Campus Environmental Awards (2006)

Lauren Heising

Coordinator of Sales and Nutrition, Housing & Dining Services

Award: Individual achievement

Lauren has successfully campaigned for improved environmental education and green purchasing from her position within dining and housing services.  In January, Lauren arranged over a 100 dining service staff members to take an environmental training.  The training was called "Let's Get Down to Earth" which included education on green cleaners, recycling, composting and organic/natural foods.  Lauren was instrumental in converting to more environmentally friendly and less toxic cleaners in the dining units.  She has also recently taken on duties to manage and maintain composting collections for the dining units. 

Lauren has also been a driving force within dining services to advance the use of organic, fair trade, local, and sustainable foods offered through all six dining units.  Lauren has partnered with the Environmental Center and Baker RAP classes and as a result of her commitment, Housing and Dining Services will soon be serving fair trade coffee and sustainably harvested seafood.  Lauren has also been of great assistance to Lisa Barlow's environmental class in their research on natural/organic meats. 

Housing and Dining Services

Award: departmental achievement

This award is for all of the effort put in by Housing and Dining Services to open Piazano’s- the first all natural Dining Unit at CU. The goal of this unit is to offer food that is 100% natural, 80% organic, 25% sustainable and 10% locally grown. Piazano’s opened its doors on Jan 17th.  Piazano’s provides quality and healthy food to the whole campus community while reducing CU’s ecological footprint.  Its success is already proven as the students’ demand for the food has surpassed expectations (and supply).  The team responsible for the planning of this unit had to forge new ground for the department. Whether it was researching, testing and procuring new products, planning new menus, or handling supply challenges, they took it in stride.  The whole department deserves recognition but there are also a few notable people particularly responsible for the success: Kerry Patterson, Mike Knapp, Kambiz Khalili, Janice Torkildson, Amy Beckstrom, and Lauren Heising. 

This departmental achievement award also recognizes Dining Services efforts this fall in making the “Global Jam” event CU-Boulder’s first zero-waste event where every food product item was compostable!  Not only did this reduce waste but also helped to educate staff and students about resource conservation, composting and waste reduction. 

University of Colorado Solar Decathalon Team

Special Recognition

Solar Decathlon winner 2005 - National competition.  Two year consecutive winner of the National Solar Decathalon.

CU was one of 18 universities competing in the Department of Energy's annual Solar Decathlon, which challenged students to design, build and operate the most attractive, efficient and comfortable solar home. CU picked up the first-place trophy at the Washington, D.C. competition for the second year in a row.

After many long nights of strategizing, arguing, and biting nails, the CU Team once again emerged victorious! While the competition was fierce and the houses were all powerful testaments to the potential of solar energy, the CU Team did the little things that were needed to eke out another win. Needless to say, swarms of people waited in line following the announcement in order to learn more about the green technologies and sustainable features employed in the BioS(h)IP. The excitement and enthusiasm generated by the Solar Decathlon competition was surely shared by all and has hopefully inspired many a person to embark on their own personal solar journey.

Robert Burke

Pipe Trades Shop, Maintenance and Operations Division, Facilities Management

Award: water conservation

Robert Burke is recognized for water conservation.  He researched and tested and conservacap/ flushometer product which saves 3/4-gallon of water without having to replace toilets.  Robert conducted the testing and installs during off hours in order to reduce disruption and as a result no complaints were received.  Nearly 300 flushometer retrofit kits have been installed in Engineering, MCDB/Porter, and CIRES/Ekeley.  The average number of flushes per toilet per day for these facilities is around 20.  If my math is right, this translates to about 1.6 million gallons saved per year, which likely saves the university around $5,000 in water and sewer charges --- thus, CU recovers the capital investments costs within a year.

Steven Engel

Senior Instructor, Leeds School of Business

Honorable Mention: green faculty

Steven Engel is a senior instructor in the Leeds School of Business Marketing Department.  Since 1995 he has taught a variety of courses.  Specifically, he has created and conducts BCOR 4000, “Marketing's Role in the Socially Responsible Firm” which is the only one like it in the entire nation.  Mr. Engel has brought awareness to the students through projects that bring life to classroom subjects.  Overall, there is a huge amount of student enthusiasm generated by the course and the instructor. 

Michael Hughes

Assistant Professor, College of Architecture and Planning

Honorable Mention: green faculty

Michael Hughes has established a series of design/build studios in the Architecture & Planning curriculum that expose students to the potential in recycling the materials in cast-off mobile homes into energy efficient, high design, affordable homes. A huge percentage of the resources and energy consumed in modern society is for the construction of the built environment.  By boldly taking on these challenges, he is sending CU students out into the world with rare and valuable skill sets. All of his students will carry resource efficient thoughts and skills during their time on campus and beyond. The true measure of resource savings has to include the impression CU makes in the community, by exhibiting the creative work itself and in the very act of partnering with the community to combine our resources in this effort to build a better future.

ROTC Department and Jon Krueger, Athletics

Honorable Mention: Recycling

ROTC has been responsible for clean up after home football games.  Some years ago the clean up crew began to collect and separate recyclable containers (mostly plastic water bottles) into plastic bags to bring down to the on campus recycling facility.  At first we were somewhat confused as to where the bags came from.  Since that time, the clean up crew has consistently diverted the majority of the co-mingled containers left on the ground by Stadium patrons.  Without this effort literally tens of thousands of individual bottles would have been sent to the landfill.

This past football season was a record one for CU Recycling in terms of the volume and weight of recyclable materials collected at home football games.  This record would not have been reached if not for the significant contribution of the ROTC/Athletics clean up crew.