Spend a few minutes in Patapsco Hall’s recently-completed addition, and you won’t have to be told it received one of the world’s top certifications for environmentally-friendly design. The large windows reduce the need for artificial light, the heating and cooling system automatically adjusts to your presence and you won’t have to look far to recycle your soda can.
But while all of those features helped the building earn a LEED Gold certification, perhaps the most innovative part of the building’s design is how it is helping shape the future. That’s because residential life is using the building as an opportunity to educate the campus about sustainability.
“We are committed not only to having facilities and practices that lead to a more sustainable future, but also to educating our residents so that they understand our commitment to sustainability and have opportunities to change the culture firsthand,” said Katie Boone, director of residential life.
Education and leadership on climate change are key underpinnings of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which President Hrabowski signed in 2007. Within three years, the university adopted a Climate Action Plan, which among other things, requires new construction to meet at least LEED Silver certification.
Patapsco Hall exceeded expectations for certification – and for student involvement. While the addition was still in the earliest stages of planning, residential life invited students to contribute to conversations about making the building environmentally friendly.
“I was primarily concerned with the green design of the project, the energy consumption of the building, ideas for day-lighting as well as energy conservation,” said Samuel Su ’11, biology, who proposed several ideas for building features at the meetings. “Because the project was something outside of the scope of my academic studies, it really presented an opportunity to learn something else through self-study.” Su runs the green living website Verno, which he started with several other UMBC students in 2009.
All student ideas were considered; some, such as elimination of actively-cooled water fountains, were implemented, while others, such as liquid discussant waterfalls, were investigated but proved to be too costly. One of the most innovative ideas came from Olyssa Starry, a graduate student at UMBC at the time, who suggested setting up a permanent experiment on the building’s roof. Building designers incorporated a 600 square foot “green roof” and an identical “white roof” area into the building’s plans, and data are collected from the water that drains from each section of roof.
“Working with them to incorporate research into the design was such a learning process,” said Starry, who is now completing her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park. “The team did not need a lot of convincing [to implement the plan], and from what I understand that is not typical.”
Starry is using data from the roof as part of her dissertation, a model of green roof hydrology. The data also are available online – and will eventually be displayed on a screen in the Patapsco lobby – creating a valuable resource for students interested in hydrology, said Andy Miller, associate professor of geography and environmental systems.
“Having a monitoring site right here on campus collecting information in real time presents a great educational opportunity,” he said. “It's always a great advantage for students to be able to get their hands on real data and to see where it came from.”
With more construction and renovation projects on the horizon, the lessons learned through this project will impact the future of sustainability on campus. The next construction project, the apartment community center, will include a green roof, and residential life is looking to harness students’ enthusiasm for sustainability through new programs, such as contests to see who can use the least electricity and a potential geography and environmental systems living/learning community.
“Ultimately,” Boone said, “it is really about partnering with students to engage and educate on sustainable practices.”
(1/30/13)
]]>As a child, Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins ’97, biological sciences, could often be found on a fishing pier on the Chesapeake Bay, dangling a line for fish or chicken-necking for blue crabs with her family.
Today, you’re more apt to find her on a commercial fishing boat in Ecuador as she researches how fishermen can keep from catching protected species such as sea turtles.
It’s a race against time as Jenkins works with fishermen and government regulators to adopt new technologies out on the water. It can take 15 years or longer to come up with a new device to keep sea turtles from being snared by hooks or to prevent dolphins from getting tangled in nets.
“When you’re looking at some of the forecasts of when animals are going to go extinct – like leatherback turtles, which could be a decade before they’re extinct in the Pacific Ocean – then 15 years is too long of a time frame,” said Jenkins, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Jenkins focuses not only on the mechanics of the devices she’s helping to streamline – called bycatch reduction devices – but also the factors that lead commercial fishermen to adopt them or reject them. In particular, she’s been evaluating barriers that might prevent fishermen in other countries from using the devices that American regulators are pushing.
She blends a touch of the social sciences into biology, understanding not just how the animals behave with the devices, but how the people who use them behave, too.
“It’s really about the people, and the people are having an impact on the environment,” Jenkins said. “What’s going to effect change really starts with humans and why they do what they do, and where there are opportunities to improve that.”
Jenkins also studies how commercial fishermen might switch their fishing gear to different types that are less lethal to protected species – from nets, say, to baited fishing lines. She is also working on recounting historic fishing harvests to better understand how humans have influenced marine life.
Jenkins’ research often takes her out on the water, working alongside commercial fishermen.
“Fishermen are wonderful. They like me, so I’m lucky,” Jenkins says with a laugh. “They are really sweet, very open. They take their time to share.”
Jenkins’ career path was shaped by her mentors at UMBC. A former junior zookeeper at what is now the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, Jenkins initially considered studying veterinary medicine and endocrinology, so she could work in captive breeding.
But it was in the late UMBC professor of biological sciences Carl Weber’s ecology class that she found her calling.
“I was reading through the textbook, a chapter we weren’t assigned on conservation ecology, and I thought, ‘This is it! This is what I want to do,’” Jenkins recalls.
In addition to Weber, Jenkins credits other UMBC faculty, including associate professor of geography and environmental systems Sandy Parker, senior lecturer in chemistry Mark Perks, and former associate vice provost Teresa Viancour (who let Jenkins into the lab at night to observe electric fish) with helping her understand where her biology training at UMBC could take her.
Jenkins also found a “wonderful oasis” in UMBC’s dance department, where she earned a minor and found a creative outlet in an interest she continues today. In fact, after Jenkins earned her Ph.D. in marine conservation at Duke University in 2006, she choreographed a dance about her dissertation on sea turtles. It won second place in a dance competition sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jenkins says the arts and science can mesh better than many might think. In fact, art can be used to communicate science to non-scientists.
“What I tell people all the time is that, especially when it comes to the environment, people’s interest in environmental issues are triggered by all sorts of things,” she said. That could be experiences in nature, photography, poetry or literature. It makes sense, she said, to communicate science through those same channels.
“If we as scientists want to deliver information back to stakeholders and people who care about the environment, doing scientific papers is insufficient,” she said.
Jenkins practices what she preaches, writing general-interest articles alongside each of her academic papers. In 2011, for example, she blogged about a research trip to Ecuador for the New York Times.
Jenkins hopes her work – whether with regulators, fishermen or regular folks – can help save vulnerable species.
“I want to make a difference. I want to have a lasting conservation impact,” Jenkins said. “When I did my dissertation, I said to my advisor: ‘I want to do work that someone’s going to use. It’s not going to sit on a shelf.’”
— Pamela Wood, UMBC Magazine
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