding list

Many stakeholders already use siloed versions of this across campus, i.e. Provost’s Office, individual Colleges and Departments, Capital Planning, Deferred Maintenance and F&S Utilities and Energy Services along with others.  A committee or team could pull all of these perspectives together and coordinate an overall metric system to accommodate the many priorities that each stakeholder values.

• Plan for equipment cooling during construction/renovation to avoid one-pass water cooling.

Core program to work with F&S, Department heads and PI’s to develop design criteria for closed loop cooling applications possibly utilizing the chilled water loop when feasible for process cooling etc…

• Establish and begin transitioning to a space utilization strategy to create flexible spaces and support the growth of interdisciplinary work. Sustainable lab design incorporates flexible spaces an effort that involves the PI’s, Deans, capital planning and other stakeholders to coordinate these types of designs. The Core Program can help advocate for these flexible spaces, identify and start conversations for flexible opportunities, break down barriers to communication and operating in silos.

Along with this from the Brainstorming document

Employ green lab director, industry standard range $65k to $85k and up depending experience level, or could hire an existing staff/faculty with a dual role position and similar qualifications with parallel work goals, outcomes or responsibilities and shared leadership and wage responsibility.

An example of a shared position would be their current wage plus an additional wage for the Green Research Position/Role and shared leadership for their reporting line. Many units have this on campus already.

Which answers this question at the bottom of the draft document

• Should we recommend where a Green Research program should reside organizationally?  Possibly all 3 departments OVCRI, ISEE and F&S.  

Thank you 

Paul Foote

----------------------------

Hi Jeremy,

I sent this to Morgan for feedback if she has time.

Please find my edits in the documents attached for the Green Research Committee.

Best

Paul Foote

May 2, 2023 Green Research Committee Meeting 2

Present: Mitchell Bryant, Shari Effert-Fanta, Paul Foote, Jennifer Fraterrigo, Stephanie Hess, Daphne Hulse, Maisie Kingren, Tim Mies, Lisa Moore, Jeremy Neighbors, Chad Stevens, Sabrina Summers

Absent: Morgan White

Discussion:

• Meeting with leadership on Friday (Jeremy and Stephanie)
• Discuss ideas for each team:
  
  • Team 1
    
    • Mitchell: outreach to graduate students who are disposing of waste. What can and cannot go down the sink and other waste diversion mechanism to keep it from reaching the environment.
    • Stephanie: what kind of waste?
    • Mitchell: plastic waste is an issue in itself in the laboratory. There’s a balance because some things need to be sterile.
    • Stephanie: can we repurpose any waste? Hexane for example can be used as fuel unless disposed of improperly.
    • Tim: every lab needs a point contact for lab safety. Don’t leave it to the students alone to know what they are doing.
    • Jen: you must have standard operating procedures in the lab safety binder. Students must review and sign off that they’ve read it. Also includes waste disposal.
    • Maisie: One point of contact for waste disposal and another contact for other responsibilities would be ideal.
    • Mitchell: not many people know to close the sash.
    • Stephanie: how to reach grad students? Stuff on walls becomes wallpaper eventually.
    • Mitchell: flyers at labs, fume hood posters, buildings have digital boards that scroll especially if it’s a lab building. Newsletters to reach different audiences.
    • Paul: fun competitions to promote good behavior. Pizza parties, trophies for winners. Chem Life Sciences proximity alarm for shutting the sash.
    • Jeremy: energy saving technology on ventilation systems. It would be good to establish a policy on what those systems should be helpful to know what we are getting out of it. Not necessarily energy, but the maintenance/safety side of reducing maintenance for things (duct/conduit). Lab space management - objective 2.1 in the iCAP. objective 4.1 is reduce water consumption. Adding to the chilled water is really expensive.
      
      • Paul: be a liaison between facilities on campus to know what’s going on, to coordinate, and ensure better outcomes. Nobody has a roll assigned to this.
      • Stephanie: some faculty no longer do research but still have their lab space. It may be because they think they might return in a future year. Regardless, departments need to know how many active wet labs they want to maintain. Some people are exclusively hired for outdoor lab work but still have indoor labs.
        
        • Safety issues arise when researchers are hired and have to use tiny spaces.
        • Research work is going more interdisciplinary as we go. The traditional way to manage space was to do it within facility, but some people need to share space across disciplines.
  • Team 2
    
    • My Green Lab training was very good, according to Stephanie. Could encourage grad students to do it, only an hour long.
    • Stephanie would like to composting with animal bedding.
      
      • Jen and Daphne have explored composting, but have found that Central Illinois is not there yet in terms of infrastructure needed to compost on a larger scale.
    • Daphne introduced recycling and waste management.
      
      • Currently only recycle 5 items: plastic 1 and 2, aluminum, paper, cardboard, and scrap metal.
      • There may be an opportunity to grow in our plastic 5 recycling. This is a material that seems to crop up a lot in research. Vet med is doing a small scale recycling program, and is sending their items over to ISTC.
      • Summer and fall 2023 F&S is rolling out a program to recycle paper hand towels from bathrooms and laboratories. Piloting in a few buildings this summer and upon success will roll out into more buildings. Paper towels are not heavy, but they are a source of waste in labs that can be reduced through this new program.
    • Group question - are the brown glasses for recycling, or for disposal? Stuff we don’t know about that we should explore.

April 5, 2023 Green Research Committee (Kick Off) Meeting 1

Present: Lisa Moore, Daphne Hulse, Stephanie Hess, Jeremy Neighbors, Jennifer Fraterrigo, Chad Stevens, Shari Effert-Fanta, Sabrina Summers, Morgan White, Mitchell Bryant, Timothy Mies, Maisie Kingren, Paul Foote, Patty Jones, Susan Martinis, Madhu Khanna

Absent: Ehab Kamarah

Charge:

• Look at what others do.
  
  • Makes it less onerous.
  • Check in with our peer institutions
• Check in with our iCAP.
• Structure what we come up with in short- and long-term goals. We have a tight timeline and a broad objective overall.

Discussion:

• Two graduate students joined, which is very valuable to us.
• Deadline to show ideas and progress and present to Ehab, Madhu, and Susan, by May. Jeremy & Stephanie will give this update and summarize what is discussed now and a general timeline going forward.
• Morgan’s been thinking about this for 7 or 8 years, and is excited to see it come to fruition. The core is that researchers are making huge changes and breakthroughs to address climate change but we’re still buying plastic and throwing it away, leaving fume hoods open, etc. How to integrate it into research without jeopardizing the research itself, is the question to explore.
• Messaging must be very cautious to balance safety with sustainability.
• Opportunity to review the iCAP 2020 or 2015 objectives to identify how it applies today.
• Green Research as opposed to Green Labs: allows us to be more broad in our approach.
• Paul Foote spent a year just doing a Green Labs Program so he has tremendous experience and background knowledge on the subject. Don’t reinvent the wheel. I2SL, My Green Lab are good resources to look at.
• Mitchell: Not a lot of knowledge about how to dispose of waste safely (information deficit), so he sees a lot of improper disposal as a student. A lot of opportunity for energy reduction in labs. Concerted effort across campus is necessary, but can we add the carrot (incentive) as well?
• Tim: ACES, South Farms, see inconsistency with how waste is disposed of. Some go through Waste Transfer, others go through Area Disposal. Researchers want to do the right thing, but most people are strapped on time “how do I do it versus how do I have time in the day?” Growth chamber: big refrigerator with a lot of light bulbs. Remove the heat from lamps. Some people don’t turn them off - maintenance or researchers just forgetting. Think of a way to incentivize this? Support the researchers as much as possible.
• Mitchell thinks is very much falls on the individual to ensure they are following the right instructors (don’t pour stains down the sink, etc.).
• On Stephanie’s mind is a culture change for safety. How can they improve the culture of safety on campus? There is simultaneously a sustainability culture we need to grow, too.

How to accomplish this:

• The charge letter had three different goals:
  
  • Break into three groups and each would tackle one of those before the next meeting.
    
    • On-site wet and dry research labs, off-site UIUC research labs, agriculture land and field sites
    • Develop a program whereby groups and departments can qualify for a Green Lab or Green Research certification. Contribute to the iCAP goals.
    • Outline a framework to recommend building-specific plans for safe energy conservation
• Sub-teams in Teams is how we will communicate among our teams.
• Cadence of meetings?
  
  • Big meeting once per month, small groups on the week between (each team has a delegate for scheduling meetings for their group)
  • October deliverables - so we have until the end of September to work
• Resources to carry this out
  
  • Anything that will require funding we will need to state, justify, estimate cost, expected impact from the investment.
• Consider reward packages for research groups.
  
  • Rewarding research groups will be key, according to Donald Stevens
• Paul will put together a sheet of how funding in the past has worked, for projects he’s been involved with. Give the group an idea of how we can tap into funds.
• Stephanie: think about connections you have, things you can tap into.
  
  • Ex: TV screens in lab settings for safety communication. Interest from researchers for this, especially if they can get it for free. A way to communicate without needing paper. Where can we ask for favors?
• Jen’s concern: how can we get voices from other researchers on campus and oversee labs: find opportunities and barriers?
  
  • Paul: successful programs have Green Ambassadors who can be a voice for the labs and can brainstorm together what will work for different labs.
  • Group agrees that more faculty PIs should be included in the conversation.
• Donald & Morgan discussion on zero growth space policy - Capital - comes from Deferred Maintenance than any sort of energy-related issue.
• Mitchell Bryant: attending a seminar tomorrow on this topic and will post his notes in Teams

The following email describes an online session about various Green Lab Certification Programs.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.  

• Ken Keeler, from the University of Michigan, will kick off the meeting describing the University’s decade-long successful program that combines a lab self-assessment and staff visit. Over 200 labs have worked through this program, but it requires substantial staff time. Ken will describe their exploration to tap efficiencies.  
• Next is Tim Lindstrom, who leads the University of Wisconsin at Madison Green Lab Program, which is similar to the Michigan’s assessment model, but integrates a student internship component to support the labs’ efforts. 
• University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Nick Ciancio will showcase his four-year effort collaborating with MyGreenLab’s certification program, a unique pilot that UAB is eager to expand. 

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