Sophomore Sean Murphy discusses sustainability proposals.

Funding granted to new Hopkins sustainability program

By: Katie Collins & Payal Patnaik

Posted: 10/9/08

The Sustainable Hopkins Infrastructure Program (SHIP) received funding authorization from the associate financial deans last Friday, officially launching the latest of the University's series of efforts to make Hopkins a leader in sustainability.

SHIP, originally conceived of by sophomore Dan Teran, was endorsed by the Student Government Association last March and is designed to help secure funding for students and employees who have ideas for practical green projects on campus.

Projects must meet the eligibility criteria agreed on by the administration on Friday, which includes reducing the environmental impacts, noninterference with ongoing projects and no ongoing maintenance.

The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering and the respective deans of finance of these schools, Frederick Puddester and James Aumiller, are providing the funding.

The proposed projects must meet a "seven-year payback" criterion, which means, according the SHIP charter, it must generate savings equivalent to the requested funding within seven years.

According to Teran, the seven-year payback is unique to Hopkins.

"The programs are much more progressive that the five-year payback used at institutions like Harvard and Macalester," Teran said.

According to Teran, a seven-year window of payback would enable more projects to focus on environmental benefits rather than on financial aspects dictated by a five-year deadline.

"We would be saving resources to capture projects that may have been funded under the restrictive five-year system," Teran said.

"It's wonderful that students will be able to help increase the sustainability on campus," said Julia Blocher, president of the Hopkins Energy Action Team.

According to Blocher, HEAT members have expressed interest in the project and the success of the Green Idea Generator project last year bodes well for SHIP.

"There was so much excitement about the green idea generator project that not all the projects could be implemented," Blocher said. "SHIP will therefore provide an avenue to funding yet more good, green ideas."

Hopkins students were initially inspired to create the program by a similar program at Harvard University, the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, implemented in 2000, which provides revolving funds for sustainability projects.

Like Harvard, Hopkins is moving toward a model of student sustainability. SHIP has put all its implementation documents online so that other schools make take advantage of them, which Oberlin College has already done.

According to Teran, SHIP is not a loan fund as it was originally thought, but will instead make a "payback" by lowering the operating costs of Hopkins, as Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration James McGill wanted to have a more centralized approach to sustainability.

The Office of Facilities Management will shoulder the implementation of projects and funding will be more centralized.

SHIP is primarily composed of an executive board, consisting of five students selected by the SGA Committee on Leadership Appointments, and an evaluations committee.

Teran is the student director and Davis Bookhart is the Staff Director of the executive board. Other members include Sean Murphy, Mike Rogers, Karen Nie, Laura Veldhuis and Alexia Simmonard.

The executive board functions to identify new projects, assist with the application process and maintain the outward visibility of the program. In addition, the executive board relies on the three other environmental groups on campus: the Engineers for a Sustainable World, Students for Environmental Action and the Hopkins Energy Action Team.

The evaluations committee will be responsible for meeting twice a semester to vote on whether the project meets funding criteria, which is composed of the staff director, student director (to represent the executive board), associate deans for Finance and Administration from both schools, a representative from Plant Operations, a faculty member with expertise in the area of sustainable development and the presidents the three student groups.

"The goal is to use the evaluations committee as a power-holding entity to give everyone a stake in the process," Teran said.

One of the first projects SHIP plans to fund will likely be securing the final funding for the waste vegetable pre-boiler, according to Teran.

Members of the SHIP executive board, who met yesterday, have already started talking to local restaurants about the use of their oil to power the waste vegetable pre-boiler.

Other students, including those in the university's environmental engineering department, have already expressed interest in taking advantage of SHIP's offerings. SHIP is now functional, and students and faculty are encouraged to apply for grants.

The SHIP executive board expressed interested in funding for projects such as installing revolving doors in buildings and light bulb replacements in addition to other energy-efficient changes.

"Sustainability is a responsibility, an ethical responsibility, which is why some people will just be throwing out ideas and have economic benefits joining," said Murphy, an executive board member.

The process that proposals undergo begins with an application to SHIP, and how well it meets the criteria. Projects requiring $5,000 or less may be presented and voted upon by e-mail, while projects exceeding $5,000 must be presented and evaluated in a formal twice-per-semester meeting of the Evaluations Committee.

After the evaluation, projects will face two possible outcomes.

Projects denied funding would receive a recommendation from the Evaluations Committee, which may range from a referral back to the Executive Board for minor improvements to a suggested abandonment of the proposed project.

Projects approved for funding would be transferred to the responsibility of the Office of Facilities Management. A project manager would be assigned, who will acquire the funds from the relevant school at Homewood.

"I see SHIP as a way to get around what we consider the biggest problem of addressing sustainability," Rogers said. "Projects are individually wonderful, and SHIP can potentially be a powerful force to integrate all these efforts."

Teran addressed the many sustainability efforts on campus, including the Presidential Task Force and other working groups, and said SHIP may consolidate these efforts.

"Looking at the raw numbers, we could save more money. It's time to stop talking and start doing something," he said.