For the first time this semester, students from any major are able to take an interdisciplinary “special topics course” that will teach how to create communities where people want to live and work, as well as how to coordinate with stakeholders to make sustainable ideas a reality for entire communities with diverse backgrounds and interests. The course has two offerings -- a sophomore- and a senior-level version.
Students from any major may register for either one – CS/Arch/GT 4803 or CS/Arch/GT 2803 – through Jan. 15. The class will be team taught by professors from the College of Architecture, College of Engineering, and the School of Public Policy.
“These are broad intellectually and teach an appreciation for what it means to work in and with a community that is different from your own,” said Ellen Zegura, professor of computer science and an original instructor from C4G who has led community projects from Atlanta to Africa.
Projects by C4G – such as implementing electronic health data systems in Africa or helping an Atlanta entrepreneur make a mobile app for women’s safety – inspired Zegura to do more.
“Much of my computer science research work takes years to develop and impact the real world,” she says. “C4G became such a fantastic avenue to do something more applied, more immediate and more directly impactful on society.”
She is now co-architect of Georgia Tech’s 10-year initiative called “Serve, Learn, Sustain” with Beril Toktay, the Brady Family Chair in Scheller College of Business.
Like C4G, students in the courses can apply disciplinary skills to solve community needs. Unique from C4G, Zegura’s new course will enable students to observe a real community challenge – water remediation at Proctor Creek – map the stakeholders, model and learn successful methods for engaging with such stakeholders to make progress on an issue.
The class is ideal for students with “an interest in the real world, an interest in what makes communities great, understanding why there are inequities, and who want to work towards a positive future,” Zegura says.
Zegura and Toktay expect the “Serve, Learn, Sustain” initiative to grow.
Within five years, they aim to add 16 new electives and refresh 28 courses across Georgia Tech with sustainability content. A freshman camp will be formed, support for relevant student organizations will be provided, and two pathways will be specified — one in Public Service and one in Innovating for Sustainability — consisting of classes and experiences such as service-learning projects or internships with organizations that tackle sustainability challenges. Capstone course offerings also will be expanded to offer projects from the sustainable communities domain.
“Eventually we hope that students will be interested in pathways to other courses, that there will be lots of classes across Georgia Tech like C4G that have community and sustainability components, and that more faculty will add sustainability concepts into their curriculum.”
For more: https://oscar.gatech.edu/
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]]>Since it started in 2002, the program has hosted more than 130 collegiate teams. The program has also grown internationally with expansion into Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The Solar Decathlon team is currently looking for students with the following backgrounds or interests:
Students can learn more about the VIP program and Solar Decathlon project by attending an upcoming information session:
Throughout the semester the team will meet Tuesdays from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Students interested in joining the Solar Decathlon Team can apply here or contact Alexandre Poux alex.poux@gatech.edu.
The Georgia Tech team is organized through the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program. This program joins undergraduate teams with faculty and graduate student advisors to create large-scale design and discovery projects.
Participation in VIP can be registered for academic credit, so the program is able to encourage students to participate for more than one semester. Students gain more exposure to multidisciplinary design projects and professional skills than they would in regular courses. For a list of all the current project teams, visit www.vip.gatech.edu/teams.
]]>Alexandre Poux
alex.poux@gatech.edu
The Public Service Pathway, part of Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain initiative, will train faculty on how to develop courses that connect academic knowledge to community challenges and work collaboratively with communities to support their visions for social and environmental change. In these courses, students will have the opportunity to form partnerships with local civic organizations and support ongoing community efforts as part of their academic work. The Commerce Club Foundation will provide $200,000 over the next two years to support course development, faculty training, and related student activities.
“This is really an outgrowth of a lot of thinking that has been happening at Tech about how to get students involved in the issues of Atlanta,” said Carl DiSalvo, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication who will serve as director of the Public Service Pathway.
A workshop each semester will help instructors and students develop their coursework and connect with community partners. The Public Service Pathway will also include the development of a Civic Innovation Prize to be awarded to students for projects that have made a measurable contribution to the community.
Many faculty members at Georgia Tech already incorporate this kind of work into their courses, but the grant will help grow the pool of courses and, in turn, the number of opportunities for students to get involved. As part of the Serve-Learn-Sustain initiative, it will also help faculty and students link community engagement to sustainability.
“The Public Service Pathway is the first curricular initiative we are launching for Serve-Learn-Sustain, along with two foundational courses next semester on systems and community principles of sustainable communities,” said Jennifer Hirsch, director of the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain. “Faculty, staff, students, and community partners who participate will be partners in helping us develop the direction of the whole program. This makes it an exciting time to get involved.”
For DiSalvo, who has been at Tech since 2007, incorporating public service and community engagement into research not only benefits the community, but also hones the skills of researchers.
“It presents a unique opportunity to take whatever question you are asking out of the lab and into a messy, uncontrolled, possibly emotional environment,” he said. “It has really sharpened my research.”
DiSalvo’s research focuses on community-based design and looks at how to work with communities to help them better understand and use technology. On a personal level, he takes seriously the responsibility of being a public employee and improving surrounding communities.
“We have an opportunity to really set the standard for what it means to be a technical institute for the 21st century. Part of that means excellence in our research and in our commitment to civic engagement and the public impact of our work,” DiSalvo said.
A call for proposals for the Public Service Pathway will take place each semester for classes or projects to be taught or carried out the subsequent term. A design workshop will follow for those who are selected. Courses will be offered in many majors, with opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students. Faculty, staff, or students interested in submitting a proposal for future semesters should contact DiSalvo at carl.disalvo@lmc.gatech.edu.
Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain initiative launched this year to provide students with a multitude of learning and co-curricular opportunities designed to help them combine their academic and career interests with their desire to improve the human condition. It envisions Georgia Tech students who graduate prepared to use their expertise to create sustainable communities. The initiative grew out of Tech’s recent reaffirmation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
The Commerce Club, founded in 1960 to serve Atlanta’s corporate, political, and cultural community, established the Commerce Club Foundation with the distinct purpose of partnering with charitable organizations in an effort to identify, cultivate, and support emerging civic leaders. The grant to Georgia Tech is part of the Foundation’s inaugural sponsorship program.
"The Commerce Club Foundation is very excited to be working with Georgia Tech on its Public Service Pathway," said John F. Brock III, chairman of the Commerce Club and co-chair of Campaign Georgia Tech. "The program builds on the Commerce Club's historical commitment to civic engagement by reaching a new generation of community leaders."
]]>Given the Southeast’s heat, humidity and variable fresh water supplies, the development of any building aiming for zero net energy and water consumption brings unique challenges. Building a facility that meets Living Building Challenge 3.0 criteria — as The Kendeda Fund and Georgia Tech hope to do — will provide the opportunity to create a living-learning laboratory for hands-on educational and research opportunities that will be a model for the region and similar environments around the world.
According to Georgia Tech, the project will be integrated into the Institute’s Eco-Commons, a series of campus green spaces designed to conserve natural resources, including energy and water, and provide the community with educational and recreational amenities. This endeavor not only supports Georgia Tech’s goal to use its resources as efficiently as possible, but also manages stormwater runoff and helps protect drinking water sources.
“Georgia Tech is honored to partner with The Kendeda Fund on this groundbreaking project. The Living Building Challenge aligns with our longstanding vision for the campus and provides a unique opportunity to physically demonstrate how Georgia Tech practices thoughtful stewardship of all of our resources and how our innovative thinking can transform future generations,” said Steve Swant, executive vice president for Administration and Finance at Georgia Tech. “These are disciplines we have proudly instilled in our campus master planning as well as our academic, research and community outreach efforts.”
The Kendeda Fund has committed to investing $25 million over the next several years to privately fund 100 percent of the design and construction costs of the project as well as an additional $5 million to support programming activities. The Kendeda Fund and Georgia Tech intend for the project to become the first Living Building Challenge 3.0-certified facility of its size and function in the Southeast.
The Living Building Challenge is a program, advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability possible in the current built environment. Meeting the challenge requires close adherence to some of the most stringent building performance standards in the world. To be certified under the program, a building must meet all the program requirements over a full 12-month period of continued operations and full occupancy.
“We could not imagine a better partner than Georgia Tech to join us in pursuing the Living Building Challenge,” said Barry Berlin, a long time advisor to The Kendeda Fund who oversees its investments and Atlanta-area philanthropy. “This project builds on nearly two decades of work by The Kendeda Fund to advance sustainability throughout Atlanta’s built environment. We look forward to helping an entire region learn what’s possible as we embrace the most rigorous building performance standards in the world.”
Pending final approval by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents and reaching defined milestones, the goal is to begin construction in 2017 with occupancy targeted for late 2018 and building certification planned for 2020.
# # #
About The Kendeda Fund
The Kendeda Fund is one of the leading philanthropic investors in civic and environmental programs in the Atlanta area, and is committed to providing solutions to social and ecological challenges at the local and national levels. The Fund accomplishes its mission by advancing green building design, community-design and public interest architecture; championing community wealth building and sustainability strategies; and leveraging innovation of cities to advance equity and sustainability. Previously, The Kendeda Fund provided $300,000 in funding for Georgia Tech’s Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.
About the Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, is one of the nation’s leading research universities, providing a focused, technologically based education to more than 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Georgia Tech has many nationally recognized programs, all top-ranked by peers and publications alike, and is ranked in the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report. It offers degrees through the Colleges of Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Sciences, the Scheller College of Business, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech has more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research that consistently contribute vital research and innovation to American government, industry, and business.
]]>The MetroLab Network will provide the opportunity to share successes, address challenges, and build shared platforms for experimentation and data between cities and universities necessary to increase the tangible results of new innovations.
“For years, various disciplines within Georgia Tech have helped cities throughout the state to develop potential solutions to infrastructure challenges,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson. “For example, our Center for Urban Innovation supports interdisciplinary research on urban sustainability and partners with other groups. The Metro Lab Network allows us to take this work to a new level as we collaborate and leverage expertise in the smart cities effort,” he said.
The MetroLab Network is based on previous successes of technologies developed from established city/university partnerships. These partnerships have produced innovative transportation and water infrastructure projects that have increased the efficiency and reduced the environmental impact of infrastructure systems.
“The City of Atlanta is proud to participate in the MetroLab Network,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “We look forward to leveraging this opportunity to take advantage of our strong university talent base and their extensive experience in technology, engineering and computer science to develop innovative solutions to some of our most pressing infrastructure and service challenges.”
“As an urban research university, Georgia State is deeply entrenched in Atlanta’s success and in the success of cities around the world,” said Georgia State President Mark Becker. “We welcome the opportunity to work closely with the City of Atlanta and Georgia Tech to find creative solutions to critical societal issues.”
By becoming partners of the network, Georgia Tech will partner with the city and colleagues at Georgia State to collaborate on smart solutions to challenges, not only in Atlanta, but throughout the cities that have partnered in the MetroLab Network.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has provided $1 million in support of the start of the MetroLab Network. MacArthur’s grant is one of severak investments by the foundation in efforts to use data and information technologies to better understand how cities work and to improve the urban condition.
More information on the MetroLab Network and its founding partners can be found at http://metrolabnetwork.heinz.cmu.edu/.
]]>An $18.5 million investment from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will help researchers at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Tech — along with colleagues at Arizona State, New Mexico State, and the University of California, Davis — tap into the lessons nature teaches us and, potentially, revolutionize geotechnical engineering in the process.
“That’s what’s exciting about this project,” said David Frost, who will lead Georgia Tech’s efforts as part of the new Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBBG). “It’s not about little tweaks that just make systems that we currently have a little better. There really is the opportunity to come up with transformational approaches and ideas for what we do.”
“In billions of years of evolution, nature has come up with some very elegant solutions to the problems we want to solve,” said Edward Kavazanjian, a professor at Arizona State University and director of the Center. “By employing or mimicking these natural processes, we should be able to devise some of our own elegant solutions.”
Ideas could come from trees or ants or microbes that help stabilize soil, Frost said. And the discoveries researchers make could mean significant improvements in how we clean up environmental contamination, harden structures against natural and man-made disasters, make infrastructure construction more efficient, or improve the effectiveness of natural resource recovery operations.
“The opportunity to come back and dramatically change how we design, for example, foundations of buildings exists if we look at how nature builds foundations for some of its structures,” Frost said.
“Let’s go back and learn how nature has done it and see what new ideas emerge that could perhaps lead to a whole new generation of foundation systems, not just from the structural point of view, but also in terms of being sustainable,” Frost said. “We’re looking for ways to manage the heat of structures better. We’re looking for ways to build ecology-friendly structures and systems. Who knows what we’re going to find?”
The Center is one of the nation’s largest single investments in geotechnical engineering. The initial funding extends for five years with the possibility of an additional five years of support from NSF.
Frost said the goal at that point would be for CBBG — what’s called an Engineering Research Center, or ERC, in NSF parlance — to be self-sustaining, and for something even greater to have happened after the NSF support period ends.
“We’re not just developing technologies to push out there,” he said. “We’re really trying to build an entire new field. In five years, if you talk about working in ‘bio-geotechnics,’ people won’t look at you say, ‘So what is that?’” They’ll know, he said, that is the branch of geotechnical engineering focused on what nature inspires or guides us to do.
Georgia Tech’s role in the Center will focus predominantly focus on the microstructure of the subsurface and building complex numerical models of what’s happening underground, areas where CEE researchers have significant expertise.
The Tech influence in CBBG’s work stretches even further, however. The coordinator of UC Davis’ efforts earned his Ph.D. at Tech with Frost as his adviser. And one of the Center’s leaders at Arizona State did her doctoral work in environmental engineering at Tech.
The potential for game-changing results out of CBBG’s work has already attracted more than a dozen companies as “industrial affiliates” to lend support to the research. Scientists from another 15 universities from the around the world also have expressed an interest in collaborating with the Center on research and educational programs.
“ERCs are recognized as being one of the marks of research excellence,” Frost said. “It is a real feather in the cap of the institution. I think it’s particularly exciting that civil engineering at Georgia Tech is at the heart of this very exciting new center.”
Learn more about the new Center in the news release from Arizona State University and on the project’s website.
]]>Project One, which evolved from Tech’s first-year reading program, strives to help freshmen connect to the campus community through discussions and programming based around a common reading. All of the campus community is invited to join in the reading selection this year.
“With Garbology, students will have the opportunity to work together to see how they can impact sustainability on our campus and beyond,” said Lacy Hodges, Academic Transition Programs Manager in the Center for Academic Enrichment.
Garbology presents the history and statistics behind America’s staggering “garbage addiction” — an average of 102 tons of trash per person — and invites readers to consider not only the waste crisis in the U.S., but also the opportunities this crisis presents for sustainability and community engagement.
All incoming students receive a copy of Garbology in their FASET Orientation materials, and the book will be used in GT 1000, ENGL 1101, and ENGL 1102 classes this fall. In addition to its presence in the first-year curriculum, this year, Project One will support Georgia Tech’s new quality enhancement plan (QEP), Serve•Learn•Sustain, and provide all members of the Georgia Tech community with opportunities to develop innovative solutions to sustainability issues and to create a more sustainable campus community.
“The book will provide students with a broad introduction to some of the important learning outcomes of Serve•Learn•Sustain,” said Steven Girardot, associate vice provost for Undergraduate Education.
There will be a number of events on campus this fall and spring to connect students to Garbology and sustainability on campus, including a campus visit from Edward Humes, the book’s author. Humes will give a plenary talk for Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff on sustainability on October 1 in Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons.
Learn more about Project One and upcoming Garbology-related events at www.c.gatech.edu/projectone.
]]>In response to these issues, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology examined options for the power industry’s future. The report released Monday will “help states define their preferred approach for complying with proposed carbon pollution regulations,” said Marilyn Brown, the project’s lead investigator and the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.
The report, “Low-Carbon Electricity Pathways for the U.S. and the South,” examines two key issues: how states can reduce carbon pollution in the most cost-effective way and how different options impact household electricity bills.
“To minimize costs, the South needs to reduce its coal consumption more rapidly, continue to expand its gas-fired power plants, but temper this growth with aggressive policies to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy,” Brown said.
The project took a turn when last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants (known as the Clean Power Plan). Since states have considerable latitude to define their preferred response, they are vigorously debating the pros and cons of different options.
Using state-of-the-art modeling, Georgia Tech identified least-cost clean power pathways that would lower household electricity bills and reduce carbon pollution. This combination may not seem intuitive to some, but it is good news for states across the South and the nation.
“This work provides the type of analytic basis that is needed to inform policymaking and will guide the future of the power industry for decades,” said Tim Lieuwen, director of the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech. "Georgia Tech plays an important role as honest broker in national policy discussions, and we will continue to support decision makers through these types of analyses."
]]>The National Water Research Institute (NWRI) named Crittenden, director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems and Hightower Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies, the winner of the 2015 Clarke Prize, citing his contributions to the sustainability of urban water resources.
“I was extremely happy and honored to receive the 2015 Clarke Prize in recognition for our work in water research and to join the ranks of such an outstanding class of former Laureates,” Crittenden said. “I consider the Clarke Prize to be one of the greatest honors that one can receive who conducts water research.”
The award is one of only a handful of worldwide prizes for scholarly and practical achievements in water research, and the International Congress of Distinguished Awards recognizes it as one of the world’s top honors.
“His work in sustainability is particularly bold and innovative, and will change the way we will promote water security, enhance economic development, and alleviate concerns of wars over water,” Joseph B. Hughes said in the NWRI announcement of Crittenden’s award. Hughes is the dean of Drexel University’s College of Engineering and former chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Crittenden will receive the award and deliver a keynote lecture in October at the Clarke Prize Conference. He is the first-ever winner from Georgia Tech, though provost and CEE professor Rafael Bras won the prize in 1998 when he was head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
More on the prize and Crittenden’s career from the NWRI (pdf).
]]>Twelve faculty members have been selected to the inaugural class of fellows with the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS). The new group will serve as advisors to BBISS and work to foster the culture and community of sustainability researchers, educators, and students at Georgia Tech. They will also help carry the message of sustainability and the vision, mission, values, and objectives of BBISS. Their selection is for three years with the potential for renewal.
In late August, the fellows will begin mapping out a strategy for future years. The 12 fellows represent all six of Georgia Tech’s colleges, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
The inaugural BBISS Fellows are:
The program and research institute are named for Brook Byers, a venture capitalist and senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1968 and later an MBA from Stanford University. Byers has helped build more than 110 companies in the life sciences area and is particularly active in biotechnology incubation.
]]>The fire department is working to do just that thanks to a summer internship program sponsored by Georgia Tech and Oracle.
The city agency is one of four groups participating in this year’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG), where 14 undergraduate and graduate students show non-profits and government agencies how data can tackle social and societal problems.
Other projects include maintaining and improving Atlanta’s urban forest, increasing efficiency for a popular hotline system, and working with Georgia Tech’s WiFi data to understand mobility patterns.
“It’s important to get students involved in real-world projects,” said Christopher LeDantec, co-director of the program and an assistant professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Media and Communication in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “We are building out sustainable learning opportunities that allow students and Georgia Tech to have a wider impact in the community. “
The four students working with Atlanta Fire Rescue shadowed inspectors to learn not only how they work, but also how they create and use data. The students identified hundreds of additional commercial properties at high risk for a fire that should be inspected with greater frequency, said Matt Hinds-Aldrich, a management analyst with Atlanta Fire Rescue working with the student team.
The program is “helping us make more informed and data-driven decisions on how best to allocate our limited resources as we balance protecting residents, visitors and commerce in our community all while remaining fiscally responsible,” Hinds-Aldrich said.
While many public agencies and non-profits collect data, staff may be overwhelmed by the volume or may lack the time and capabilities to interpret the information, said Bistra Dilkina, co-director of the DSSG program and an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering in the College of Computing.
The program shows groups how data can work to their advantage, while exposing students to different career paths, Dilkina said.
“Nonprofits and conservationists need data scientists, too,” she said.
Georgia Tech received more than a dozen project proposals, but could only staff four. More than 100 students applied for the 10-week paid internship and 14 were selected.
Richard Huckaby, a rising third-year student in computer engineering, joined because he wanted to learn new skills and help people.
He’s part of the team working with the United Way of Greater Atlanta on their 211-hotline system, which is a searchable database of city services. Students will suggest ways to improve and reconstruct the existing call menu to better organize incoming calls and reduce average wait time.
“There’s more to data science than commercialization or helping large companies,” he said.
To conduct their work, students pulled data from multiple sources and had to go through several steps before it was ready for analysis.
The urban forest team working with the City of Atlanta and Trees Atlanta relied on tax parcels, thermal maps, city inventories, floodplain data and other sources.
“Games and apps are fun, but we’re setting up a system the city and Trees Atlanta can build on in the future,” said Caroline Foster, who will start Georgia Tech’s masters program in Human-Computer Interaction next month.
Students from all four teams will present their findings and recommendations during a public demonstration scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Ponce City Market.
]]>Dean French will accept the award on behalf of the college at the ecoBenefete on September 25.
Sustainability is a signature aspect of the college's community planning and urban design programs. As part of the Georgia Conservancy's "Blueprints for Successful Communities" program, students from the School of Architecture and School of City and Regional Planning developed successful, sustainable growth plans for communities across Georgia.
Under the guidance of professors Richard Dagenhart, Michael Dobbins and others, graduate students take semester-long "Blueprints" studio classes in order to help Georgia communities develop action plans for sustainable growth and environmental protection.
"The Conservancy has enthusiastically supported and in some ways pioneered citizen engagement and guidance into Blueprints projects," said Dobbins.
"A key aspect of many of Georgia Tech’s Blueprints studios has been the intense involvement of the citizens where the studio are focused. Indeed, local neighborhoods and Neighborhood Planning Units have initiated studios and joined with the Conservancy to provide modest funding to carry them out," he said.
"Thus local citizen knowledge joins with students’ knowledge and the involvement of the relevant agencies to guide outcomes that both respond to local needs and that are implementable"
An example of this unique relationship between Georgia Tech students and local communities is the Lindbergh-Lavista corridor studio spanning Atlanta and DeKalb neighborhoods, he said.
Among the many issues facing the corridor, perhaps most vexing was an active proposal from the Georgia DOT to destroy part of a neighborhood in order to complete the I-85/SR 400 interchange. In the face of strong neighborhood opposition, planning students pursuing dual degrees with Civil Engineering were able to devise a routing that could save the neighborhoods, reduce the cost of the project, and gain both neighborhood and GDOT endorsement.
"As an important urban ecological bonus to that project, urban design students and the neighborhoods were able to persuade GDOT to create a park along the north fork of Peachtree Creek and overall the project joined with and gave impetus to the emergence of the South Fork Conservancy," Dobbins said, "and both creek initiatives are improving conditions and providing amenities for citizens."
"These are great learning experiences for students – they test what they are learning with real people in real contexts, where they learn to listen, interact, and see their work carry forward into policy change and project implementation."
The "Blueprints" projects these studios are associated with usually take a year to complete, ending in a report that details students' research and suggestions. Some projects, like the award-winning "Sea Level Rise on Georgia's Coast" program, reveal the need for greater study.
This "Blueprints" project actually laid the foundation for a series of subsequent courses contending with the imminent increase of sea levels in Savannah and along the Atlantic Coast through Chatham, Liberty and McIntosh Counties. The foundation course, co-taught by Emeritus Professor Larry Keating, FAICP and PhD Candidate Dana Habeeb, tracked the substantial effects of increasing sea levels on the Georgia coastline and barrier islands.
"More than 30 percent of the three county area is projected to be inundated with the Island of Tybee projected to lose almost 50 percent of its development land," Keating said. "The research and policy suggestions included an emphasis on the damaging impacts of sea level rise on vulnerable populations -- people with disabilities, different minority groups, Gullah Geeche populations, low income individuals and elderly populations."
The project was recognized by the American Institute of Certified Planners and awarded the "Outstanding Student Project--Contribution of Planning to Contemporary Issues" at the American Planning Association Annual Conference in May 2014.
The "Blueprints" program emphasizes natural resource protection by advocating the conservation of environmentally sensitive land and promoting development practices that conserve resources, are healthy for people and the environment and anticipate future challenges.
Through this community-oriented program and the college's strong, collaborative nature, Georgia Tech and the Georgia Conservancy have helped tens of thousands of people.
Recently concluded "Blueprints" studies have captivated Atlanta communities and established models for communities all over the world.
The "Mission Zero Corridor" project paired Dagenhart and School of Architecture students with The Ray C. Anderson Foundation and Anderson's carpet tile company, Interface. BeltLine designer Ryan Gravel and four other Georgia Tech alums (all with dual Master of Architecture and Master of City and Regional Planning degrees) joined the team as urban designers from Perkins + Will in Atlanta.
Their goal was to create a vision of a sustainable highway based on a 16-mile segment of I-85 in West Georgia named in honor of Anderson -- who was also a Georgia Tech alum (ISYE'56) and a dedicated environmentalist. Based on Anderson's plan to reduce his company's environmental impact to a "net zero" by 2020, the Georgia Tech studio group fashioned a "net zero" plan for highways by 2040. The implications of their plan are global.
The "Chattahoochee River Park" project aimed to catalyze economic development and quality of life potential along 53 miles of the Chattahoochee River, just south of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Vinings.
While presenting the "Blueprint" studio class report last month for project collaborators Chattahoochee NOW and the public, Dagenhart put forth the idea that "every kid who has access to a bus stop has access to the river."
The studio report emphasizes rural character preservation and stormwater management while planning for the kind of waterfront recreation and development enjoyed by other major cities in the country. Through a land development plan that includes various towers connecting the currently hidden section of the Chattahoochee, streets and bridges -- even a MARTA line -- could be extended to the envisioned river park.
Georgia Tech's College of Architecture joins an elite and influential group of past Distinguished Conservationist Award-winners, including: The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Ray Weeks, Governor Zell Miller, Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner.
]]>Emory University’s Piedmont Project, which began in 2001, is a faculty development program designed to help educators incorporate sustainability and environmental issues into their courses. This year, Emory invited Georgia Tech faculty to participate in a two-day summer workshop that’s part of the project.
Monica Halka, associate director for the Honors Program, took the opportunity to meet with peers from around the area to discuss how they are addressing sustainable communities in their classrooms. Participants came from disciplines as varied as health sciences, dance, film, or environmental studies.
“We all had different perspectives on sustainability — there are so many ways to think of it — but with a focus on place: the Piedmont,” Halka said, referring to the geographical region that encompasses the Atlanta area.
Part of the two-day workshop discussed making personal connections with community partners to find the right opportunities for university partnerships. Some outside groups may want to work with students but are not aware of some of the challenges, such as trying to fit a project into the timeline of a semester.
“You can’t do this work unless you have personal connections,” Halka said. “You have to find people who want to work with students and, really, who have a project ready to go.”
When these challenges are faced and worked through, though, the partnerships can be extremely rewarding for both sides. Halka teaches an urban forests class that focuses on the role of trees in cities, frequently partnering with Trees Atlanta. One recent project was to conduct a tree survival inventory to help the organization determine which trees grow best in which places in the city. They also have worked with Georgia Tech Facilities Management on a soil study to determine the same thing on campus, and to look at stormwater management.
“Students just love it,” she said. “They feel like they’re doing something real.” Many of Halka’s students have continued to volunteer with partner organizations such as Trees Atlanta, even after they finish their work in the course.
The Piedmont Project also was a chance for university peers to find ways to collaborate with one other. This year, Halka hopes to work with a professor from Georgia Perimeter College who specializes in microbiology and can assist with training students on how to take soil samples in urban environments. In exchange, Halka will introduce the Georgia Perimeter group to Piedmont Park, where she routinely takes classes for field work.
While Georgia Tech has an influence around the globe, Halka emphasized the importance of working with local communities and doing work on and around Tech’s home.
“If you can’t get your own house in order, how can you go out to other places to help?”
In recent years, she’s made a concerted effort to work community involvement into Honors Program courses. Chris Burke, director of community relations for Government and Community Relations, teaches a course focused on public school outreach. Kelly Comfort, associate professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, has taught a class that incorporates outreach with Hispanic communities.
The biggest challenge Halka has found in getting more faculty involved is that they are not formally trained on how to do it.
“It’d be nice if it were the culture here to get involved in this work,” she said.
An experimental atomic physicist by trade, Halka transitioned into working in sustainability after coming to Georgia Tech nine years ago. While teaching a class that required students to calculate their carbon footprints, she discovered hers was larger than anyone’s, thanks to the international travel she took several times a year. She began trying to offset her emissions by volunteering with Trees Atlanta, which led to the development of her urban forests course.
“I found that the work I was doing wasn’t benefiting the world,” she said. “Urban forest work is kind of a nascent science, but I hope I’m becoming one of the experts in my old age.”
]]>The Smart Energy Campus Program uses Georgia Tech as a living laboratory and collects data from energy utility systems all over campus. Through collaboration among multiple campus departments, insights from this project will directly impact energy planning and consumption on campus in many ways, with the hope of making Tech’s energy utility systems more efficient.
Smart Energy Campus is a joint sustainability research initiative with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL), and Georgia Tech Facilities Management. Beginning in 2013, the idea behind this project was to see if Georgia Tech researchers could be of use to Facilities by utilizing data analysis as well as modeling and simulation tools to evaluate and optimize different energy systems on Tech’s campus.
“It is extremely exciting to know that our team is supporting some of the most brilliant complex-system designers in the world,” said Mark Demyanek, assistant vice president of Operations and Maintenance within Facilities Management. “Using our built environment as a living laboratory is a concept that is growing in higher ed, and I believe we at Georgia Tech are leading that growth in a thoughtful and responsible way.”
Already, the Smart Energy Campus Program has created software for the Facilities Management Energy Conservation team to use when analyzing utility consumption trends and identifying potential energy efficiency projects. This project is designed to save labor hours, resources, and money by quickly identifying buildings that have unusually high energy usage, and then notifying teams to remedy the problem.
“The Smart Energy Campus Program is trying to take advantage of new modeling tools and large amounts of data to gain deeper insight and predict what can happen in terms of energy utilization on campus,” said Scott Duncan, research engineer in the ASDL.
The Facilities Management team consists of five people who meet with the research team several times per month. The research members on the team have included graduate students, research engineers, and postdoctoral fellows, all of whom serve as another set of eyes to interpret the data and help Facilities see problems in different ways.
“This program is revolutionary in getting access to data,” said Duncan. “If we were doing this program for a community outside of campus, it would be difficult to get access to this much data.”
With so much data, the project continues to grow and the mission evolves. Building a predictive model of campus energy is no easy feat.
“We keep finding things to do and smaller side projects to work on,” said Duncan. Through thermal network and electric grid modeling of campus, researchers will have greater agility and insight to see where energy is not being used efficiently, as well as analyze the effects of energy system technology upgrades.
Through the research effort, areas of improvement will be more visible and enable Facilities to channel resources toward areas of need. The ultimate vision of the research team is a “smart” system that will identify and react to problems and inefficiencies on its own, potentially without human assistance.
“With any luck, one day soon, campuses across the world can use these tools to manage their facilities resources more efficiently,” said Demyanek.
]]>During his time in China, he learned that Coke had made significant investments to help underprivileged children in rural schools there. “As part of a meeting, I visited a small school and was surprised by the positive impact that company funding was having on the lives of those kids,” he recalls. “I’d worked for the company for many years and never knew.”
Because those community investments fell within the purview of “corporate social responsibility” and were not part of the business plan, they were happening on the periphery of the company, explains Rodriguez-Vila, now an assistant professor of marketing at Scheller College. “They were not thought of as a marketing opportunity that could bridge social and commercial benefits.”
After returning to Coke’s headquarters in Atlanta, Rodriguez-Vila joined a task force charged with integrating sustainability efforts at the company. While Coke had been innovating its manufacturing to reduce plastic waste, it had also devoted resources to empower women in developing nations and train teenagers in Brazil for education and employment, among other initiatives.
“Our team looked at how to use all of the investments to grow the business,” he recalls of the massive effort to account for everything the company was doing within the realm of sustainability and whether the activities affected the brand or bottom line.
Deeper Dive
But Rodriguez-Vila, who joined Coke in 1996 to lead advertising efforts in Latin America, wanted to dig even deeper into researching environmentally friendly and socially responsible business practices. “When I was working there, I realized I had little time to study why some things were the way they were. I had to move onto the next campaign and chase the next sales target,” explains the Puerto Rico native.
Over time, he realized that transitioning into an academic career would afford him the opportunity to conduct much more research. Already holding an MBA from Northwestern University, Rodriguez-Vila enrolled in the PhD program in marketing at Emory University in 2008, having 17 years of professional experience under his belt.
Rodriguez-Vila joined the Scheller faculty in 2012, attracted by the growing emphasis on sustainability here and the Marketing faculty group’s interest in research that makes real-world impact on how businesses operate.
Working closely with Scheller College's Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, he is focused on developing better measures for sustainability that will help companies make business sense of their investments.
“Ultimately, my hope is that such measures will help companies move from seeing sustainability simply as a moral imperative to something that can help drive growth,” he says.
Marketing Perspective
Many companies excel at sustainability, Rodriguez-Vila says, but often at the CEO level or through a sustainability office. “Not many companies are engaged with sustainability at the chief marketing officer level,” he notes.
Companies often think of sustainability in terms of back-end activities, such as reducing energy consumption, but aren’t as focused on promoting those benefits to customers, he explains.
Rodriguez is researching at what points sustainability matters to consumers. He uses Nike as an example of a company that’s innovatively implemented back-end sustainability initiatives. “But in the moment of a transaction, consumers may be concerned more with performance and style than a sustainability message,” he says.
In addition to studying the environmental and social sustainability benefits of brands, Rodriguez-Vila also researches the effect of technology changes (such as social media) on the evolution of integrated marketing communications.
Now in this third year at Tech, Rodriguez is enjoying teaching MBA and undergraduate students Introduction to Marketing courses, in which he incorporates sustainable concepts. He’s also collaborating with Wayne Li, an industrial design professor at Tech, on the development of a new course on product development that maximizes both economic and societal benefits.
“Teaching is one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done,” Rodriguez-Vila says. “I always do my best to give it my all, incorporating lots of discussion.”
This profile orignially appeared at scheller.gatech.edu.
]]>A feature article in Research Horizons magazine highlights some of the projects, led by Georgia Tech faculty and researchers, that will improve the capture, storage, management, and delivery of renewable energy.
Read the full story: Power Up
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Hosted by the Energy Club, the Expo will take place April 2–3 at the Student Center, bringing students and others in the energy community together to focus on the scientific, policy, and business elements surrounding the greater issue of energy. The two-day event includes sessions on topics such as legal and regulatory framework, entrepreneurship and access to capital in the energy field, and new technologies.
“The Expo is really geared toward inspiring students at Tech to get into the energy field and show them that there is a lot going on here and in Atlanta,” said Zach Archambault, an electrical engineering major and Expo organizer. “But more than that, we want to show them that they can get involved right now.”
The event began last year as a showcase and has grown to include panel discussions, guest speakers, and presentations. It’s open to the campus community and students from any area of study.
The Expo begins Thursday, April 2, at 4:30 p.m. with a screening of Cape Spin, a documentary about the political struggle and future of wind power, followed by a related debate and reception. Friday will be a full day of panel sessions on energy-related topics and will culminate in a research showcase, where Tech researchers, local organizations, and national companies will share their work on the green roof of the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons. Attendees are welcome to come and go during the day’s events.
“We want to show that Atlanta is riding the line of being at the forefront of energy innovation in the U.S. and it’s a good place to stay if you want to get involved in this field,” said Kavin Manickaraj, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and member of the Energy Club. “We’re already a huge leader in the Southeast, and we can make Georgia Tech the hub of energy innovation.”
The Expo fits into the Energy Club’s larger goal of creating leaders who will be able to join the workforce better prepared to handle energy-related issues.
“We want green energy companies to know they can come to Georgia Tech to recruit well-informed students,” Manickaraj said.
Expo tickets are $7 for general attendance and $25 for full student attendance, which includes lunch and drinks on Friday. Full attendance for others is $107. Register at www.energyexpo.gatech.edu/register.
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The class is a welcome change of pace for many students on campus, one that allows them to tap in to their creativity while exploring design principles of the world around them.
Offered through Georgia Tech’s new Innovation and Design Collaborative, "Drawing on Nature" is open to students from any major at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Read the Full Story: Drawing on Nature
]]>The students in CEE 4803 — a course called Environmental Technology in the Developing World — have spent the semester preparing for the 10-day trip. They’ll be evaluating different methods for testing air and water quality but will have to do so outside the comfort of their usual lab and equipment.
“It’s a really powerful and humbling experience to encounter your own limits and the limits of what is possible under certain constraints,” said Joe Brown, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who teaches the course.
So far this semester, the class has worked to determine what kind of equipment they will use, how they will take samples, where to send them, and how to be as prepared as possible. About six days of the trip will be spent gathering data to analyze back in Atlanta, but an equally important goal is for students to learn how the technical aspects of their work relate to cultural, social, and economic aspects of the community where they are working.
Rebecca Yoo, a third-year civil engineering major pursuing minors in Spanish and Global Engineering Leadership Development, found the class a perfect fit for her range of interests. In high school she found herself wanting to pursue development work but wasn’t sure how until she came to Georgia Tech and learned about civil engineering.
“I was interested in communities that didn’t have the same basic needs met that I had grown up with,” she said. “I wanted to work with people, so I thought I would end up doing liberal arts, but decided to try engineering.”
Though she has traveled internationally for mission trips and to study abroad, this will be her first trip doing engineering in another country.
“It surprises students to find that they can make a difference with their work,” Brown said. “It can be a life-changing or career-changing experience for them. It changes their perspective on engineering and shows how they can contribute to the world.”
Enrolling in the class is a selective process. Brown looks for students with international interest or experience and dedication to the subject matter. The Joe S. Mundy Global Learning Endowment, designated for international learning experiences for Civil and Environmental Engineering students, provides full funding for the students’ travel.
The group of 10 undergraduates, two graduate student teaching assistants, and Brown will work with Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz. Brown hopes this trip is the beginning of other long-term opportunities for research and collaboration with the university. The group will also meet with U.S. Embassy staff during the trip.
As the class prepared for the trip this semester, they consistently revisited one question: What are we trying to do?
“One of the most valuable things I’ve learned is that we are aren’t going there to provide for people who are lesser than we are,” Yoo said. “These communities are people, with their own values and ways of communicating. We’re there to do research that hopefully will help, but we want to get rid of the doctor/patient relationship idea that we are there to save people. We want to learn about their culture, their perspective, and learn to collaborate with their communities.”
Brown came to Tech last year from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Europe’s largest public health school. His research focuses on international development at the intersection of public health and engineering, particularly in the areas of water and sanitation in underprivileged communities. He looks at microbial and infectious diseases whose exposure is due largely to a lack of infrastructure, and how new technology or the adaptation of technology can prevent exposure.
Though the work has serious implications, Brown takes a lighthearted approach.
“I like to say that excreta is my bread and butter,” he said.
Brown did work in Bolivia as a graduate student, but hasn’t been back since 2006. He’s excited to return and for his students to see the country and its culture.
“Usually when we come into class, Dr. Brown starts out showing us something like a video or a picture of llamas,” Yoo said.
The group will continue to post updates on its work online at www.facebook.com/brownwatergroup and www.twitter.com/BrownResearchGT.
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The GSVC provides aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure, and $50,000 in prizes to grow businesses that will make a positive real-world impact.
“Being one of GSVC's nine global partners — along with the London School of Business, the Indian School of Business, ESSEC Business School, and others — and the host of the U.S. Eastern Region Semifinals reflects Scheller College’s increasing international prominence and Atlanta’s growing status as the social innovation hub of the Southeast,” says Dori Pap, assistant director of Tech’s Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ILE), who serves as faculty advisor for GSVC .
Second-year MBA student Mark Ladisch, who along with first-year MBA Sarah Caulk co-organized the semifinal round on Feb. 27 at Scheller, notes that while most of the competing teams are for-profit organizations, they also address important social issues.
"Being involved in the educational process that you can do both at the same time has been very rewarding," he said.
Of the 21 teams that made it to the semifinal round for the Eastern U.S. Region, four were from Georgia Tech.
The two top teams, Drinkwell from Lehigh University and Toilets for People from Columbia University, will advance to the finals on April 10 at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley (which where the winners from nine global regions will compete).
Drinkwell aims to ease the global water crisis through its filtration technology and a franchise business model, while Toilets for People is designing, producing and selling affordable composting toilets for people living in flood-prone areas of the developing world.
The Vayando team, which includes Georgia Tech MBA student Joshua Wine as chief financial officer, placed third. Vayando connects curious travelers with micro-entrepreneurs in emerging economies around the world – for example, coffee farmers in Costa Rica or basket weavers in Rwanda.
Competitors in the semifinal round (Eastern Region), who were selected from dozens of submissions, included teams from a variety of leading schools, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Michigan. Worldwide, over 500 teams participated in the competition this year.
ILE’s Dori Pap says that Tech’s impressive showing in the semifinal round (four teams out of 21) reflects the effectiveness of local networking efforts as well as the strong entrepreneurial ecosystem at Georgia Tech where competitions such as Ideas to Serve and InVenture create a strong pipeline of student-led start-ups (potential candidates toward the GSVC).
Jasmine Burton, who earned her BS in industrial design from Georgia Tech in December 2014, participated in GSVC as founder and president of Wish for WASH LLC, which won last year’s InVenture competition for its toilet designs and educational efforts to meet sanitation needs in the developing world.
“For me the Global Social Venture Competition was a great opportunity,” Burton says. “As a designer, you can think a lot about the product itself and not necessarily about other details. This competition has really helped give me a holistic view of how products are delivered, shipped, and distributed, and how you can use funding to optimize processes.”
Ron Alston, senior vice president of SunTrust, was one of 20 GSVC judges, who included leaders from the corporate, impact investment, and social enterprise communities. “It was really amazing to see the diversity of ideas and range of problems that teams were trying to solve and the innovative approaches they were taking,” he says.
The founding partners of GSVC’s semifinal round included Scheller College’s Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship, Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, and Gray Ghost Ventures. Sponsors included Mosley Ventures, Ronald Blue & Co., Full Circle Living, and Net Impact.
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“As these rejuvenated spaces come back online, the campus will continue to transform into a more pedestrian friendly, sustainable, well-connected place,” said Frank Lamia Associate Director of Construction Services.
The positive environmental impacts, such as stormwater management and tree canopy preservation, that these projects will generate align with Tech’s Campus Landscape Master Plan and its recent PGMS Landscape Accreditation. Additionally, failing trees will be replaced with the same type of tree, providing shade for pedestrians, improving water permeability, and helping to mitigate the heat island effect.
The Harrison Square improvements along Cherry Street will be around the Corliss Pump gathering area, and the soon-to-be Hinman Courtyard will be located behind the Old Civil Engineering Building. These renovations should be ready for fall semester 2015.
For more information on these renovations, visit the Facilities Management website.
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“Georgia Tech takes great pride in its efforts to protect the environment and preserve our natural resources as a core value. Our Landscape Services team has demonstrated outstanding leadership in this area and it is very gratifying to see these stewardship efforts recognized via this accreditation,” said Operations and Maintenance Assistant Vice President, Mark Demyanek.
Hyacinth Ide, Georgia Tech’s associate director of Landscape Services and Vehicle Management, managed the extensive application submission and received the honor on behalf of the school.
The PGMS Landscape Management and Operations Accreditation program is a dynamic evaluation tool used by facilities and organizations that have a landscape services or grounds component. Through peer expertise, the program evaluates strategic grounds management principles and practices that produce and guide the delivery of properties to an attractive, sustainable and healthy state.
This makes Georgia Tech only the fourth higher education institution in the country to have attained this rigorous accreditation for applying an integrated environmental management systems approach to their landscape management and operations.
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On Thursday, Feb. 5, Enterprise to Empower (En2Em) will host the Social Enterprise Career Fair from 11 a.m.- 2 p.m. in the Klaus Atrium. More than 20 organizations will be recruiting, including Teach for America and Medshare. Wish for Wash, an organization founded by Tech student Jasmine Burton based on the Inventure Prize-winning toilet Safichoo, will also be in attendance.
Undergraduate and graduate students of all majors are welcome to attend the career fair.
“This event is for students who want to make an impact,” said Sabrina Moin, vice president of marketing for En2Em. “The Social Enterprise Career Fair is different from other career fairs because it’s based on a theme and not on majors or careers.”
One appeal of this career fair is the low-pressure environment, Moin added.
“There aren’t long lines. It’s a relaxed environment and students have a good time,” she said. “The recruiters are looking for students who are passionate about the mission or purpose of the organization. They are interested in your values, not just your skill set.”
As at other career fairs, though, students should plan to wear business attire, bring copies of their resumes, and research companies ahead of time if possible.
En2Em was founded in 2010 by Tech alumna Melissa McCoy through an Atlanta-wide conference and career fair focused on social enterprise. Now, the Social Enterprise Career Fair is in its fourth year and is En2Em’s largest annual event.
Register online to attend the career fair. To learn more about En2Em and the Social Enterprise Career Fair, visit www.en2em.org or the Facebook event page.
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A 1956 Industrial Engineering graduate of Georgia Tech, Anderson was a loyal and devoted supporter of his alma mater for more than five decades. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Institute in 2011.
The Foundation has committed to distributing $5 million in expendable funding over the next decade, providing a term-of-years naming for the Center. In early 2013, the Foundation committed the initial three-year, $750,000 seed funding that established the Center for Business Strategies for Sustainability.
“Ray Anderson championed the business case for sustainability. His life’s work to pioneer sustainability in global manufacturing is an inspiration for generations to come,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “Georgia Tech shares his commitment to sustainability, and we are honored to continue his legacy through this Center that bears his name.”
“Ray’s name on the Center for Sustainable Business represents not just a memory of a man, but institutionalizes his lifelong passion for all things Georgia Tech, most especially the notion that from this day forward, sustainability education and business education will be forever entwined,” said John A. Lanier, executive director of the Foundation. “Ray stood for the principle that businesses must learn to live in harmony with society and the environment. For this dream to happen, the business leaders of tomorrow need to learn about this principle today.”
Since its founding two years ago, the Georgia Tech Center has been active in catalyzing new research and developing course work in business sustainability for students at all levels — undergraduates, MBAs, doctoral students and executives. To support its mission to use the power of business, technology and innovation to create a sustainable future, it continues to grow relationships with an extensive network of businesses, other academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, industry groups and sustainability experts.
Under the leadership of Scheller College of Business Dean Maryam Alavi, and that of Beril Toktay, Center faculty director, and Howard Connell, Center managing director, the new commitment will ensure and expand the Center’s ability to serve as a catalyst and connector, bringing together students, research faculty, entrepreneurs and executives to create an environment where business-driven solutions to sustainability challenges can take shape and thrive.
The Center’s progress to date has also been supported by a three-year, $300,000 commitment from the Kendeda Fund received in 2013.
The Ray C. Anderson Foundation was created in honor of the late Ray C. Anderson (1934-2011), an honors graduate of Georgia Tech and the founder of Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet, marketed as Interface and FLOR. In 1994, Anderson created a sea change within Interface and throughout industry when he became a champion for the notion of businesses “doing well by doing good,” including environmental stewardship and sustainability. The Foundation seeks to promote a sustainable society by supporting and pioneering initiatives that harmonize society, business and the environment for the present generation and tomorrow’s child. The Foundation achieves this mission through inspiring and funding innovative, educational and project-based initiatives.
For more information, visit the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business website.
]]>Imagine you had the opportunity to take part in developing affordable products and services for the underserved, deploying community renewable energy or sustainable mobility solutions, supporting a clean water infrastructure, developing local, state and federal environmental policy. In 12 months’ time, Georgia Tech will officially begin the "Serve•Learn•Sustain" program to make this reality. Its central tenet will be service learning and community engagement – this means projects will address a community need and you will serve this need with what you learn here at Tech, in your major.
Students, they write, will have the opportunity to make service contributions based on their disciplinary expertise, bringing renewed meaning to Tech’s motto, “Progress and Service”.
Evidence shows that students with skills in listening to and working with diverse communities are much more valuable to employers than those who have equivalent technical skills but lack awareness of societal context. The ‘doing well by doing good’ perspective you will bring to your jobs will create value to your employers by redefining how your organization engages with communities it serves. In the long term, Georgia Tech will be known for its positive impact on communities near and far.
Serve•Learn•Sustain, which begins in 2016, addresses educational needs clearly voiced by graduates, enhances long-held Georgia Tech values and directly responds to Georgia Tech’s strategic plan.
The full editorial is available on The Technique's website. To stay informed of the progress and opportunities within Serve•Learn•Sustain, visit serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu/join.
]]>By Judith Curry
At the recent United Nations Climate Summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that “without significant cuts in emissions by all countries, and in key sectors, the window of opportunity to stay within less than 2 degrees [of warming] will soon close forever.” The premise of dangerous human-caused climate change is the foundation for President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So, is there an overwhelming scientific justification for the premise of dangerous human-caused climate change and the urgency for immediate action? I am concerned that the problem and its solution have been vastly oversimplified.
The climate has always changed and will continue to change. Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect. However, there is enduring uncertainty beyond these basic facts, and the most consequential aspects of climate science are the subject of vigorous scientific debate: whether the warming since 1950 has been dominated by human causes, and how the climate will evolve in the 21st century due to both natural and human causes.
There is growing evidence that the climate is less sensitive to adding greenhouse gases than has been predicted by climate models. Solar variability, volcanic eruptions and long-term ocean oscillations will continue to be sources of unpredictable climate surprises. Societal uncertainties further cloud the issues as to whether warming is “dangerous” and whether we can afford to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the near term.
Can we make good decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty about climate change? Uncertainty in itself is not a reason for inaction. Research to develop low-emission energy technologies and energy efficiency measures are examples of “robust” policies that have little downside. It is in America’s long-term political and economic interests to develop a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. However, attempts to modify the climate by reducing carbon dioxide emissions may turn out to be futile. The hiatus in warming since 1998 demonstrates carbon dioxide is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales. Even if carbon dioxide mitigation strategies are successful and projections are correct, any climate impact would not be expected until the latter part of this century.
Whether or not human-caused climate change is exacerbating extreme weather events, vulnerability to these events will continue—owing to increasing population and wealth in vulnerable regions. Climate change may be less important than rising populations, land use practices and ecosystem degradation. Regions that find solutions to problems of climate variability and extreme weather, and address relevant challenges of an increasing population, are likely to be well prepared to cope with any additional stresses from climate change.
— Judith Curry is Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, specializing in the dynamics of weather, climate and the atmosphere.
By Kim Cobb
As a climate scientist, I firmly believe that if Americans understood the facts about climate change, they would be concerned enough to support a comprehensive, data-driven plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nobody with any knowledge on the subject denies that carbon dioxide (CO2) derived from the burning of fossil fuels is measurably warming the planet. Nobody denies that the risks of climate change will accelerate as greenhouse gas emissions accelerate. And nobody denies that, given the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the climatic response of our current emissions will play out over the lifetimes of our children and our grandchildren. They will inherit our generation’s climate debt, and its accrued interest, potentially in the form of irreversible impacts.
Opponents of climate action cite grave uncertainties about the magnitude of future climate change impacts, but such uncertainties are two-sided. It is equally likely that future impacts will be less than or greater than those projected by climate models. So yes, there is a very small chance that climate change impacts will be relatively benign over the next century, with modest damages. But there is also a very small chance that those impacts will translate into economic “catastrophe”— in the jargon of economists who attempt to quantify climate change risks.
In this sense, inaction on climate change is like betting against the house when you know the deck is stacked in its favor. You might be willing to lose a few bucks for a small chance of a huge payout, but you wouldn’t bet your life’s savings.
For those who are concerned, it’s often unclear what, if anything, can be done to avert climate change. It is true that whatever steps we take today to limit greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will still accelerate over the next decades—the climate system and energy infrastructure both carry appreciable momentum.
But by the same token, the longer we wait to begin curbing emissions in earnest, the tighter we lock future generations into a path of accelerating climate change. For every year we delay, we accept (knowingly or not) that the stabilization level for greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will be ever higher, and the associated climate risks ever greater. The recent agreement between the United States and China to limit emissions growth over the next decades is an important down payment towards collective climate action, but the most effective action will come when each and every American understands that they have a role to play in reducing emissions.
The power of collective action is demonstrated during a class project in my “Energy, the Environment, and Society” course that I teach at Tech each spring. In the Carbon Reduction Challenge, student teams compete to reduce CO2 emissions over the course of two short months. The most successful teams engage with private-sector partners, and the savings they achieve are remarkable. One winning team averted over 180,000 pounds of CO2 emissions by recycling wooden pallets at a large manufacturing plant. That’s equivalent to taking 15 cars off the road for an entire year.
If each American began to rethink how they conduct their own “business as usual,” and that of their workplace, we could begin to pay down the climate debt while paving the way for a sustainable energy and climate future for our children and grandchildren. A collective effort to reduce energy use, when combined with the continued development and deployment of affordable, low-carbon energy technologies, puts such a goal in reach.
— Kim Cobb is Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, specializing in paleoclimates, climate change and geochemistry.
This article originally appeared in Vol. 90, No. 4 of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine.
]]>Two of Tech’s major academic showcases take place this week. The second annual Tech4Good Poster Showcase and the twice-yearly Capstone Design Expo both help students gain real world experience and promote creativity in designing their own products for market.
Tech4Good lets students from different areas of study work on projects that benefit nonprofit organizations and local communities. It aims to build on current service learning activities on campus and promote social entrepreneurship and civic engagement in Tech's curriculum.
The Capstone Design Expo focuses on mechanical, biomedical, electrical and computer, and industrial and systems engineering projects, as well as industrial design projects. Students in these majors take the Capstone Senior Design course and develop innovative ideas that solve an industry-sponsored challenge, help researchers develop technology, or form the basis for their own startup. Both events allow students to meet professionals from their field of study who provide helpful criticism and potential job and investment offers.
From helping nonprofit companies to competing for cash prizes and job offers, each expo shows Tech’s student talent. Tech4Good will take place Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 4 – 6 p.m. on the first floor of Clough Commons. The Capstone Design Expo will be held Thursday, Dec. 4, from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at McCamish Pavilion. Both events are free and open to the public.
]]>“We look forward to ever-evolving opportunities for action and success, both on the campus and in the Westside communities,” Dean Jacqueline Royster said. “This award affirms our commitment and inspires our ongoing pursuit of excellence.”
The WCA Executive Leadership Team includes Dean Royster, GT Director of Community Relations Chris Burke, WCA Director Sheri Davis-Faulkner, and WCA Associate Director Mackenzie Madden. The Alliance is a collaboration between the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, College of Architecture, and Office of Government and Community Relations with Georgia Tech’s neighboring Westside communities.
As a collaborative network, the WCA functions as a nexus for intercommunication, action and advocacy, by bringing communities, academic institutions, and stakeholders from various arenas together to tackle local challenges and find points of synergy for positive action. A primary goal for the WCA is to operationalize a dynamic model of multi-institutional civic engagement, research, and action. We use our platform to spotlight economic and educational anchors, as well as cultural and historic assets, in addition to highlighting the significant investments made by community leaders and residents throughout Atlanta’s Westside. Ongoing IAC faculty and student work with Westside community groups include: Westside Soul with Chris LeDantec (DM); Westside Food Oasis with Carl DiSalvo (DM); Community Think Tank with Micheal Hoffman (PubPol); and Westside Atlanta Land Trust with Erica Louise Richards (IE).
In the upcoming 2014-2015 school year the WCA will finish developing a Westside data dashboard, provide additional capacity-building for community-based organizations, and coordinate Institute support for four Atlanta public schools within the Booker T. Washington High School cluster. Visit our website, get on our listserv, take a service-learning course, volunteer to engage with Westside communities, and join the Westside GT Taskforce. The WCA depends on the academic expertise and the volunteer spirit of our GT community. Their motto is “Together, we can do better.”
]]>“It’s my passion and my team’s passion,” said Swant, who has a background in architecture and urban planning. Swant’s been at Tech since 1996 and, in his nearly 20 years on campus, he has watched the campus get better and smarter about its sustainability practices.
Engineering News-Record (ENR), a leading construction information source, recently named him one of its 2014 Top 25 Newsmakers for innovations and achievements in the construction industry. ENR selected Swant because of his dedication to sustainability, which he believes should be embedded in everything on campus.
“It’s not about doing the ‘green’ thing, but the right thing for the campus,” he said. “It’s about making sure Georgia Tech continues to exist.”
Even before writing his master’s thesis at the University of California, Los Angeles, on how to get people to take ownership of sustainable practices, Swant has been interested in integrating sustainability into business. Earlier in his career, he planned courthouses, jails and New York City office towers. In his current position, he oversees a varied portfolio that includes capital planning and space management, housing, dining, landscaping, facilities, parking and transportation, information technology, human resources, legal affairs, and other campus services. He aims to “put meaning behind the effort” by organizing and optimizing these areas around campus. Though he pushes a certain sustainable agenda in his business rationale, it’s not a hard sell at Tech.
“I’m fortunate that people here are passionate about it,” he said.
That’s not just true for campus. In the Atlanta community, Swant fosters a partnership with the Midtown Alliance, where he sits on the organization’s executive board. He’s found the local construction community is also supportive of Tech’s goal of cultivating a sustainable enterprise.
“More and more firms are finding it’s just good business,” he said. “We have a lot of great firms in the city that share the agenda, and when they bid on projects, they make the case that they can do it the way we need it done.”
Tech has a special way of building on its campus, outlined in the Georgia Tech Yellow Book, a homegrown document of nearly 500 pages outlining Tech’s design standards.
At times construction may seem an ever-present element of campus. While it can be the cause of temporary inconvenience, it leads to award-winning facilities and campus grounds. In the past five years, Tech has been honored repeatedly by the Princeton Review’s Green Honor Roll, Tree Campus USA, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, and Sierra Magazine for its campus amenities. Specific to buildings, the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory, Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, and North Avenue Apartments have all been the subject of positive external attention for their leading-edge design and renovations. The recognition is nice, but it’s not the focus of Swant’s attention.
“I like to think we’d do the same thing without the incentive of awards,” he said. “The return on investment is worth it in these facilities. The key is being smart about using the available technology.”
Technology employed in a new HVAC system for the Sustainable Education Building will save an estimated 10 percent in annual utilities, or $15,000 per year. An air optimization project at the Global Learning Center is projected to save $88,000 annually. At the Economic Development Building, a ventilation project currently in progress is estimated to reduce energy usage by 28 percent and save $64,000 per year.
Swant thought he might spend five to seven years at Tech, but 18 years later, he’s still here and still excited about the future of campus. The under-construction Engineered Biosystems Building, which will house technologically advanced biological laboratories and research space, is the beginning of a multi-building, multi-phase ecologically-focused district of the campus that will include two additional buildings and an ecocommons. The area will provide green space and reduce stormwater runoff.
Howard Wertheimer, director of Capital Planning and Space Management, has set an ambitious goal of using no potable water for irrigation on campus within five years. Wertheimer, whose department reports to Swant, is grateful to have an advocate and colleague who also believes sustainability should be inherent in Tech’s built environment.
“Steve sees the return on investment outside the spreadsheet,” Wertheimer said. “He looks through a broad lens at long-term investment.”
Aside from the progress being made at the Engineered Biosystems Building, Swant looks forward to the continued integration of Tech into Midtown around Tech Square, as well as revitalizing historical buildings at the core of campus and building a strategy for an enhanced Student Center.
“We want to inspire more innovation and integration, and provide the right amenities and connections between the university and the community,” he said.
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The purpose of the QEP is to enhance the quality of student learning outcomes and the environment of learning. The QEP is directly related to the Institute’s strategic plan. It will have a detailed implementation plan and a budget for five to 10 years of
support.
According to Mary Shoemaker and Rachit Kansal, co-chairs of the Sustainability Committee of the Student Government Association, students are increasingly aware of the challenges of sustainability and are acting on their desires to positively impact the world around them through available curricular and co-curricular activities.
However, to date, there is no coordinated curricular effort in this area.
This QEP will not only fill this void, it will also immerse students in learning opportunities where they work on sustainability-focused problems drawn from the community, businesses, and government. The capabilities that they develop in the process will translate to productively working, living, and leading in any complex, multisystem, multistakeholder, and multicultural setting. The plan will also help Tech operationalize its strategic plan vision and its mission.
“This QEP will enhance foundational classroom instruction and curricular opportunities,” said Beril Toktay, professor and Brady Family Chair in the Scheller College of Business, and co-author of the QEP. “It will focus on the establishment of experiential and contextual learning opportunities that emphasize connections between the real world and subject matter, such as project- and problem-based learning, service learning, entrepreneurial opportunities, internships, and co-ops. We look forward to developing a set of external partnerships to achieve this.”
Another important element of the QEP will be the creation of a supportive and engaged campus culture.
“A successful QEP will result in Georgia Tech graduates who have a deep understanding of the societal impacts of economic value creation and the needs of communities they live and work in,” said Ellen Zegura, professor of computer science in the College of Computing and co-author of the QEP. “This depth of understanding will not be attained when it is sought as an ‘add-on.’ Rather, the interdependence of economic and societal value must be integrated as part of our students’ core education, and our students must be challenged to work on relevant problems that cut across disciplinary boundaries.”
The QEP aims to help students, who are already sought-after for their disciplinary expertise, to become creators of joint environmental, social, and economic value throughout their lives and careers.
Reaffirmation is the process by which Tech must prove to a review team from peer institutions via the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) that the Institute is qualified to continue to award academic credit. SACSCOC, the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the nation’s southern states, works closely with the U.S. Department of Education. The QEP is due to SACSCOC by December 2014. More than 80 percent of the onsite accreditation review in March 2015 will focus on the QEP.
Five QEP concept papers were presented to the QEP Advisory Committee in February, followed by another round of consultation. The Committee selected two proposals, which were merged to create one QEP.
“What makes the intersection between contextual learning and sustainability so exciting as a QEP is that it lends itself to defining clear learning objectives and to institutionalizing a growing interest among all students,” said Colin Potts, vice provost for Undergraduate Education. “They want to use their skills and knowledge to make a difference in the world — directly and personally in ways they can empathize with — and the QEP gives us an opportunity to focus that excitement and passion in an academically productive way.”
Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, said the Institute is a great institution that can only get better through this process.
“The SACSCOC reaffirmation process should be used to take stock of all that we are doing well and identify all that we can do better,” Bras said. “We have the advantage of being able to build on a visionary strategic plan and several years of discussion, analysis, and implementation efforts. The selected QEP reflects those efforts. I am confident that like past QEPs — focusing on the International Plan and Undergraduate Research — this QEP will make the Georgia Tech educational experience even better.”
Tech’s official reaffirmation process began last June and will continue through the end of 2015. Catherine Murray-Rust, vice provost for Learning Excellence and dean of Libraries, is Tech’s accreditation liaison and is responsible for overseeing the reaffirmation process.
]]>Keith Golden, CE 86, MS CE 89, and Todd Long, CE 89, MS CE 90, are the commissioner and deputy commissioner, respectively, of the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Georgia transportation funding is in a time of transition. Much hard-asset infrastructure, like the Interstate System, is 50-plus years old and in need of significant rehabilitation, if not replacement. Unaddressed, congestion will stifle growth and the city’s vibrancy. Billions of dollars are needed for long-term solutions.
Anything close to that amount, however, is not likely to be available—at least not from traditional sources. The prevailing view is that foreseeable federal funding will remain static or decline, perhaps as much as 25-30 percent. July’s rejection of the T-SPLOST one-cent sales tax referendum showed a majority of Georgians oppose increased state transportation taxes for a variety of reasons. For the 46 counties that did pass the transportation sales tax, expect to see growth as they resolve many of their transportation problems.
Our mission is to continue transforming the bureaucracy into a responsive, customer-focused enterprise making better use of the Department of Transportation’s 4,300 dedicated employees. We aim to implement initiatives like variable speed limits, flex and auxiliary lanes, signal synchronization and immediate incident response to maximize the efficiency of our existing infrastructure. We strive to eliminate inefficiencies and privatize work when it makes sense to do so. We want to develop more public-private partnerships and managed toll lanes when they best serve mobility and taxpayer interests, and we’ll focus available resources on projects that yield the highest benefit/cost ratio to Georgia.
It is a daunting challenge. But thanks to Tech, we know we are well prepared.
Ryan Gravel, Arch 95, M Arch/CP 99, imagined the Atlanta BeltLine—a 22-mile path for pedestrians, bicycles and light rail circling Atlanta—in 1999 as his Tech master’s thesis; he is now a senior urban designer with Perkins+Will.
T-SPLOST, the proposed penny sales tax that would have raised $8.5 billion for roads and transit in metro Atlanta, suffered defeat at the polls on July 31.
Explanations for this are as divided as the vote. What is clear is that developing a nuanced plan to address the varied transportation needs in a diverse, sprawling region is challenging, and the politics of doing so are even more challenging.
But instead of starting from scratch, what if we built on a bold, sustainable vision already underway?
In the 1960s, Fulton and DeKalb counties and the City of Atlanta began to build the current MARTA rail system.
With nearly half a million boardings every weekday, MARTA is now America’s ninth-largest system. It consistently ranks among the most cost-efficient and cost-effective systems in the country and contributes significantly to Georgia’s transportation solutions.
But it receives essentially no money from the state. MARTA was last expanded over a decade ago. Complaints about the rail system “not going anywhere” are explained by our lack of investment in it.
The original MARTA Act was far more aspirational and visionary than T-SPLOST, but it was not entirely successful because three of metro Atlanta’s five core counties opted not to participate. Perhaps now the time is right.
Clayton, Cobb and Gwinnett Counties—which stand to gain the most from transit expansion—could buy into the system right away.
With significant demographic shifts taking place in these counties, and with leadership changes underway at MARTA, now is the perfect time to leverage our existing assets, mend relationships and move forward with a shared vision befitting Georgia’s role in the global economy.
This story originally appeared in the February issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. Photos by Josh Meister.
]]>Five QEP concept papers were presented to the QEP Advisory Committee on Feb. 11. Another round of consultation will be held on Feb. 18.
Reaffirmation is the process by which Tech must prove to a review team from peer institutions via the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) that the Institute is qualified to continue to award academic credit. SACSCOC, the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the nation’s Southern states, works closely with the U.S. Department of Education.
Tech’s official reaffirmation process began last June and will continue through the end of 2015, with the on-site visit scheduled for March 2015. The Compliance Certification and the QEP for Student Learning are the two main components of the effort through which Tech reviews all policies, procedures, and programs, and chooses a special high-impact project for the next five years.
The purpose of the QEP is to enhance the quality of student learning outcomes and the environment of learning. The QEP also should be directly and traceably related to the Institute’s strategic plan. The QEP will be a funded mandate, and once selected, will result in a detailed implementation plan and budget for five to 10 years of support. More than 80 percent of the onsite review will focus on the QEP.
“For an idea to succeed as a QEP, it requires widespread buy-in from the campus community,” said Colin Potts, vice provost for Undergraduate Education. “SACS is serious about the need to show we’re enhancing student learning. It would be obvious if we put forward someone’s pet project or solutions in search of problems. So, we went about the task by inviting concept papers last year from teams representing at least three colleges. Nearly 100 authors were actively involved in the crafting of responses (that’s about 10 percent of faculty). And the concepts all traced directly back to the strategic plan — which was the result of deliberations by thousands of faculty, staff, and students over a period of a couple of years.”
The Student Government Association and other student constituencies are being consulted and will be fully involved in the refinement and definition of the QEP, according to Potts.
“There are already obvious tie-ins to many student societies, majors, and labs, as well as outreach to external organizations,” he added. “I’m confident that the QEP that emerges will reflect the ‘One Georgia Tech’ message.”
The QEP will be defined by early March and is due to SACSCOC by December 2014. The current QEP Advisory Committee will grow and change in membership once a QEP is selected. By September 2014, Tech will provide a self-study of its compliance — 95 core requirements and principles — encompassing the spectrum of activities on campus. The gathering of this information will be managed by a Compliance Steering Committee of campus administrators.
“The purpose of the reaffirmation process, which justifies all the time and effort by the hundreds of people involved, is to make Georgia Tech a better, stronger institution of higher learning,” said Catherine Murray-Rust, vice provost for Learning Excellence, dean of Libraries, and Tech’s SACS accreditation liaison. “In addition to a clear reaffirmation of accreditation by SACSCOC at the end of 2015, our goal is to have a very clear action agenda for improvement, which is aligned with the strategic plan.”
]]>• The efforts are being chaired by Dean Catherine Murray-Rust, SACSCOC
liaison for Georgia Tech.
• The two main components are Compliance Certification and a Quality Enhancement Program (QEP) for Student Learning.
• Five QEP concept papers were
presented in February 2014.
• A QEP will be selected in March 2014.
• A compliance report is due in September 2014.
• The off-site review will take place October-November 2014.
• The QEP and response to the report from the off-site review is due December 2014-January 2015.
• The onsite SACS visit will be
March 9-12, 2015.
• The report from the onsite visit will be available in spring 2015.
• The formal ruling on reaffirmation will occur in December 2015.
This realization fueled Toktay’s interest in sustainability. Today, she is internationally known as a scholar in the field of sustainable operations management, with a focus on socially responsible, environmentally friendly business practices. “She is one of the pioneers in this research area,” says Scheller College Dean Steve Salbu.
Her dedication and leadership were major factors in the College’s winning of a $750,000 grant from the Ray C. Anderson Foundation to start the Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability in early 2013. That gift was soon followed by a $300,000 grant from the Kendeda Fund.
The Center focuses on strategies that bring business value while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and society. Center goals include:
Salbu points out that Scheller College rivals many top business schools with the number of faculty members actively engaged in sustainability activities.
“Our College’s strong focus in the management of technology, innovation, and commercialization is highly relevant to the adoption and management of green tech,” he says. “The opportunity to leverage these core strengths for high-visibility, high-impact leadership in sustainable business research and education has never been greater.”
Interest in sustainability is growing tremendously in both the business world and academia, says Toktay, holder of the Brady Family Chair.
“When I first started my career, not that many people were researching it,” she says. “But Scheller College now has faculty in different areas, from operations and finance to business ethics and marketing, addressing various aspects of sustainability, including socially responsible investing, corporate social responsibility, brand value, and sustainable operations.”
She adds, “We hope to leverage all of this expertise through the new Center and pursue collaborative, value-adding partnerships within the broader sustainability community at Georgia Tech and beyond.”
While Toktay serves as faculty director of the Center, Howard Connell was hired in summer 2013 to serve as director as well as a professor of the practice of sustainable business. In addition to teaching, he is building partnerships and connections to industry, supporting fundraising efforts, and developing educational initiatives and career opportunities.
Prior to joining Scheller, he led B2B sustainability efforts internationally at Kimberly-Clark Corporation. “All industries are realizing that there are not enough resources on the planet to provide for everyone without massive innovations in sustainable processes and business models,” says Connell, vice chair of the nonprofit organization Sustainable Atlanta.
Connell, who began his career as a musician and sound engineer in Nashville, Tennessee, says he became fascinated with sustainable business after reading Paul Hawkens’ The Ecology of Commerce (1993).
The book inspired him to pursue opportunities in socially responsible investing and later choose a sustainability concentration for his MBA studies at the University of California-Berkeley. That degree led to six years of sustainability-focused consulting with A.T. Kearney before he joined Kimberly-Clark in 2011.
Coincidentally, The Ecology of Commerce book that so inspired Connell also had a great impact on the late Ray Anderson (1934-2011). The foundation created in his honor funded the creation of Tech’s Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability.
Anderson, who earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Tech in 1956 and built Interface into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of commercial carpet, said that book hit him like a “spear in the chest,” inspiring him to set highly ambitious goals for his company to reduce waste and carbon emissions.
Professor Toktay says it’s a great privilege for the Center to win the support of the Ray Anderson Foundation.
“What we want to achieve is so congruent with Ray Anderson’s vision that I really cannot imagine any other partnership that would be more inspiring to us and send a more powerful message to the world about our aspirations: to do groundbreaking, high-impact research, and to educate the Ray Andersons of the future.”
Toktay and Connell are excited about expanding educational opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students through the Center.
During fall 2013, Connell is teaching a new Sustainable Business Consulting Practicum in which MBA students work on solving real problems for participating companies. He’ll teach a similar course for undergraduates in spring 2014 as well as one called Innovation Tournaments for Sustainability.
In spring 2013, Toktay introduced these innovation tournaments into the Business Strategies for Sustainability course that she teaches to MBA students. In these contests, students generate business-model or product ideas that would have a positive environmental or social impact, and class voting and input determines and refines the best ideas. Winners go on to develop an early-stage business plan and investor pitch.
“We’re harnessing the collective wisdom and creativity of the class to come up with one or two good ideas that might tie into structures at Tech that help aspiring entrepreneurs,” Toktay says.
Evening MBA student Sophia Bromfield’s concept made it to the final round of the spring 2013 tournament. Her concept was for a nonprofit organization called Greenhouse that would provide sustainable emergency housing for natural disaster victims.
“These sustainable shelters, sturdier than tents, would be made out of recyclable materials so that they don’t become trash,” says Bromfield. “They would be great for the disaster victim as well as for the environment. Their design includes cloth ventilation for cooling and insulated materials for heat, so that in the event that it’s impossible to generate power, the dwelling would still be comfortable.”
Bromfield, who earned her master’s in architecture at Tech in 2010, wants to be at the forefront of the sustainability trend because she believes it will be crucial for her career. Now a project manager for a design and construction services firm, LCG-CI, she says that environmentally friendly design is going to be a factor that influences every company’s real estate decisions in the future.
“I’d like to combine strategy, sustainability, and construction design,” says Bromfield, who earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) accreditation. “The MBA degree will open more doors for me.”
Bromfield says there’s a big push for those in her industry to understand sustainability. “Through LEED, you’re trained to be a consultant to advise builders and developers on how to make buildings green,” she says.
“I believe that sustainability should be ingrained into our culture,” she adds. “I think that in the future, it won’t really be an option. There are going to be more requirements and mandates. Corporate clients are already demanding greener approaches.”
Full-time MBA student Mansoor Baloch recognizes that those interested in sustainable business practices sometimes get labeled as “tree huggers.” But that’s a mischaracterization, he says.
“I think that businesses can create value for consumers and shareholders while incorporating the principles of sustainability and social responsibility. There’s value for everyone in pursuing the triple bottom line (profit, people, and planet),” he says.
“Consumers are increasingly aware of environmental issues, so there is a growing sense of urgency in the business world to minimize harm to society and the environment. I want to play a leading role.”
Baloch has already gotten deeply involved, serving on a student committee supporting the College’s new Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability. What’s more, he’s the 2013-2014 president of the College’s Net Impact chapter (which recently earned Gold Standing from the national organization).
Net Impact has more than 300 chapters worldwide, including 40,000 students and professional leaders who are focused on creating positive social and environmental change in the workplace and world. Tech’s Net Impact chapter brings sustainability leaders to speak on campus, enters teams into national sustainability case competitions, and promotes social responsibility by helping organize the Pro Bono Consulting course, which supports nonprofit organizations.
During the next year, the Tech chapter plans to work in collaboration with the Scheller College’s newly created Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability to inaugurate a sustainability panel bringing industry leaders to share their experiences with current MBA students.
Professor Toktay’s research into sustainable business began almost as soon as she started her doctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her first project dealt with the Kodak single-use camera that was popular at the time.
Under pressure from environmentalists, Kodak figured out they could save money and materials by reusing lenses and circuit boards from those cameras, so the company worked out incentives for photo processors to return the devices. “My project focused on the supply chain issues that came up as a result,” she says.
Currently, Toktay and operations management associate professor Atalay Atasu are contributing to the development of proposed legislation that would extend manufacturer responsibility over the life of a product. For example, when a user is done with a computer, the manufacturer would be responsible for paying for its recycling.
“If you make the manufacturer responsible for costs at the end of a product’s life cycle, you give them incentive to design a product so that it’s environmentally friendly, thus closing the loop,” Atasu says. “But how the legislation is implemented makes a big difference to its impact.”
Some of Toktay’s research has focused on the environmentally friendly practice of refurbishing computer equipment and selling it on the secondary market. She explains that in some cases, original equipment manufacturers of IT-related products, such as servers, have made efforts to squelch the secondary market for their products through high relicensing fees, fearing the competition would cannibalize new sales.
But her research team’s work has highlighted the importance of supporting secondary markets under a wide range of industry conditions. “We’ve shown that it’s not necessary to kill the secondary market for a product,” she notes. “Companies like IBM have gained significant value from secondary markets through combining leasing strategies with asset recovery operations.”
Sudheer Chava, associate professor of finance, looks at sustainability from a different angle. A common question in his research is whether finance can be a force for good in the world. He is looking at whether capital markets can cause companies to change behavior related to sustainability.
The answer, in brief, is yes, he says. In fact, he found that the markets charge a higher interest rate to more polluting companies, most likely because of the risks involved with environmental contamination as well as the general public relations costs of being branded as a polluter.
Investors are increasingly leery of polluters, Chava finds. When investing, for example, TIAA-CREF considers the environmental, social, and governance aspects of companies.
Through the new Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability, Chava is looking forward to pooling ideas across disciplines, the business school, university, and beyond. “What we can do as a group is far better than a single discipline can produce,” he says. Ravi Subramanian, associate professor of operations management, believes the Center is well-positioned to address sustainability issues from multiple perspectives, including technology/innovation.
“Most companies’ actions are driven by customer choices, such as what to buy, how long to use, and where to dispose,” he says. “If we want firms to go beyond the basic measures required by regulations, we need to understand not only the kinds of company practices that help create and sustain firm value, but also customer behavior.”
“For example, we need to look at transactional data to understand the prices that consumers actually pay for green products as well as their opinions of these products,” he adds. “Also, are there technological or business solutions to improve the economic lives of products?”
Other professors integral to the development of the Center include Manpreet Hora (Operations Management), Omar Rodriguez-Vila (Marketing), Wade Chumney and Lucien Dhooge (Law and Ethics), and Terry Blum (Organizational Behavior; Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship).
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“Students do great things that can be quite invisible,” said Ellen Zegura, a professor in the School of Computer Science who taught a Computing for Good (C4G) course this semester. The expo will focus on projects students have done this semester in a number of colleges and schools and will also include participants in this semester’s C4G courses, which in the past presented at their own expo.
Andy Pruett, who’s pursuing a master’s in human-computer interaction, will be there with his team, which created Food Mapper, an open and accessible platform that lets users map food sources in places where they are scarce (sometimes called “food deserts”). Tackling the project from a service learning perspective served as a motivating factor in several ways.
“When the project hits challenging spots, knowing that you are working to serve and volunteer can be a source of pride and drive,” Pruett said. “The clients for these service learning projects can be emotionally dedicated to their work, and it’s rewarding to know simple solutions can often make a significant difference for nonprofits and service providers.”
The expo is the first event organized by the newly formed Service Learning and Community Engagement Council (SLCE), a group convened as part of the Strategic Plan Service Learning and Legacy Project, for which Zegura is a co-chair. It aims to build on current service learning activities on campus and promote social entrepreneurship and civic engagement in the Tech curriculum.
Efforts have an emphasis on undergraduate education but also affect the graduate experience, particularly in the case of cross-listed courses such as C4G that may be taken by both undergraduates and graduates. The SLCE plans to pursue a course designation for service learning course offerings. Around 10-15 courses have already been identified, and others would likely be added in the coming years.
In the meantime, the expo is intended to showcase what’s already being done and the momentum that exists for this type of learning.
“Outreach by Tech students to the surrounding communities is important for the profile of the university,” Pruett said. “Knowing that the quality of the end result matters beyond the scope of the course is a positive and compelling reminder that details matter, decisions matter, communication matters, and execution matters. This soaks through the team, makes work more enjoyable, and makes small wins very rewarding.”
In addition to the expo, the SLCE is working on a concept paper as part of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) for Georgia Tech’s Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) reaccreditation. The QEP is intended to have broad application that enhances student learning or the learning environment. Tech’s International Plan and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program were both part of the QEP in Tech’s last reaccreditation.
Around 30 projects will be on display, with their creators, at the Tech4Good expo this Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 4–6 p.m. on the first floor of the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons.
]]>Reaffirmation is the process by which Georgia Tech must prove to a review team from peer institutions, via the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), that the Institute is qualified to continue to award academic credit. SACSCOC, the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the nation’s southern states, works closely with the U.S. Department of Education.
The formal kickoff for the 10-year reaffirmation of Tech’s accreditation began in June 2013. The process will continue through the end of 2015, with Tech’s onsite visit scheduled for March 2015.
“This is an important process through which we review our policies, procedures, and programs in compliance certification,” said Catherine Murray-Rust, vice provost for Learning Excellence, dean of Libraries, and Tech’s SACS Accreditation Liaison.
By September 2014, Tech will provide a self-study of its compliance — 95 core requirements and principles — encompassing the spectrum of activities on campus. The gathering of this information will require time and effort on the part of hundreds of people campuswide, and will be managed by a Compliance Steering Committee of campus administrators. During last month’s Institute Address, President G.P. “Bud” Peterson thanked faculty and staff in advance for their engagement in the project.
The compliance certification is an opportunity for Tech to identify institutional weaknesses or problems and correct them, Murray-Rust said.
“I view the compliance part of this process, at best, like moving from one house to another,” she said. “It takes a tremendous amount of work, and if you do it well, you recalibrate your life and your belongings. You review all aspects of your stuff and how you live, toss out or give away what you don’t need, pack what is left up carefully, and move. At least for a brief period, you are aware of your assets and your liabilities.”
Tech must also provide a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) to improve the quality of student learning outcomes and the environment of learning. It should be directly and traceably related to Tech’s strategic plan. The QEP will be a funded mandate and will result in a detailed implementation plan and budget for five-10 years of support.
“The QEP presents an opportunity for campus to select an academic goal that will impact student learning,” Murray-Rust said.
The plan is due in December 2014. There will be a process to submit focused proposals. There is a QEP Steering Committee in place that will grow and change in membership once a QEP is selected.
“The Quality Enhancement Plan is the part of the compliance certification that most directly involves faculty,” Murray-Rust said. “Faculty need to be engaged in determining the best project and creating the plan that generates wide impact on campus, including assessment and programmatic support.”
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