MSU administrators are asking for students’ help to solve energy problems facing campus. The Office of Campus Sustainability is seeking 60 students to participate in a Campus Energy Summit to be held in November.
Terry Link, director for the Office of Campus Sustainability, said energy usage must be addressed.
“We waste energy here left and right,” he said. “From buildings that have day lighting and still use overhead lights to computers that are left on all night.”
Link said he hopes the summit will develop creative long-term solutions for how the campus produces and consumes energy. He said interested members of the campus community should contact him by Sept. 26 if they would like to participate.
“We are consuming an awful lot of resources to provide energy to campus,” he said. “Every dollar we spend on energy is another we don’t spend on scholarships, computers, books or any number of things.”
Richard Bawden, a visiting professor of resource development, will employ the “systems thinking and scenario planning” approach to generate solutions.
“I am absolutely obsessed with people being involved with decision-making,” he said. “I hope that we can learn that as a member of the MSU community, we take increasing responsibility for the issues it faces.”
Bawden said this approach allows communities to create their own solutions to problems, such as the energy issue at MSU. He said there will be a three fold approach, starting with students’ exposure to the issues concerning energy on campus.
“Secondly, we will actually come up with a series of potential scenarios for how the university should develop strategic solutions for energy usage,” he said.
Third, Bawden said he hopes to create an awareness that programs like this can help the university in the future.
Bawden has been running such scenarios for the past 10 years, including a project with a group of universities in South Africa to explore the role of service learning in their curriculum and a number of other projects in his native Australia.
If MSU is successful in its strategy to counter rising energy costs, it could serve as an example for the state of Michigan and the nation, Bawden said.
MSU spokesman Terry Denbow said energy conservation is one of the paramount issues on campus.
“Where better than on campus to use the expertise of students, faculty and staff to solve these problems,” he said. “President (M. Peter) McPherson has mandated to all of us that we prepare our administrative area to approach this challenge.
“It is not just this year’s challenge, but a long-term one.”
Students interested in participating should contact Terry Link at link@msu.edu or leave a note of interest at 525 S. Kedzie.
