The Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability (CALS) program is offering up to $75,000 for faculty or student projects that advance Syracuse University’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, directly or indirectly, or through raising awareness on campus about climate disruption and environmental sustainability. Funds will become available May 16, 2020. University faculty and students from any discipline may apply.
Last April, four projects were awarded funding:
The next round of funding is available for projects undertaken between May 16, 2020, and June 30, 2021. All proposals must clearly address how the projects relates to climate disruption and all must include outreach or educational activities that promote awareness of sustainability issues on the Syracuse University campus. Projects may include faculty or student research, applied research, campus infrastructure or landscape projects, outreach campaigns, service projects or course development.
The School Of Design in the College of Visual and Performing Arts submitted its first application for “Does the School of Design Care About Environment?” Project manager Louise Manfredi and project partner Seyeon Lee stated: “The School of Design is a miniature community, which can be an ideal platform for students to exercise and experience sustainability knowledge, which they learn in the classroom. This grant allows us to intentionally create a learning environment that enforces our students to engage in reuse, reduce, and recycle practices of waste they produce in studios. This opportunity would significantly benefit our programs in shaping our students into environmentally responsible designers as well as developing lifelong skills that respect our planet’s resources and further bringing greater impacts to our communities.”
The Syracuse University Climate Action Plan, which was released in 2009, is providing the competitive funding as part of the CALS program, overseen by a team of faculty and staff from across the University. The program merges academic scholarship with the University’s broad initiative to meet energy efficiency goals, while having faculty and students use the campus as a test bed for innovative ideas.
Baris Salman, professor of practice of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, stated about his grant: “Recent developments in wireless sensor technologies, data analytics tools and cloud computing have reached to a point where deployment of these transformative technologies for real-time infrastructure monitoring, management and smart decision making is more easily achievable. The main goal of this project is to develop hands-on course components on Smart Stormwater Management to enhance our students’ exposure to these critical advancements. We anticipate that this project will bring significant returns in terms of raising the human capital and securing larger grants in smart infrastructure systems.”
“The CALS grant is perfect, as it helps our talented students and professors help the University with its sustainably-related goals,” says Sustainability Coordinator Melissa Cadwell. “Being able to work with the students and professors has created a stronger working relationship between Sustainability Management and the campus community.”
The Call for Proposals and application materials may be found at sustainability.syr.edu/cals/. The deadline for proposals submissions is midnight on March 16, 2020.
