Student Contributor

  • Exciting Scholarship Opportunity for Brock’s Environmental Sustainability students!

    Wednesday, June 20, 2018 | By

    By: Shanen D’Souza

    Toromont CAT Scholarship Presentation

    Photo: Cheque presentation by ToromontCAT representatives to Scott Johnstone, AVP Facilities Management and Dr.Ingrid Makus, Dean of FOSS at the reopening of Theal House in February 2018.

    The Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC) along with Brock Facilities Management is offering $5,000 in scholarships for the upcoming year! ToromontCAT Construction donated these funds to the University to encourage and foster sustainability education and research at Brock.

    For students enrolled in the Master of Sustainability program, three scholarships of $1,000 each will be awarded to students in good academic standing. The three designations are as follows: one current student in Scheme A, one current student in Scheme B and one incoming student who will begin studies in the Fall of 2018. For students who have declared a Minor in Environmental Sustainability, two scholarships of $1,000 each will be awarded to students in good academic standing.

    For more information on the scholarships and applications please visit our website.

    This scholarship is another indicator of the quality research and education that is carried out through these Environmental Sustainability courses. It also displays Brock’s commitment to becoming a national leader in sustainability, while striving to create beneficial educational opportunities for its students. According to Ryan Plummer, Professor and Director of the ESRC, these scholarships recognize as well as support excellence in Environmental Sustainability.

    Applications include an essay question to be answered in 1500 words or less and the applicant’s unofficial transcripts. All completed applications must be submitted via email by August 22, 2018 by 11:59pm to sustainability@brocku.ca. Successful recipients will be notified via email by September 7, 2018.

    Categories: Student Contributor, Study Sustainability at Brock, Sustainability at Brock

  • Milestones achieved by Facilities Management at Brock!

    Tuesday, June 19, 2018 | By

    Blog Contributor: Shanen D’Souza

    Brock Engine Room at the CUB

    Photo: Engine room at the Central Utilities Building, Brock University

    Facilities Management (FM) is the department responsible for all activities related to the maintenance, operations and development of Brock’s facilities and grounds. The department is heavily focused on sustainable development and the functioning of the campus. FM is always looking to reduce its impact on the environment and community around us. The recent grant of $75,000 awarded to Brock by the Ontario government to install 10 new electric vehicle charging stations is a testament to FM’s continued work towards Brock becoming a more sustainable campus.

    In the past year, the efforts of Facilities Management have reduced the energy consumption of the university as well as its greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts have also created thousands of dollars of yearly savings for the university. Installing new Variable Frequency Drives to two return fans in the Schmon Tower has led to over $86,000 in savings and 456,000 kWh in energy saved! These frequency drives coupled with a new high efficiency motor reduce the energy consumption of the Tower, the most used building on campus. Even a simple change in the LED lighting in both the 1st and 5th floors of the Tower have resulted in annual savings of over $3,000 and 17,000 kWh in energy.

    Another notable initiative by FM was the recommissioning of the Chiller in the Plaza building. A chiller is a machine that is used to cool the various buildings on campus. By using the Central Cooling Loop on campus instead, FM was able to shut down the Plaza chiller, as the Central Loop provided the necessary cooling on its own using innovative engineering methods. This has resulted in over $82,000 in annual savings and 435,000 kWh saved of energy. Subsequently, recommissioning the electric boilers in Decew Residence is now saving the university $140,000 annually and reducing energy consumption by 75,000 kWh!

    These proactive projects, along with several others in the last year, have cumulatively saved 1,750,000 kWh of energy and $332,000 on an annual basis! As the Facilities Management department leads Brock’s structural initiatives towards sustainability, the campus as a whole, can reduce its environmental impact and continue to be a good social citizen in the community.

    Categories: Student Contributor, Sustainability at Brock

  • Ready, Set, Charge!

    Tuesday, June 19, 2018 | By

    Blog Contributor: Shelby McFadden

    Electrical Vehicle Charging Station - International Centre, Brock University

    Photo: Electric vehicle charging station located at the Brock University International Centre.

    We have exciting news to share, as Brock was just approved for the installation of 10 new level 2 electric vehicle charging stations, which are to be installed by November 2018. Brock was generously given $75,000 through the Ontario Government’s Workplace Electric Vehicle Charging Incentive Program to carry out the project.

    To date, Brock has three electric chargers on campus, all of which are used frequently. The first charging station was installed at International Centre in 2013, through the partial gifting from Sun Country Highway. Then in 2016, two additional stations were added. There is one charger at the Central Utilities Building, and one in Lot H behind the tower.

    These chargers are available to be used by the Brock community, but also by people in the community and visitors to the Niagara Region. Currently, these chargers are free to use for permit holders, with non-permit holders only needing to pay a small amount for parking.

    With the student population sitting at around 18,000 students, and electric vehicles rising in popularity, these new charging stations will make it easier to accommodate electric vehicles on campus.

    This is really exciting, especially as someone who hopes to buy her own electric vehicle one day soon.

    While not perfect, electric vehicles have less impacts on the environment, as the only emissions are associated with electricity production, which is less of an issue with coal having been phased out in Ontario. By driving an electric vehicle, the average Canadian can reduce their car’s gas emissions by 60 to 90% (Plug ‘N Drive, n.d).

    This is a step in the right direction for helping to reach Brock’s emission reduction target of 20% by 2023.

    I am personally quite excited to see these chargers pop up around campus in the upcoming months, and am looking forward to future initiatives contributing to sustainability on campus.

    References:

    Plug ‘N Drive. (n.d). Electric vehicle benefits. Retrieved from https://www.plugndrive.ca/electric-vehicle-benefits

    Categories: Electricity, Energy, Student Contributor, Sustainability

  • Sustainability Committee Workshop

    Tuesday, June 05, 2018 | By

    Blog Contributor: Kaitlin James

    The Brock Sustainability Coordinating Committee serves as a forum for discussion of sustainability related information, practices, actions and initiatives, with a goal to enhance and promote sustainability at Brock.

    Today we had our first sustainability committee workshop of the new year. It was great to meet everyone and hear about all of the different initiatives going on across the university campus. Bringing together such a diverse group of individuals is integral to be able to facilitate and sustain sustainability campus wide, and allowed for an all-encompassing, active discussion of what we would like the future of sustainability to look like at Brock, including potential challenges in implementation.

    Myself and the other summer interns were excited to share with the group what we have been doing over the last couple of weeks and engaged in meaningful conversation to help build our list of current initiatives taking place across campus, ensuring that our list is as comprehensive as possible. It was great to see all that is being done across the school to make steps towards a more sustainable campus. I’m excited to see what the future of sustainability at Brock has in store for us!

    To learn more about Sustainability at Brock visit: brocku.ca/sustainability.

    Categories: Student Contributor, Sustainability, Sustainability at Brock

  • In our backyard: ESRC playing a part in Brock’s Community Garden

    Tuesday, June 05, 2018 | By

    Blog Contributor: Shanen D’Souza

    Shelby and Shanen in the Brock community garden.

    Brock’s Community Garden, located opposite Theal House, has received tremendous support and involvement by the Niagara community in recent years. Every year people are encouraged to adopt a plot and grow different plants, whether it is colourful flowers or vegetables for supper. The 12 initial plots were so high in demand that the grounds crew had to make 8 additional plots, and now all 20 plots are assigned.

    The Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC) has adopted one plot and will be maintaining it over the summer months. I, along with the other summer interns as well as the staff at the Centre, will be growing various plants this summer. Being an international student who grew up in a desert, I never had the opportunity to plant and watch flowers grow and bloom, so this is a very exciting opportunity for me.

    We will be planting cardinal flowers, a native red flower of the Niagara region. The Centre is working to promote sustainability on campus and aims to be an environmentally-friendly community member. Planting a native species promotes the unique flora of Niagara, and the red colour signifies the signature Brock red colour. We will also be planting some red vegetables like tomatoes and red peppers, and hopefully even some cucumbers.

    I am excited to watch these plants grow and bear fruit over the next couple of months. I have heard that deer and bunnies do feast upon fruits of the Brock Garden, but hopefully we will get to enjoy some too!

    Brock Community Gardens

    Categories: Outdoors, Student Contributor, Sustainability at Brock

  • Brock-Lincoln Living Lab research project to examine Lake Ontario shoreline flooding

    Tuesday, June 05, 2018 | By

    THURSDAY, May 03, 2018 | by

    The flooding of coastal communities along Lake Ontario last year caused major damage and made people realize that century floods aren’t nearly as rare as the name implies.

    A new research collaboration between Brock University and the Town of Lincoln is aimed at helping the community understand how to deal with the impacts of climate and environmental changes and examining potential avenues of solutions for future development along the shore. It’s the first externally funded project as part of the Brock-Lincoln Living Lab partnership announced in October 2017.

    Brock UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability Liette Vasseur is leading the three-year research study for the Ontario component of a larger project by Université du Québec à Rimouski, which is examining how various coastal communities can deal with and share ideas on the impacts of climate and environmental changes.

    Brock UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability Liette Vasseur

    “Communities are becoming more and more exposed to different hazards,” said Vasseur, who has been involved in similar research initiatives in other communities in Atlantic Canada and Ecuador. “With climate change, these types of events are coming faster and more often.”

    The project has received $280,000 in funding from the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR), with additional support from the Town of Lincoln and Brock. MEOPAR is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government as a National Centre of Excellence that supports research and trains students in the area of marine risk and resilience.

    Lincoln suffered around $1 million in damage as a result of back-to-back spring storms in 2017 that caused massive flooding from Lake Ontario. The storms led to the Town’s first-ever voluntary evacuation notice for residents living near the Lake Ontario shoreline, and caused significant damage to Charles Daley Park and sewer systems in Jordan Station and Campden.

    Vasseur said climate change scenarios over the next decade are projecting continuous sea level rise and increases in extreme weather events. This will amplify the severity and frequency of flooding in coastal communities like Lincoln, which is continually growing with more people living near the Lake Ontario waterfront.

    “People were always talking about 100-year events. Now it’s more like one every five years,” she said. “It shows that we need to be more prepared. When we’re planning things like residential developments, we need to plan in a way that we’re going to survive with these types of events.”

    For the Town of Lincoln, the research will provide crucial information about current and future risks.

    “In 2017, Lincoln experienced the real and harsh effects of severe weather on critical infrastructure in our community,” said Lincoln CAO Mike Kirkopoulos. “As another benefit of the Brock-Lincoln Living Lab, this research is grassroots to our community, helping us better understand the conditions for collective ownership of adapting to climate change as an organization and community.”

    Vasseur said the research team will include a postdoctoral fellow and a master’s student, who will collect data in Lincoln, and share information and ideas with other researchers and communities along the St. Lawrence Seaway.

    “It will be a very good learning experience for the students, while helping the communities at the same time,” she said. “We’re hoping that by the end, the data we’re going to get can be used by communities all along the coastline.”

    Lincoln Mayor Sandra Easton said municipalities like hers are learning that more frequent smaller floods — not just rare major flooding events — can have a big impact on resources.

    “Climate change and the impact on municipal infrastructure is top of mind for our council,” Easton said. “With the growing municipal infrastructure funding gap, municipalities have a responsibility for long-term planning and mitigation of the effects of climate change. This research is critical for council to understand how we can better identify actions toward climate change adaptation.”

    Story originally published in The Brock News.

    Categories: Education, Student Contributor, Sustainability

  • Environmental sustainability is the theme as Brock teams up with Niagara Parks

    Tuesday, June 05, 2018 | By

    FRIDAY, April 20, 2018 | by

    Niagara Parks Chair Janice Thomson and University Provost Tom Dunk sir before faculty and students from Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Institute, as well as Ingrid Makus, Dean of Social Sciences (second from left), ESRC Director Ryan Plummer (second from right) and Niagara Parks Chief Operating Officer David Adames (third from right).

    The longstanding relationship between Brock University and the Niagara Parks Commission (NPC) has entered a new era after the two institutions inked an agreement to work more closely in developing knowledge and practices in protecting the environment.

    In a ceremony Friday (April 20) at the NPC’s School of Horticulture, Brock Provost and Vice-President Academic Tom Dunk joined Niagara Parks Chair Janice Thomson in signing a Memorandum of Understanding designed to enhance the conservation practices of both organizations, while creating educational and research opportunities for Brock students and faculty through their work with Niagara Parks staff.

    Addressing members of the Parks Commission, Dunk praised the agreement as a reassuring sign of two organizations sharing a commitment to benefit people in the surrounding region, and far beyond.

    “We are both significant Niagara institutions that share a responsibility to use our resources and abilities for the greater good of our own community, and indeed of the whole planet,” said Dunk.

    A central player in this rekindled relationship is Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, whose Director, Ryan Plummer, was a key architect in developing the MOU and encouraging the collaboration behind it.

    The MOU calls for creating an Environmental Stewardship Initiative (EESI) that uses the expertise and resources of both organizations to increase environmental stewardship through public events and, in the case of students, through co-op education opportunities, course work and research.

    Plummer said an example of the potential for this MOU can be seen at the Niagara Glen Nature Area, where some 130,000 visitors a year hike down trails through the forested Niagara Gorge to the edge of the rushing Niagara River. Staff and researchers from both organizations can study public perceptions of the environment in a setting like that, to better understand which stewardship activities work best and which can be improved upon.

    “The MOU will advance the understanding and practice of environmental stewardship,” said Plummer. “Our partnership with the NPC addresses this two-fold challenge and does so in an iconic landscape. Engaging Brock faculty and students directly with staff from the NPC is sustainability science in action.”

    NPC Chair Thomson said the timing of the new agreement with is ideal.

    “This partnership reflects Niagara Parks’ steadfast commitment to the environment,” said Thomson, “and we look forward to continuing to work closely with Brock University and its team at the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre in further advancing and promoting our shared goals.”

    Brock’s ESRC, a part of the Faculty of Social Sciences, is one of Canada’s leading environmental research units, encouraging research excellence in environmental sustainability and engaging in knowledge mobilization that impacts the environment.

    Niagara Parks in an agency of the Ontario government, entrusted to preserve and protect the lands surrounding the Niagara River. Besides managing millions of visitors each year to its Niagara Falls attractions, the Commission operates a wide range of facilities along the Niagara River between Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, including historic sites, golf courses, nature trails, restaurants and its renowned School of Horticulture.

    Story originally published in The Brock News.

    Categories: Niagara, Student Contributor, Sustainability

  • Initiatives aim to grow a greener Brock

    Wednesday, May 16, 2018 | By

    Thursday, April 19, 2018 | by

    Water filling stationSecond-year Physical Education student Niamh Haughey uses one of Brock’s 44 water bottle refilling stations.

    The scourge of plastic pollution has gone from being an issue of awareness to one of alarm, as our roadsides, green fields and oceans are increasingly stricken with bags and bottles that will take centuries to break down.

    As more people become aware of the urgency to reduce global consumption, Brock University is constantly striving to do its part — one bottle at a time.

    Earth Day, coming up this Sunday, April 22, is an annual event, but some of Brock’s efforts are year-round initiatives as the University constantly reviews its conservation activities and sets its sights on future goals.

    For instance, when Brock began installing water filling stations in 2013 as a way to discourage use of disposable plastic bottles, there were only eight stations for people to find. Today, there are 44.

    In those four years, the program has kept the equivalent of more than 4.3 million bottles — or roughly 90 metric tonnes of plastic — out of landfills or ditches. This includes 930,343 bottles from the past year alone.

    Brock has introduced four new filling stations since April 2017, and plans to install more in the coming year in hopes of diverting a million bottles a year by Earth Day 2019.

    The sustainability efforts don’t end with water.

    On an institutional scale, Brock recently entered the second phase of a massive multi-year project to update its co-generating power system, replacing 25-year-old facilities with modern equipment to produce electricity, heat and cooling for the campus. When finished, the new system will consume 26 per cent less fuel and reduce annual nitrous oxide gas emissions from 55 tonnes to eight, and hydrocarbons from 15 tonnes to four.

    Other on-campus initiatives promote recycling, reusing or composting waste. Last year Brock diverted some 1,372 tonnes of waste from landfills, including 260 tonnes of organics, 414 tonnes of paper and nearly one tonne of disposable coffee cups.

    The on-campus sustainability initiatives are now being spearheaded by a recently formed partnership between Facilities Management and Environmental Sustainability Research Centre. The two Brock entities have come together in an effort to engage the school community in year-round activities meant to help reduce the University’s environmental impact.

    “We’ve done a lot and are committed to sustainability, but as a community we still have a lot to do,” said Scott Johnstone, Associate Vice-President, Facilities Management. “Every person on campus can be a part of it by making positive choices, whether that’s choosing the right bin for recycling, turning off a light when they leave an office or using the water filling stations instead of buying disposable bottles.”

    Johnstone said a new long-term sustainability plan for Brock should be completed by the fall, and will map out future projects and goals.

    Meantime, a new display in the Thistle corridor just outside the Matheson Learning Commons illustrates how garbage is impacting our planet, and how we can make a difference by disposing of it properly.

    The show includes poetry, drawings and art made from litter found in the nearby woodlands — created in part by a group of children from the Forest School on campus. The display is based on a three-year study on the implementation of the school, which sees preschool-aged children immersed in nature by spending two mornings each week in an outdoor classroom. Led by Debra Harwood, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, the research examines the experiences of children and educators in an outdoor learning and teaching environment.

    The public display examines the ways in which “children’s immersion in nature provokes opportunities for thinking, learning and acting for sustainability,” Harwood said.

    On display until mid-May outside of the Matheson Learning Commons is a showcase of environmental artwork created by children from the Forest School on campus. Debra Harwood, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, helped to put the project together.

    Story originally published in The Brock News.

    Categories: Student Contributor, Sustainability, Sustainability at Brock

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