Getting rid of the freshman 15 isn’t the only reason School of Education students are getting exercise these days, with bikes that allow them to pedal-power a laptop, music system and apple cider warmer.
The ‘pedalathon’ hosted two weeks ago is just one of the many green initiatives integrated into the school by sedGreen, a group that advocates environmentally friendly practices into SED. The pedalathon was intended to demonstrate how much practical energy human physical exertion can generate.
‘I think people often take for granted the appliances and the electricity without the awareness of where that energy actually comes from,’ sedGreen member Lia Stelljes, an SED graduate student, said. ‘It does take work to produce that electricity.’
In addition to the pedalathon, sedGreen is moving forward with other green initiatives, sedGreen co-founder Douglas Zook said. Its most recent project is to install 25 motion censors in SED that will shut off the lights in a room if it has been motionless for 15 minutes.
‘People are always looking for a big solution,’ Zook, an associate curriculum and education professor, said. ‘But some of these things are relatively straight-forward and not that costly.’
Although SED Dean Hardin Coleman transferred to BU just last spring, he said Zook has helped catch him up on green projects and future planning.
SED currently has seven solar panels and a small wind turbine on its roof as well as recycle bins for paper, bottles, cans and cardboard on each floor, Zook said.
The College of Arts and Sciences began working with sedGreen this semester through its environment and geography department, BU Energy Club and the Environmental Student Organization, Zook said.
‘ ‘We would love to see the top leaders of the university… mandate that each school of the university reduce its electric energy by 10 percent,’ Zook said. ‘There is such a big green effort at Harvard, and it isn’t just due to the fact that they have a lot of money. They have decided to make this a unifying theme for the university.’
Mirroring Harvard, President Robert Brown’s $1 million Sustainability Initiative is meant to unify BU by making the campus greener. BU geography and environment professor Cutler Cleveland and Vice President for Operations Gary Nicksa are forming the corresponding green committee and are in the process of hiring a director for the overall initiative, Nicksa said.
Other colleges working on becoming more environmentally conscious include the College of Fine Arts. Current renovations will include the installation of motion sensors in the new music practice rooms, which will consume 17 percent than the current fixtures, CFA spokeswoman Jean Connaughton said in an email.
College of Communication administrators are encouraging professors to ‘cut down’ on their handouts and use CourseInfo to save paper, Assistant Dean Micha Sabovik said in an email.
Staff writer Lauren Finch contributed to the reporting of this article.
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