Adopting Buildings, Earning Class Credit, and Greening the Campus:
Public Affairs Students Investigate Sustainability in the Maxwell-Eggers Complex

In October 2008, Professor William Coplin of the Maxwell School invited Syracuse University Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Lloyd to speak to an introductory Public Affairs class about campus sustainability initiatives, and a new project was born. The basic idea was this: Buildings are to blame for the bulk of campus greenhouse gas emissions, so why not “adopt” a specific building, find out what the people who work there think and do, and make practical observations of matters like recycling and energy consumption? Four months and four student projects later, the Adopt-a-Building program carried forward by Professor Coplin’s students has reached into nearly every corner of the Maxwell School and its two buildings, Maxwell and Eggers Halls.

Fall 2008 Project

Lloyd captured the interest of students in PAF 101, Introduction to Analysis of Public Policy, when he described his plan to “adopt” Archbold Gymnasium. The plan had stalled when student volunteers ran short on time; Lloyd concluded that the relatively demanding project was better suited to a class. As it happened, several students in his audience were seeking just such a project to satisfy a PAF 101 requirement. With their professor’s approval, ten signed up immediately for a pilot.
The group worked on a tight schedule, conducting surveys and observations on the first two floors of their own classroom building, Maxwell Hall, and reporting the findings to Lloyd’s staff in the Sustainability Division of the Department of Energy and Computing Management. The students identified several opportunities for sustainability improvements--including a lack recycling bins on the second floor, which was resolved immediately.

Spring 2009 Projects

In spring 2009, the effort expanded into three related projects. One focused a new group of PAF 101 students strictly on visual observations of the third and fourth floors of Maxwell Hall. The other two projects centered on surveys of the occupants of both Maxwell and Eggers Halls. These surveys, developed with the assistance of Carol Dwyer, Director of the Maxwell School’s Community Benchmarks Program, became major individual projects for students in Professor Coplin’s PAF 315 class, Methods of Policy Analysis and Presentation. One student collected responses to questions about departmental spaces and practices from administrative assistants in 17 departments. The other gathered responses to a web-based questionnaire, which asked over 240 individual members of the faculty and staff about personal awareness and conservation efforts. All results were reported to the Sustainability Division. More Information

Looking Forward

“Adopting” Maxwell and Eggers Halls resulted in both a learning experience for Public Affairs students and a substantial collection of data to help the University toward its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The information collected may ultimately contribute to policy recommendations, awareness campaigns, and building efficiency improvements. Plans call for Public Affairs students to tackle other campus buildings in future semesters.

Senior's Generator Combines Excercise and Sustainable Power

Matthew Mockaitis, a senior Civil Engineering student, is combining recreation with sustainable energy generation in his honors project.  Working in Archbold Gym with equipment furnished by Joe Lore, Director of Recreation Services, and utilizing funding provided by the Renee Crown Honors Program, Matt is modifying a stationary bicycle so that its rider, in addition to getting a good aerobic workout, will generate electric power.
According to Mockaitis, the direct current output of the bicycle’s generator should be enough to power a reading light, to recharge a cell phone, to run an iPod, maybe even to power a small television – it all depends on the effort expended during the workout.  Matt’s project includes equipment which will record periodic readings of power output (voltage and amperage) so that, after a number of trial runs, the most effective applications of electricity from each level of workout can be determined.

Mockaitis is designing the electricity-generating bicycle separately from the equipment to measure and utilize the electricity generated.  As a result, other exercise equipment – suitably modified to provide its own electrical generating capability – can easily be substituted for the bicycle.  In fact, if time and funding allow, Matt’s already got his eye on an elliptical training machine.

This engineering project is also at the heart of an expected entry to the Syracuse Panasci Business Plan Competition, sponsored by the Whitman School’s Program in Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises.  The entry will focus on a franchisable commercial recreation facility which will generate a large portion of its own electricity using the muscle power of its members.

Maxwell under Student Reveiw

Undergraduate students in the Public Affairs Program of the Maxwell School are actively involved in making their college’s facilities and practices more sustainable. 
As projects for Professor Bill Coplin’s PAF 315 class, students are conducting surveys of the departments and employees within the Maxwell School, to identify opportunities for energy reductions, improved recycling, more sustainable purchasing and other ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The student projects will focus on collection and statistical analysis of the survey data.  Results will be passed to SU’s Sustainability Division, which will follow up to assure that the opportunities identified are addressed in an effective and timely manner.

Additionally, students in Coplin’s PAF 101 class, under the direction of two undergraduate teaching assistants, will be conducting a physical inventory of two floors of Maxwell Hall.  Building on the results of an inventory of two other floors last semester, these students will identify potential short-term improvements to the academic facility.  Students in the Fall semester identified the need for improved recycling infrastructure on the second floor of Maxwell; this improvement is already in place.  According to Steve Lloyd, Chief Sustainability Officer, similarly quick response is expected to at least some of the opportunities identified this Spring.

Future semesters will likely see Public Affairs students performing similar surveys and inventory efforts in other buildings across campus, as Syracuse University undertakes to reduce the carbon footprints of all its academic and administrative facilities.