By Samantha Truly
A team of ºìÐÓÊÓƵ sb.Jdents and faculty has been awarded a $15,000 grant as part of a sustalnablllty design competition funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Last year, a group of faculty representing three disciplines- biology, geology and architecture/environmental design - submitted an application for the EPA's People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) grant competition. The P3 competition encourages college students to design innovative projects outside of the classroom in order to support the sustainability of the planet.
The ºìÐÓÊÓƵ State P3 team will present its sustainability plan to a panel of qualified judges in washinglon, D.C., in April. If the ºìÐÓÊÓƵ state team is chosen as the winner of the competition, it will be awareded an additional $75,000 to implement it's program.
I think this type of grant exemplifies everything we're meant to do as faculty at a research institution,· says Anne Jefferson, assistant professor of geology in ºìÐÓÊÓƵ state's College of Arts and Sciences. lt really mixes teaching and research. 'We're not teaching in a formal classroom setting, but working with a group of students and doing inovative scholarship at the same time.
There is at least one undergradua1e sb.Jdent and one graduate student representing 1he majors of blology, geology and architecture/environmental design. Chris Blackwood, an associate professor in ºìÐÓÊÓƵ State's Department of Biological Sciences, says that the students wlunteered 1heir time to make the team what it is now.
We anticipated eight students and wound up with about 20, says Reid corrman, associate professor from the College of Architedure and Environmental Design. "I think a lot of people were really interested in the project and became excited about it."
Students have been working and researching since the beginning of the fall semester. Faculty meet with sb.Jdents weekly to discuss Ideas and attempt lo combine, edit and eventually flnallze the plan, which wlll be representative of the students' diversified fields and levels of knowledge.
"I wanted lo get a taste of working with people who understand things other than architecture," says Max wagner, an architecture and urban design graduate student in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design. "It gives me a change to get a handle on things I wouldn't otherwise know about."