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Education Update: Beyond the Books
Florida Universities Transforming Education With Sustainability Initiatives
By Lauren Heighton, Staff Writer
Above: Dr. Marwa El-Sayed is an assistant professor of environmental engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
There are plenty of misconceptions around the idea of sustainability. Dr. Marwa El-Sayed, assistant professor of environmental engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University hears them from her students.
For one, El-Sayed says, “A lot of times, there’s a misconception about what sustainability really is.”
“Many of my students come in thinking that it's just about recycling,” she said. “And then at the end of the course, they laugh that maybe recycling is not even sustainable.”
For El-Sayed, sustainability is about the choices we make for each situation.
Looking at sustainability as an optimization process, Dr. El-Sayed teaches students in the College of Engineering that there is no right answer.
“There are several right answers,” she said. ”It's just the way of looking at your perspective and looking at the problem.”
Problem solving is at the forefront for universities in Florida as they prioritize sustainability and the environment through their expansion, student involvement and research endeavors.
Lab Approach
At Embry-Riddle, moving towards sustainability is implemented on campus in a lab. The Sustainability and Environmental Engineering Lab (SEEL) housed onsite in Daytona Beach utilizes new methods for measuring environmental contaminants and identifying pollutants, with a focus on atmospheric contaminants.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides support to Embry-Riddle to research contaminants across several sites in Florida. The addition of low-cost sensors to both stationary points and unmanned aerial vehicles, like drones, is a technique Embry-Riddle is using to collect data from different altitudes.
A diverse group of professors and students from the Department of Aeronautical Science and the College of Engineering work on this low-cost sensor project. The team also collaborates with a professor of social sciences from the University of South Florida who conducts quantitative and qualitative research surveys to identify which communities in Florida are affected by environmental injustices.
The research from SEEL doesn’t have a set end date; it will continue as questions are answered and new ones arise.
“The use of the low cost sensors for air quality monitoring hasn't been out there for a long time, less than a decade,” El-Sayed said. “So there's so many questions that could be asked still.”
Expanding Goals
The University of Central Florida (UCF) is prioritizing the environment with a goal of carbon neutrality by the year 2050. While this may seem like a daunting target, the university has set up guardrails to keep it on track in the coming decades.
One of the guiding metrics used to prioritize sustainability in higher education institutions across the country is the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS), created by the Association for Advancement of Sustainability and Higher Education (AASHE). The STARS metric comprises categories such as academics, operations, and planning and administration. The University of Miami and Florida State University are the two institutions out of nine in Florida to currently hold gold status. UCF attained silver status with its last submission in 2021.
UCF is working to achieve a gold STARS ranking by 2027. Ryan Chabot’s role as Sustainability Coordinator at UCF is to join the efforts necessary to make the goal a reality.
“Right now, my students and I are doing sort of a reassessment of how we're doing, or trying to better understand in this sort of rebuilding phase, like what areas of the university maybe we hadn't been able to tap into before, to showcase some of the things that we are doing well, but also to figure out what areas we really want to push forward,” said Chabot.
Campus Implementation
Spread across 800 acres, UCF’s enrollment is at just under 70,000 students. With that, the campus must sustain a large population while prioritizing these goals for improvement.
“We actually have our own energy plant on campus for our small solar city energy generation,” Chabot said. ”It just helps increase efficiency and reduces a lot of that line loss that would come from bringing electricity on campus.” Energy purchases were cut by a third with its installation. Other developments include a thermal energy storage tank that reduces energy by taking advantage of cooler ambient conditions at nighttime to run the chillers, which saves megawatts by storing cooled water, reducing 40% of the peak demand for cooling.
Student Involvement
Campus implementation of sustainable innovations isn’t the only way that UCF is championing sustainable development. The Learning-by-Leading program was adopted from the University of California Davis in 2018. Since then, it has seen fast success with a 140% growth rate. Teams in the program tackle projects around UCF’s large campus, bringing awareness to problems and areas for improvement.
Natalia Anaya is a senior at UCF and a student in the Learning-by-Leading program, serving as a co-coordinator for the stormwater management team. One of the projects Anaya’s team focused on was looking for harmful pollutants in stormwater ponds on campus.
“We tested about 13 different ponds around campus and now we're doing the analysis for that,” Anaya said. “And then hopefully in the future, we're going to be able to create some green infrastructure to fix those levels and balance them out.” In the future, they may explore installing rain gardens or bioswales.
Along with her work as a co-director of the stormwater management team, Anaya is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
A More Sustainable Future
As for the future of the Sunshine State, these universities serve as an example of the goals and implementations necessary to make progress for sustainability.
For students at UCF, sustainability efforts are immersive and competitive. The university’s event ‘Kilowatt’ is returning for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic this spring, challenging each residence hall to see which can have the highest rate of energy reduction. From turning out lights and regulating air conditioning use, this event brings all students together for a positive outcome.
Learning-by-Leading teams at UCF also collaborate with other students at the university to support the Knights helping Knights pantry, growing fresh fruits and vegetables in the community garden that are donated directly to food-insecure students.
“I view it as a small city and that's why I love having people involved so early on,” said Anaya. Getting to involve UCF students with her work, she said, “You get to just emphasize that and see how the levels work and how your research can really bring changes within your community.”
Research at Embry-Riddle continues to embrace the arising challenges the community faces, bringing light to pollution issues in Florida and beyond. As students travel to California for the Air Sensors International Conference this semester, they will bring their findings and learn about new strategies to implement.
In the thick of sustainability research, Dr. El-Sayed has a positive outlook.
“The bottom line is you can achieve sustainability and you can grow and develop in a sustainable way,” she said. “It's just a matter of making the right choices.”
