Approved: 9/12/2014
Funding Amount: $6,750
This proposal will provide funding for 5 students to attend the 2014 AASHE Conference and Expo in Portland, Oregon. This project aims to increase the practice of sustainability at UK by allowing a group of students to serve as knowledge ambassadors following the conference. These students will return to Lexington with the blueprints, ideas, and connections necessary to advance sustainability on college campuses, positively impacting the campus community. AASHE also addresses sustainability from a whole-systems perspective, with economic justice and DE&I forming the cornerstone of the program design.
Funding Amount: $10,000
In the spring of 2012, thanks to a proposal by a student in the College of Public Health, funding from the Student Sustainability Council, and a partnership with campus PPD, UK launched its first full scale outdoor recycling pilot program. In the years since the launch of the program, the number of outdoor locations served by the program has steadily grown and now stretches from WTY Library to the UK Student Center and includes Engineering, Law, Business, and Memorial Hall and the Kirwan Blanding Complex. The College of Agriculture and UK Healthcare are now priority areas for expanding the program.
This proposal is for funding to continue a partnership between the UK SSC and the UK PPD to purchase and install additional outdoor recycling receptacles to be placed strategically around campus.
Approved: 10/12/2014
In 2010, student managers from the Cats Den in the Student Center led an effort to have bottle filling stations installed in the UK Student Center. In 2011-2012 the SSC provided funding that led to the installation of 17 additional stations on campus. In 2012-2013 the SSC and PPD partnered to continue the expansion of this project. To date more than 100 fountains have been installed in 50+ campus buildings. The fountains are very popular, and Facilities Management receives weekly requests for them across campus. This proposal is for funding to support a partnership with the Campus Physical Plant to continue to expand the availability of the filling stations providing convenient access to free, cold, plastic-bottle-free water to students, faculty and staff across our campus. The funding will be used in two ways: 1) to fund the difference between a regular fountain and one with a bottle filler when a fountain needs to be replaced (approximately $400 per unit). And 2) purchasing standalone bottle filler retrofit kits for fountains that are compatible ($500 per unit).
Funding Amount: $8,000
Since its origin in 2009, the DOPE conference has been centered around decolonial, feminist, and critical scholarship and activism. DOPE has always engaged scholars and activists from a wide range of backgrounds from all over the world, whether or not they identify as political ecologists, including folks working in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. This proposal provides funding for honorariums, speaker travel and lodging, advertising, food, and miscellaneous expenses for this year’s conference to continue DOPE’s long-standing tradition of creating a space for participants to foster praxes of radical care, abundance, reciprocity, and interculturality.
Approved: 11/09/2014
Funding Amount: $1,200
For the last 20 years, the UNFCCC has hosted COP to try to create a treaty to comprehensively address anthropogenic climate change. COP 20 held this year in Lima, Peru, will be a key year for the negotiations because at COP 21 (December 2015) the COP will be unveiling the next climate agreement. This proposal will provide partial funding for UK student Caroline Engle, a COP 20 Delegate with the Sierra Club, who is one of only twelve student delegates from across the USA representing the student perspective for the largest, oldest, and most powerful environmental organization in the country, to attend COP 20.
Funding Amount: $250
This project will fund a seminar given by Julia Vallejos in partnership with UK USAS, BCTC S4P&EJ, UK Sociology, and BCTC. In 1998 Julia's life was turned upside down when Hurricane Mitch flooded Lake Managua, and she, with many others who lived on the alongside the lake, were forced to leave their homes and their livelihood behind. After being relocated to a refugee community outside the city limits, Julia began meeting with other displaced women in her community to figure out how they could make a living. Many people they knew were finding work in Free Trade Zones—huge textile factories owned by foreign corporations and contracted by foreign clothing companies. Though they provide employment, the factories have a reputation for poor labor conditions where workers are paid very little and work long hours, and the profit always remains in the hands of foreign corporations. The women decided to form a worker-owned cooperative factory called The Women of Nueva Vida (the name of their new community) with support from a U.S.-based NGO.
After establishing the Nueva Vida sewing cooperative, they later applied for Free Trade Zone status – enjoying tax breaks and access to U.S. and European markets without changing their worker-owner model. The new status came with a new name – Masilí. The workers continue to share the profits of the factory and ensure fair labor conditions for all their workers. They also decided to use only organic fabric as a commitment to protecting the environment. Today, Julia is the general manager of the factory. During her tour through the Southeast region, Julia will share her story. She will also give her perspectives on how free trade policies and U.S. corporate practices have affected her community and the choices we as consumers can make to support alternative trade models like Masilí.
Funding Amount: $21,500
The objective of the Sustainability Studio will be to fully integrate sustainable principles into a proposed addition to Pence Hall on the UK Campus. A design studio of 14, undergraduate and graduate students in the UK School of Architecture will be challenged to research and develop the project.
The semester long project will begin by gathering information on the programmatic needs of the College of Design. Students will identify and research relevant sustainable building precedents. A portion of the grant funds will be used to send student teams to investigate precedents in sustainable design. Analysis meetings will be scheduled with the architects, owners and end users to develop a post occupancy evaluation of the subject buildings. The findings will be presented to the student body in a lecture format.
After gathering and presenting information on sustainable precedents the studio will begin applying sustainable principles to the design of an addition to Pence Hall on the University of Kentucky Campus. Pence Hall is the home of the UK College of Design. Design development will take place through a series of design reviews with faculty, design professionals and representatives from the UK Student Sustainability Council.
The final design proposals will be documented and presented to the student body. First through the jury process in the School of Architecture then through a lecture open to the University. To assist in envisioning the proposals, display boards of each team project will be placed on the sidewalk adjacent to Pence Hall and exhibited in the Student Center Rasdall Gallery. A portion of the grant funds will be used for documentation in book form as a permanent record for The University.
Approved: 12/14/2014
The UK Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students would like to bring Nader Tehrani to campus as our keynote speaker for a conference they will be hosting in April for 300 architecture students from across the Midwest United States. While most of the activities of the conference (workshops) are going to be limited to registered participants, the keynote lecture will be open to the entire University, and even the Lexington community, including invited local architects.
Tehrani would be a particularly wonderful keynote speaker for the College of Design students and extended community because his practice does not simply revolve around hitting simple checkmarks of sustainability; he is constantly pushing the limits of materials and digital technologies to attack issues of sustainability alongside sensitivity to site, complexities of program, and contemporary design theory. He is not only concerned with traditional environmental strategies (efficient environmental control strategies awarded LEED Gold status to many of his designs), but also experimenting with adapting existing materials (exemplified by his work with the Toronto school), and building sensitive to the surrounding context while also creating a notable design (designs that can be sensitive to the surrounding community, loved by them and cared for over the years—perhaps the ultimate sustainable endeavor for a building).
Funding Amount: $750
This proposal will fund one UK student to attend the Solidarity Immersion Trip to the Dominican Republic in Villa Alta Gracia, DR. It will be a labor rights learning experience where the student will have the opportunity to stay with union leaders and learn organizing skills to make a difference communities and campuses like Lexington and UK.
Approved: 01/18/2015
Funding Amount: $33,333
This proposal will partially fund the 2nd year of the Sustainability Challenge Grant program. The purpose of the program is to engage multidisciplinary teams from the University community in the creation and implementation of ideas that will promote sustainability by simultaneously advancing economic vitality, ecological integrity, and social equity. Each project funded to date has had a high degree of student participation though the nature of that participation is not prescribed and varies from project to project. Students are gaining valuable experience in project coordination, curriculum development, community outreach, public speaking, report preparation, and research.
Funding Amount: $60
This proposal will fund one UK student to attend the Sierra Club Activist weekend. The student anticipates becoming more educated regarding environmental issues and to develop skills to promote social change for the common environmental good.
Funding Amount: $2,000
The Beaux Arts Foundation is one of the largest student-run, non-profit organizations in the state of Kentucky. Each year, the Beaux Arts Ball is thrown to raise money and awareness for charities in Lexington such as Broke Spoke, Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, Home of the Innocents, CASA, and the Governor’s School for the Arts. Beaux Arts Ball is about the arts, camaraderie, and above all, optimism for all situations, as that is what non-profit organizations do: donate money to spark positivity. The focus for the 2015 Beaux Arts Ball will be Sustainability and Recycling.
Funding Amount: $5,400
This funding would provide access to data collected by the Carbon Disclosure project for 10 graduate or faculty researchers at the university. This provides access to all their collected data, for all years collected. The access is valid for three years.
Approved: 02/10/2015
Funding Amount: $500
The funds will be used to plant a community garden and three fruit trees outside of the Woodland Glen complex. A community garden located at this dorm provides learning experience for UK students, especially for students in the Greenhouse Living Learning Program (LLP) located in the WG2 dorm. Students can learn how to grow food, tend plants, and also get experience cooking with fresh vegetables and fruits. This knowledge can then be applied later in life, when the students are living off campus and are now solely responsible for feeding themselves.
Funding Amount: $9,000
This funding would create three internship positions with the Office of Sustainability for the 2015-2016 school year. The 2015-2016 school year will be the first year of a restructured internship program between UK Sustainability and the Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment (TFISE). There will be six total positions available next year. Interns will provide general support to the working group or operational unit and will also work closely with mentors from those areas to develop an independent project that they will focus on for the year.
Approved: 02/24/2015
Funding for this project will support four undergraduate fellowships. The fellowship program provides financial support and professional development to undergraduate students conducting sustainability-related research aligned with the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This opportunity is designed to support a student’s close collaboration with UK faculty and is intended to provide the student with an opportunity for intensive and self-directed research or creative work while advancing the university’s goals of sustainability.
Approved: 03/10/2015
Funding Amount: $5,000
The proposed project will help students critically evaluate what sustainability means to them and reframe their thinking in the context of these areas through a series of exercises and an art installation. This will be a one-day workshop for approximately 30-40 students from various disciplines. Students will be placed in teams and led through a series of exercises to critically assess what “sustainability” means by disassembling their current definitions or understanding and redeveloping a conceptual framework based on social, environmental, political, and economic parameters. The second half of the workshop will allow each team to innovate by creating an installation. These will be implemented across campus to provoke the UK community to reframe their understanding of sustainability in regard to water-related issues.
The graduate design elective, Fabricating Play, explores issues of iterative modes of construction and user interaction through research, discussion, and fabrication over the course of 14 weeks. The class was charged with developing full-scale interactive objects to be deployed in the 2015 Beaux Arts Ball. Specific to the theme of the course is to consider the potential of a series of related objects that develop a unified spatial character to be deployed in variety of contexts.
This year’s resulting installation, Pressure Drop, presents an enclosure generated by a hanging field of 268 unique elements hovering over a textured ground condition. Underneath the silver “drops” sit two large soft seating elements in which visitors can relax or engage in various forms of play.
Participants:Tyler Abell, Madeline Cunningham, Shelby Ewing, Paul Morini, Randi Riggs, Jacqueline Sanchez, Ben Ward
ARC 599: Spring 2015 Design Elective: Fabricating Play. Photo credit: GLINTstudios.
Funding Amount: $625
The SustainabLex Community Sustainability Gathering will be a community gathering for the purpose of collaboratively developing new solutions to Lexington’s existing sustainability problems. The event will consist of up to 75 attending individuals gathered at the Plantory on April 25, 2015. Individuals will be split into small groups and given several hours to work together on a solution to what they see as a problem with Lexington’s environmental sustainability. The scope and details of each solution, as well as the particular problem each seeks to tackle, will be left up to the attendees. At the end of the event, once all groups have developed their solutions, groups will be given the opportunity to present their ideas. At the event’s conclusion, the ideas presented at the gathering will be compiled into a list with the goal of submitting it to the city government (either through our juror Jennifer Myatt or by direct presentation to the city, e.g., to the city council). This allows the event to potentially play a role in future policy changes within the city.
Funding Amount: $2,300
This project is a series of events called Earth Days in the Bluegrass. The full calendar of events includes includes film screenings, service events, and grass roots outreach. The topics of the events currently scheduled span the spectrum of sustainability-related topics including alternative transportation, water quality, food systems, climate change, and more.
Approved: 03/24/2015
Funding Amount: $2,150
The purpose of this project is to continue the development and improvement of the SSC during the summer while the organization is effectively inactive. The intern would help plan fall events, organize SSC documents, and generally prepare for the new fall council. The anticipated work for the intern involves significant documentation and generation of quickly digestible information for the benefit of the Council and transparency to the student body. A secondary component involves outreach to previously funded groups and potential collaborations with other organizations in order to create recognition for the Council and sustainability-related issues on campus in general among broad sections of the campus community that might not actively seek out sustainability-related events on their own.
Approved: 04/14/2015
Funding Amount: $4,900
Through this project 50 students, 10 faculty members and staff of the National School of Wildlife and Protected Area Management in Benin and 60 rangers of the three protected areas (W, Arly and Pendjary) will be trained on GIS and the use of drones to conserve the biodiversity. Research will be conducted on the determinants of the unsustainable practices in and around the WAP. Effective surveillance practices will be conducted along the Pendjari river and in the three parks. Collaborative management of the transboundary parks is facilitated through the project implementation and encouraged to continue after the project ends. At the University of Kentucky, the results of the projects will be presented at different occasions:
Public presentations and two scientific publications will be made: one in International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems and the second in the Journal for Nature Conservation.
Funding Amount: $50,000
The University of Kentucky Student Sustainability Council (SSC) and Campus Physical Plant Department (PPD)have partnered to install an array of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels atop the Ralph G. Anderson MechanicalEngineering building facing the courtyard. The total installed capacity of the array will be 62 kilowatts, more than double the size of the existing solar PV technology at the University. This funding is earmarked for Phase 2, which are the two smaller 15.9 kW systems on either side of the Phase 1 installation.
Funding Amount: $1,000
Catalyst is a week-long training camp hosted and developed by Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition leaders to train and empower 30 young people from across Kentucky and develop a trainings team of 9 leaders to prepare and deliver trainings and workshops. Their goal is for participants to use the network formed at Catalyst to encourage them to put roots in Kentucky and fight for change for decades to come. The curriculum will cover grassroots organizing skills, everything that folks need to know to launch a team, run a successful strategic campaign, and work towards consensus based, anti-oppressive, positive change.
Funding Amount: $1,500
When cost-reducing technologies met higher crude oil and natural gas prices in the early 2000s, shale oil and gas extraction surged in the U.S. Recent studies have documented the energy boom as a clear local economic shock with employment and wage increases. However, little work has been done to test and quantify the schooling effect on teenagers as a boom response. This research project aims to analyze the impact of the recent unconventional energy boom on schooling decisions at the county level. With regards to the energy boom, increased demand for and earnings of low-skill labor could draw teenagers out of school. The researchers plan to use the county-by-year oil and gas production and drilling data to identify boom counties and focus on high school and college enrollment and/or graduation rates.
Funding Amount: $245
The purpose of this project is to clean up the litter along Cane Run, which runs adjacent to the Legacy Trail (an 8-mile public recreational path) and the perimeter of the UK North Farm. Environmentally, it is essential to pick up litter along Cane Run to prevent the litter from traveling into the Kentucky River. At the same time, Cane Run is frequently viewed by the public eye because of its proximity to the Legacy Trail and North Farm, increasing the community outreach/public benefits of the Clean Up. Funds for this project are allocated towards transportation, food, and gloves for the volunteers.
UK Dining, UK Sustainability and UK Recycling have been meeting with many other campus stakeholders during this year working on deploying large scale composting within UK dining facilities. All stakeholders are committed to a complex, large scale pilot that begins this summer. The SSC co-funded a graduate assistantship position to assist with all aspects of the program, from operational design for the pilot, to education and outreach to UK Dining staff to assisting with day-to-day operations of the compost program.