Eloquent Advocates It’s not every day that a college student serves as an official representative at international environmental conferences, but such events are surprisingly frequent in the life of UM student Chris Stampar. Stampar, a Dickinson Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences, is director of international partnership development for IDEAS For Us (Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions), leading the advocacy group’s affiliated sustainable agriculture initiative, nourish9billion.org. Earlier this year, Stampar was invited by the Swedish government to participate in the 40th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference on the Environment and represented IDEAS For Us at the Rio 20 Earth Summit in Brazil. He has also addressed the United Nations in New York on the evolving trend of linking measures of national well-being with eco-sustainability efforts. Spearheading improvements in environmental policy is the mission of UM’s Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, which educates the next generation of environmental leaders. The center also co-sponsors local events as part of Earth Week and takes at-risk youth on educational tours of the Everglades. The Abess Center’s passionate and accomplished students are also its best
UM international relations student Chris Stampar has attended conferences in Sweden and Brazil and addressed the United Nations in New York on eco-sustainability issues.
ambassadors. One of them, Chris Sanchez, who conducts research on the environmental aspects of urban living, is a 2012 Barry Goldwater Scholar, one of four UM students to earn the honor. Engineering Energy Conservation When President Barack Obama visited the University of Miami to deliver a speech on energy policy early this year, he preceded his appearance with a tour of the College of Engineering’s Industrial Assessment Center. Shihab Asfour, associate dean of the college and director of the center, and his students demonstrated various assessment procedures to reduce industrial and corporate energy consumption. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy for the past 11 years, the center provides free assessments to small- and medium-sized businesses based in South Florida. The center’s more than 220 energy
assessments thus far have reduced its clients’ energy expenses by an average of 25 percent. “Our program advances knowledge in the area of energy conservation and management and develops a workforce of energyconscious engineers,” says Asfour. President Obama noted that such efforts “couldn’t be more important. Figuring out how our buildings can waste less energy is one of the fastest, easiest ways to reduce our dependence on oil and save a lot of money in the process.” Water Bearers Ask most people what natural resource most needs conserving, and they’re likely to say oil. But access to water is an even more urgent issue for hundreds of millions of people around the world, and a School of Communication endeavor is helping to deliver the message to today’s youth. The school’s Knight Center for International Media has developed an elementary and secondary-level school curriculum around the topic of water conservation and use that covers such topics as the “Water Cycle,” “Earth’s Drinkable Water,” “Acid Rain,” “The Effects of Damming Rivers,” and more. The curriculum is backed by a companion website called Knowater.org. At UM to make an address on energy policy, President Barack Obama (with industrial engineering doctoral student Jason Grant) visited the College of Engineering’s Industrial Assessment Center, noting that its work “couldn’t be more important.”
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI 2012 PRESIDENT’S REPORT 13