The Joe's heartbeat

Photo by Kevin Clifford

THE ARTEMISIA
By Carolina Chacon

Behind overlooked doors on the first floor of the Joe Crowley Student Union, a small mechanical room breathes. Inside, gray titanic tubes and massive white pipes boom and rumble. Unlike any other on campus, this inconspicuous room hides the highly-efficient heart of the union's sustainability and UNR's growing green campus.

"Nobody really cares about this room or asks to see it, but it's the most important room in the building," John Sagebiel, UNR's Environmental Affairs Manager, says.

Those noisy white pipes, unbeknownst to the public, serve as the building's veins, pumping chilled water within and transforming it into fresh, cool air. Smarter than the average air conditioning system, the pumps run at variable speeds and different times, supplying only what the union's thermostats demand, room by room. In other words, they save
electricity and slash energy costs.

Yet most of the JCSU's high-efficiency features go unnoticed by its everyday visitors. The light dancing into the building's interior passes through a light shelf, which directs the sun's rays inside. Tiny Nevada-shaped etchings on the windows then help diffuse incoming light and reduce its harshness. At strategic and odd locations, such as the fourth floor restrooms and above the main staircase, skylights help diminish the need for artificial illumination. Small censors hang from the ceilings to administrate the glow within each individual space, though to passersby they look like tiny irrelevant knobs.

This trend of unawareness extends to other portions of campus. Few students are aware of Canada Hall's rooftop solar-thermal panels, which provide the building with hot water. Not many realize the shuttles transporting them to the JCSU and back for run on a combination of biodiesel and petroleum, or that UNR partially funds the downtown-bound Sierra Spirit. A slim number take advantage of the university's discounted bus passes, carpool parking stickers, or bike lockers - and transportation is a major contributor to green house gas emissions, Sagebiel notes.

"I don't know if students ask themselves - where's the water come from? Where does the trash go? Where does the electricity come from? I don't know how many students ask that of themselves," Sagebiel says.

Some students, however, have eagerly joined the cause for a greener Nevada blue. Dakota Casserly, interim leader of UNR's S.E.E.D.S. (Students and Educators for Environmental Development and Sustainability), is searching for ways to "reduce our ecological footprint on this campus" - and he has already found some. Casserly, a first-year graduate student majoring in geography, and the rest of S.E.E.D.S. strongly lobbied for a green student union, meeting with developers and contractors to convince them of the vitality of erecting a sustainable building.

"I'm really proud of the way we worked with students to make this a green building," Chuck Price, director of the JCSU, says. "I want it to be a model for the rest of the campus."

Price and S.E.E.D.S. continue to work closely together, trying to expand green efforts within the JCSU (See Sidebar for more information.)

Meanwhile, other students bring locally-grown pumpkins to campus. Mattie Melrose, a fourth-year student, helped organize a local food information fair last semester as part of a class project. As Associate Director for Academics and Outreach at the Academy for the Environment, Jennifer Huntley-Smith says, most food travels 1,500 miles to get into grocery stores. Promoting a local agriculture also helps cut down on green house gas emissions.

This semester, Melrose, who is a double major in political science and environmental studies, hopes to plant a vegetable garden on campus for students to enjoy and devour.

In February, she also sought members to initiate another environmentally-minded club at UNR. The club's name and official purpose will be determined later, after the club receives recognition from ASUN.

"I really want to focus on things that will bring people together, like
educational forums on how sustainability relates to campus," says Melrose.

Huntley-Smith and the Academy for the Environment encourage and fund students who develop eco-friendly projects and conduct environmental research. In fact, the Academy for the Environment offers a unique program: the environmental studies major.

Undergraduates who choose the program must combine environmental studies with another major, like Melrose has done with political science, as the program aims to provide an interdisciplinary education drawing courses from various colleges.

"I really like (the program)," Melrose says. "I'm learning to consider the environmental aspects of everything - how the environment relates to all fields."

The Academy, which is accepting only 10 students into the major per semester, is one of the few campus offices requiring students to engage in environmental projects. "(UNR is) not requiring anything of students, just providing options," Sagebiel says. "Everybody, student or not, has the opportunity to do what they can."

UNR, for its part, offered an official recognition to its environmental consciousness when it became one of the charter signatories to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a pact to defend the environment against global warming within campuses across the nations. The Commitment calls on colleges to take at least two of several "interim" steps to curtail green house gas emissions. Few students realize UNR has acted on four: agreeing that all new buildings must meet the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Silver standard or better, requiring the purchase of ENERGY STAR products, encouraging use of public transportation and minimizing waste.

In addition, Sagebiel says, "(UNR is) working on a report of our green house gas emissions that is due next fall."

Some students, such as S.E.E.D.S. leader Casserly, have expressed disappointment with the State Public Works Board's decision not to officially certify the Molecular Medicine Center and the Matthewson-IGT Knowledge Center with the U.S. Green Building Council. (The State Public Works Board programs all new campus buildings.) In fact, the highly-anticipated Knowledge Center, unveiling this August, will not incorporate any energy- or cost-efficient sustainable features.

Only the Academic Athletic Center will receive official LEED certification. Co-leader of S.E.E.D.S. Virginia Smith, like Casserly, is also worried about the strength of UNR's green campus.

She urges administrators and students to expand on the green initiatives already enacted - she sees environmentalism as a critical issue to each student's future.

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