MCLA Blog

1. Jan. 31, 2008 – Seminar - Murdock 218 5:30 – 6:30 pm
“Photovoltaics: How they work and local examples” by Chris Derby Kilfoyle – Berkshire Photovoltaic Services, President.
This seminar is part of our Green Living Seminar Series on Thursday evenings and all are open to the public to attend.

2. February 1, 2008 – “Carbon Calculator 101 –Your Questions Answered” - Presentation – Murdock 218 3:00 – 4:30 pm. Presenters include: Audrey Werner – Instructor in Environmental Studies, MCLA, Daniel Harris – MCLA Student Intern working on MCLA’s Carbon Calculator, and Stephanie Boyd - Acting Director, Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives, Williams College. A general information presentation by Audrey will start the event and Daniel Harris will present MCLA information and Stephanie Boyd will follow with Williams College’s Carbon Calculator figures.

3. Electronic billboards in the Centennial Room Cafeteria will display students using the new recycling bins and what types of items are able to be recycled and which are not! These will be shown all week 1/28 – 2/1/08.

4. Display of student artwork involving global warming themes and other environmental concerns will take place in the Centennial Room during the week of Jan. 28 – Feb. 1. This artwork was done for student projects with Melanie Mowinski and Laura Christensen from the Fine and Performing Arts Department at MCLA.

5. Students in ENVI 101 – Introduction to Environmental Studies will do readings and write response papers about Global Warming. They will be reading from “Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Man, Nature, and Climate Change” by Elizabeth Kolbert. A class discussion involving these readings will be part of the classroom activities.

6. Laura Christensen from the Fine and Performing Arts Department at MCLA will be incorporating Global Warming into the coursework for Art 210: Introduction to Drawing. The assignment for the class will be “Repeat Drawing of Glacier Shapes” and will involve drawing abstract drawings from glacier photographs.

7. Mary Kavanaugh, Coordinator of Academic Technology and Anne Goodwin, Associate Professor in Biology have been offering workshops to faculty to organize their courses online and reduce paper here on campus. There will be several more workshops offered throughout the semester. January 8 and 9 were two sessions to organize courses for this spring semester.

8. An “Arctic Bike Ride” is being organized for January to increase awareness of the option of bicycling instead of using automobiles. Teddy Bourgeois is organizing this effort from the Energy Subcommittee of The Green Team at MCLA. This is part of their awareness campaign as they start a Bike Share Program here at MCLA.

9. A Webcast from EARTHDAY Television will be shown Wednesday, Jan. 30’Th at 8 pm entitled “The 2% Solution”. Jeremy Smith from the Chemistry Department is organizing this event. More information about this event can be found at www.FocusTheNation.org .

10. Reusable grocery bags will be available in the C4 Store on campus from Aramark! In addition to the cornstarch cutlery replacing plastic ware and recycled paper napkins, Aramark is continuing their efforts to reduce global warming. They also offer reusable coffee mugs which also result in a lower price for refills to urge the campus community to reduce!

ENVI 101 students are planning activities to increase recycling awareness to the campus community Jan. 29, Jan. 30, and Jan. 31. Here are some of the plans:

11. Button Ecological Footprint: To inform the students and others on campus about what an ecological footprint is and how it affects the environment around us, we have decided to do this by using MCLA’s “Going Green” pins. With these pins we are going to place them on a bulletin board in the marketplace in the shape of a footprint. When we inform people about what the footprint represents and what our project is based on, we will give each person a pin causing our footprint to get smaller which will, in essence be reducing the ecological footprint of the campus. We will also have a large piece of paper to the side on the wall showing how big it was when it first started and how much it reduced every hour. From ENVI 101 Lab report submitted 1/22/08.

12. The Café Kids: Another group of students is going to setup a table during lunch - To convey a positive message of recycling to the students through tabling, posters, and digital media during lunch time in the cafeteria.

13. Beacon Recycling Squad: Our Plan is to try to reduce the amount of paper not being recycled on campus. One of the main problems is newspapers because on a regular basis people read the papers and then throw them in the trash. Instead we have decided to get people informed by sending a campus wide email to the students about recycling the newspapers on campus as well as placing an ad in the newspaper and putting up signs about recycling the papers and leaving them in pick-up boxes instead of trash cans. Another is putting an event on Facebook to get a wider range of students on campus.

From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/22/08.
14. Mailroom Recycling Squad: We plan to construct stop/think-before-you-throw-away signs to put on the trash can in the mail room so that people will recycle. We will also make a poster that displays the benefits of recycling and ideas for reusing materials and minimizing waste. From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/22/08.

15. As students in the Computer Center log on to use the computer lab, a display will pop up showing them the number of paper copies they have used to make them aware of their own use.

From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/23/08
16. Weighing Recyclables from Student Population: We are going to collect old boxes from the bookstore and Aramark to reuse them to distribute to 15 different people to collect their cans and bottles over a 3 day period. After the 3 day period we are going to collect all the accumulated recyclable cans and bottles. Then we will take a picture of how much waste a few people can generate over a 3 day period. We will then estimate the weight of all the recyclables by finding the weight of a single can. Finally we will show the difference each person can make by simply recycling their cans and bottles.

From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/23/08
17. Recycled Table Decoration Awareness: To create a poster designed to promote awareness about recycling. The poster will read: “Reuse, recycle, take action today/because the future might waste away!” The poster would be hung on the wall of the cafeteria. On the tables there will be empty soda cans with environmental facts and statistics wrapped around them. The cans will be holding recycled paper flowers. We plan to use origame with recycled paper to make the flowers.

From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/23/08
18. Vending Machine Info: Recycling maps near vending machines-Our plan is to increase awareness of how to recycle plastics and other recyclable products here on campus by making posters that we will be placing all around campus. The posters will be placed near vending machines due to the traffic in those areas and their relevance to the topic, and the posters will include statistics about recycling plastic products such as soda bottles, and will also include a map showing the locations of all the recycling stations on campus.
From ENVI 101 lab report submitted 1/24/08

19. Bathroom Stall Info: We plan to place awareness fact sheets inside bathroom stalls all around campus. The sheets will educate about energy usage, and water conservation, as well as the importance of recycling. The awareness sheets will be printed on recycled paper.

20. Paperless Courses: During lunch on Thursday we will be tabling to foster awareness on paperless courses here at MCLA. We will make a colorful poster from pieces of paper taped together to make one big poster and hand out flyers around campus before Thursday that will be printed on recycled paper. The flyers will contain information about what classes/ teachers are running paperless courses, contact information, awareness about the course, petition time on Thursday, and teacher incentives for attending computer help programs.

21. Team Towers: We plan to collect recyclable goods such as plastic, paper, cans & bottles from the Berkshire Towers. With these materials we will make a huge collage and hang it in the Amsler Campus Center “Marketplace.” On either side of the collage we will have posters. The one to the left will say “This collage was constructed with a fraction of recyclable waste found in the Berkshire Towers alone.” Meanwhile, the poster to the right will read, “How will you make a change?” An arrow will point down to a “Suggestion Box” where we will ask the MCLA community to contribute their ideas to aid the recycling project on campus.

22. Tragedies of Trash: Our basic plan is to make a flyer alerting students at M.C.L.A. about the “tragedies of trash” on campus. First, we will design a flyer with different information on how to recycle daily on campus. Then, we will collect paper that has already been discarded throughout campus in such buildings as Murdock Hall, The Freel Library, and Bowman Hall. Using the paper people left to be recycled, we will print our information on it and then have it delivered to the student bodies mailboxes. Then, students will be receiving an informational hand out that is on recycled paper, demonstrating that this is something the campus could consider doing itself.

23. The Going Green Game Show: Our plan is to make a game show like poster called “The Going Green Game Show!!!!” that involves people and allows them to receive a “MCLA Going Green” button. When a person answers one of our facts/questions correctly they will receive a button. We also plan on giving buttons away for effort.

24: Roaming Button Squad: We will be roaming around all the recycling bins on campus and passing out “MCLA Going Green” buttons to students that were recycling.