The following project highlight the goals of this year's fellows. For more information and contact information on these projects and more, search the Fellowships database by campus or project topic.

Andrea Triplitt
Furman University
The Green Room Energy and Environmental Initiative (GREEN) Showcase Room will serve as a residence hall model for students on campus to learn how simple lifestyle and product choices in their dorm rooms can significantly lessen their carbon footprint.

Christa Jordan
Clemson University
Christa is collaborating with a local non-profit, Friends of Lake Keowee, to construct green roofs both on campus and in the larger community.

Kate Ekman
Northeastern Illinois University
The purpose of the project is to assist Northeastern Illinois University in understanding and quantifying its environmental impact while focusing on steps to reduce it. Kate will conduce a greenhouse gas inventory using the Clean Air Cool Planet program, which will create measured benchmarks for the future.

Axel Ramirez-Madera
University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez
Axel's ambitious project is supporting seven fundamental "Green Resolutions" on campus, including: transportation, recycling, energy conservation and efficiency, habitat, purchasing, education and outreach and water conservation.

Hal Knowles
University of Florida
This “Core Project” entails the first year activities associated with designing and implementing the UF Carbon Neutral Action Plan. Specifically, the fellowship will support Hal’s role as a coordinator for this cross-campus interdepartmental endeavor.

Nirav Patel
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Nirav is going to be working to implement Maximum Power Point Tracking technique in various ways on his campus. This technique aims to locate the global maximum power point on the P-I curve of the interconnected arrays to extract the maximum power from the PV arrays thus bypassing any local maximum that might trap other single stage MPPT technique.

Callista Perry
Clark University, MA
Summer of Solutions 2009: Worcester will bring together young climate activists from campuses across the Northeast to create community-based solutions to climate change. It will build a strong, self-sustaining community of people directing their efforts towards specific and attainable projects in Worcester, MA, while simultaneously developing practical skills to implement real climate change solutions at the local level in communities throughout the Northeast.

Isaac Slings
Wartburg College, IA
Students Seeking Sustainability (SSS) is a student lead initiative which aims to strengthen it's initiatives by organizing and hosting the first Iowa Student Government Association Summit, which will focus in part on statewide sustainability efforts, and completing a carbon map of the campus' ecological carbon footprint to which the school will be accountable to reduce. SSS is the first step in a multi phase plan to reduce the "footprint" of Wartburg College.

Gideon Burdick
Warren Wilson College, NC
Warren Wilson College (WWC) Real Time Energy Monitoring will strive to provide students, staff, administrators and facilities maintenance with real time feedback about student energy consumption. By making this information easily accessible via internet this project aims to educate the WWC community on the impacts of energy use. In addition this tool can be used to compare building trends to Green Building/EPA standards. Using technology developed by a visiting electrical engineer, who currently supervises the Energy Audit Crew, this project will aim to explore an unprecedented approach to wiring buildings for energy monitoring.

Prashant Tank
New York Institute of Technology, Manhattan
The proposed project aims to measure the useable solar radiation in a dense urban environment and its effect on the temperature profile of the main building of the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) Manhattan campus. The work will encompass the digital archiving of the incident solar radiation impacting the building. The radiation will be measured using a digital camera calibrated by a light meter and solar PV panel on the roof of the structure. In addition, the temperature profile in the building will be measured and correlated with solar radiation. The data collected will be made available to the School of Architecture for case study purposes.

Josh Mantooth
Truman State University, MO
A Windbreak and Carbon Sequestration Plot at Truman State University's Farm
Land at the University Farm will be devoted to the planting of native species - Eastern Red Cedar, Black Oak, Aromatic Sumac, Big Bluestem, and Illinois Bundleflower - to create a desired windbreak and, simultaneously, a new carbon sequestration opportunity. A mixture of trees, shrubs, grasses and legumes were chosen in order to maximize soil carbon storage (Fornara & Tilman 2008). The net carbon sequestered in the experimental plot will be compared to that of an adjacent control plot supporting the current land use at the farm. The comparison will be accomplished in the context of a new interdisciplinary seminar course to be offered by the University.

Antonio Bautista
University of California, Santa Cruz
The Ecocities class will be taught as Action and Research Team (ART) under the Education for Sustainable Living Program (ESLP) at UC Santa Cruz. ESLP is a student directed course, now entering its 6th year that involves over 250 students annually at UCSC in sustainability projects through Action Research Teams (ARTs). The Class will cover Ecocites and will relate back to the UCSC campus in creating an Eco-campus. The Students in the ART will participate in a class project during spring 2009. By the end of the class they will have developed projects to reduce UCSC’s carbon footprint. The projects will be coordinated with the UCSC Climate Action Plan, a draft of which is scheduled to be released in December 2008. The greater purpose of the Ecocities ART is to help UCSC become an Eco-campus by developing student led projects and encouraging further participation in the student sustainability movement.

Briar Schumacher
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Energy Harvesting
Briar plans to research the amount of energy available for grid tied use from playground or fitness center equipment. The scope of her project will be to determine the best ways to harvest the energy expended by children when at play or adults at the gym for a selected group of equipment.

Ian Joshnson
University of Wisconsin, River Falls
Prairie Management for Multi-Use/Sustained Yield of Endangered Species and Carbon Negative Biofuels Feedstock: A Case Study of Willow River State Park and the St. Croix River Watershed
This project will define and provide a holistically integrated model for optimal biofuels feedstock production from native prairie polycultures in conjunction with optimum management of rare, threatened, and endangered (RTE) grassland species management for the sake of profit driven carbon negative climate initiatives in the Upper Midwest. Research done at the University of Minnesota has identified native tallgrass prairies as an ideal feedstock in terms of input vs. output efficiencies (Tilman, 2006), but little has been done beyond this initial perspective in terms of identifying additional benefits of, or methods for managing feedstock plots. This study will contribute significantly to defining best management practices (BMP’s) to also maximize biodiversity, carbon sequestration, watershed benefits, public benefit, and species protection. A distinct effort will also be made to define economic benefits on a broad scale beyond obvious harvest market values.

Heather Downing
Cosumnes River College, CA
Title: Inventorying Greenhouse Gases & Raising Recycling Awareness at Cosumnes River College
This project enables Cosumnes River College (CRC) to establish the first greenhouse gas inventory in the Los Rios Community College District (LRCCD). This inventory will provide critical baseline information to help the campus identify and establish reduction targets and, ultimately, formulate a Campus Climate Action Plan. In addition, this project includes efforts to: 1) increase recycling awareness at our campus and 2) conduct education and outreach to our district's three sister colleges, local businesses, and nearby K-12 schools.

Anne Pandey
Cal Poly Pomona, CA
Cal Poly Pomona's Climate Action Plan
Anne will be working to advance Cal Poly Pomona's Climate Action Plan by; completing a draft of a climate action plan for the University for review, finalizing a plan for formal adoption by the University by September 2009, promote the climate action plan, campus sustainability initiatives and other related resources by creating an on-line sustainability library as part of Cal Poly's website, creating a Facebook page, and promoting through BrocoBytes and the Poly Post as well as community outreach.

Joanna Calabrese
University of Maryland
Energy Consumption in Buildings: Behavior Modification through Departmental Energy Report Cards
Joanna's project will promote energy conservation and measure the results in select campus buildings. She will partner with department leadership to share data about current building usage, set reduction goals, provide education about the energy being used (e.g., it is equivalent to the energy used by 25 Maryland households per month), share conservation strategies, and develop incentives for participation. Over time, this process will be expanded to include a department's total carbon footprint, reporting carbon emissions from energy use, business travel, commuting and other carbon-intensive practices.

Campus Ecology...It takes a big step to make a smaller footprint.