Last month, STARS Participants joined the ranks of hundreds of U.S. and Canadian institutions to participate in Recyclemania, a friendly competition to see who can reduce, reuse, and recycle the most on-campus waste. While this annual competition recognizes institutions based on data submitted over an eight-week period, the Waste subcategory in STARS recognizes ongoing initiatives that move institutions toward zero waste. March’s STARS Facts and Best Practices blog focuses on OP 17: Waste Reduction and OP 18: Waste Diversion.

Overview of Credits

• OP 17: Waste Reduction recognizes institutions that have reduced waste generation over time. While other credits recognize the benefits of recycling, this credit acknowledges the importance of preventative measures to reduce total waste generation (garbage, recycling, and compost).
• OP 18: Waste Diversion recognizes institutions that are reducing waste and conserving resources. Institutions earn points by diverting materials from the landfill or incinerator by recycling, composting, reusing, donating, or re-selling.

STARS Facts
Based on the current STARS data, there is tremendous room for improvement to minimize waste on college and university campuses.

• OP 17: Waste Reduction – On average, institutions earned 1 point out of 5. Only 8 out of 175 institutions achieved waste reductions of 50% or more compared to a 2005 baseline.
• OP 18: Waste Diversion – On average, institutions earned 1 point out of 3. Overall, 22% of all waste has been diverted from the landfill or incinerator through recycling, composting, re-using, donating, or reselling.

With campus populations growing steadily, data submitted for OP 17: Waste Waste Reduction show that total waste generated per campus user has decreased by 4%, even while overall waste has increased by 5%.

In comparison to the 2005 baseline, average recycling and composting rates have increased for STARS-rated institutions while rates for disposed goods have decreased:

• 11% increase in recycling
• 2% increase in composting
• 13% decrease in disposed waste

AASHE Resource Center
Click here to access resources on Sustainable Management of Campus Waste & Materials.

Highlighted Institutions

• Arizona State University (STARS Gold, July 2011) published a Strategic Plan for Sustainability Practices in 2011 that declares zero waste as a primary goal for on-campus sustainability efforts. ASU has pledged to eliminate 90 percent of campus solid waste from the landfill by 2015. Over the last five years, ASU has launched over four dozen projects and initiatives, for both waste aversion and diversion, across diverse areas of operations, resulting in a 52% drop in total waste generated.

• In accordance with its strategic plan, Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA (STARS Silver, February 2012) has established a campus-wide policy to “reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink”. Campus community members participate in aggressive waste reduction programs that include single-stream recycling, paper reduction initiatives, and numerous others. With a 2011 diversion rate of 73%, Agnes Scott College is on its way to achieving its zero waste goals.

The most successful campus waste reducers have established challenging waste reduction goals and are implementing broad and numerous initiatives to achieve these goals. Moving forward, a challenge for institutions is to systematically reduce total waste while still accommodating for campus growth. The STARS team would love to hear readers’ feedback on ways to shape STARS in the future to further promote zero waste initiatives. Please send your ideas to stars@aashe.org.

UMBC has earned an honorable mention on The Princeton Review’s recently released list: “Top Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2012.” The recognition places UMBC among schools like Georgia Institute of Technology, UC Santa Cruz, and Northeastern University.

Released annually, the list features 50 schools from around the country, including their “top ten” undergraduate and graduate schools in this category. This year, the University of Southern California secured first place for their undergraduate game design program. The rankings were based on a survey administered by The Princeton Review during the 2011-2012 academic year that consulted administrators at 150 schools and universities. The winning schools were judged on the quality of their curriculum, faculty, facilities, and infrastructure, as well as their scholarship, financial aid, and career opportunities.

“We salute the schools on our list this year for their commitment to this burgeoning field and the innovative programs they offer. For students aspiring to work in this more than $10.5 billion industry and for the companies that will need their creative talents and skills, we hope this project will serve as a catalyst for many rewarding connections,” says Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s Senior VP/Publisher in a press release.

Both UMBC’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department and its Visual Arts Department offer programs for students interested in pursuing a career in video game development. Artists can concentrate on “Animation and Interactive Media,” while computer programmers can pursue the “Game Development” track within the Computer Science major. In addition, UMBC has a Game Development club, and has been a host site of the International Development Association’s Global Game Jam for the past four years.

To see a comprehensive list of winners, visit The Princeton Review’s website.

The buzz about driverless cars erupted after Google received a patent for the technology in December of last year. Since then, the project has been steadily moving forward. A few days ago, Google started testing their vehicles on Nevada roads, following approval by the state’s Legislative Commission. With the inevitability of autonomous transportation creeping closer, measures to ensure its realization are being pursued by more companies than just Google.

Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, and his team are working on developing a “smart” intersection that would manage the flow of driverless cars, reports techworld.com.

According to Stone’s project, intersections would be equipped with a manager that would coordinate traffic in an efficient and mathematical way. Techworld reports:

‘"When a car gets close to the intersection, it calls ahead and says, 'I want to go through the intersection.' The intersection manager says either yes or no. It keeps track of the reservations it grants and makes sure it doesn't give permission to other cars that would conflict with them," Stone said.’

To learn more, check out the full article: “Scientists develop computer-controlled intersections for self-driving cars.”

Now Online

View photographs from the Hughes Company photography studio and experience Baltimore life during 1905-1940.  Find out what your neighborhood street looked like back then; compare familiar buildings and structures--such as the Hippodrome Theater and Bromo Seltzer tower--with how they look now; peruse images of Flower Mart from the 1920s; make your way through the old outdoor markets of Eutaw and Lexington Streets; or see horse drawn carts, streetcars, and early automobiles traverse the city.

The Basics of the Collection

The 2,682 glass negatives from the Hughes Company Glass Negative Collection were scanned and converted into digital positives.  The collection features images of Baltimore and environs, including street scenes, buildings, churches, schools, store fronts, monuments, and signs.  Also included are commercial photographs from local businesses and community groups, such as company portraits, student groups, advertising images, machinery, and people at work. 

The History of the Company

The Hughes Company was a commercial photography studio in Baltimore, MD founded circa 1878 by James F. Hughes. Business was good for Hughes, and the studio thrived into the 1890s.
After his death in the early 1900s, the company was sold to his studio assistant, photographer James W. Scott. The studio experienced a boom of production, generating advertising photographs for clients as diverse as Westinghouse Company and the Baltimore Sun, as well as local businesses and school and church groups. The glass negatives in the digital collection were created during this period.
In 1939, Scott trained his son, Gaither, in both photography and the operation of the studio. Gaither Scott later took over the studio and eventually moved the company to Annapolis in the 1970s, where he retired and finally closed the business.
Scott divided the collection and gave the Hughes Company negatives to three different institutions, including UMBC, the Maryland Historical Society and the Peale Museum.

How You Can Participate

You can help us enrich the collection by providing additional details about the images. If you recognize a building, a person, or know further information about an image, please email Special Collections at speccoll@umbc.edu.

Additional Resources

• Growing Baltimore is a project carried out by UMBC Public History graduate students Aiden Faust, Ryan McCormick and Trisha Okine, who created an online exhibit using images from the Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection to illustrate expansion and development of Baltimore City from 1918-1939.
• A portion of UMBC's Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection can be viewed on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/umbclibrary/sets/72157622584312332/.

• Case studies from Gale CaseBase and from additional publishers
• Interactive LiveCharts for economic and business indicators that let students generate their own analyses and generate custom charts for use in reports and presentations
• Inline article content that lets users explore the broader context behind events and trends they perceive in economic data
• Global company, country, and industry overviews full of detailed information, as well as interactive rankings and stats, with quick links to associated news, case studies and academic journal articles
• Global industry research reports for specific industries within specific countries
• Academic journal articles, periodical articles, news articles, newswires and other news media
• Topic overviews on major areas of international business, with quick links to associated content
• Company histories and market share data
• Faceted search results, extensive deep links, multiple sorting options

Trial access runs through April 9, 2012.  Feedback on the usefulness of this product is appreciated.  Leave a comment to let us know what you think, or contact Drew Alfgren at alfgren@umbc.edu.

Congratulations to UMBC Ebiquity alumna Cynthia Parr for being selected to present at the 2012 TED conference on the Encyclopedia of Life project. Cyndy was a research professor at UMBC and worked with us on the SPIRE project. She now works for the Smithsonian Institution and is director of the EOL Species Pages Group.She gave her three minute talk last night and we look forward to seeing it when it is available online. Here’s a note from the TED blog.

Cynthia Parr takes the stage to update us on a massive TED Prize project: The Encyclopedia of Life. Perhaps a quarter of TED talks feature living organisms. Whether it’s an urgent need for conservation or a creature that can teach us something, it’s obvious that you care deeply about biodiversity. And with your help we’ve made Ed Wilson’s grand vision a reality. To build the Encyclopedia of Life we started with databases from leading museums, libraries, and science projects. We’ve brought in content from Flickr and Wikipedia and invited everyone to add text directly to EOL.

Thanks to global partners we’ve now got information in Spanish and Arabic with more languages to come. because people should be able to learn about the species they care about in their own language. And because scientists describe 15,000 new species every year, we set it up so that if they publish in an open-access journal we automatically make a new page on EOL.

Everything on EOL, even the software itself, is free to use and to re-use. As of this week, we’ve got information on almost a million species. That’s an incredible number, nearly half the species in the tree of life and it has only been five years. But we are more than just a bunch of web pages.

Our next steps are to get even more eyeballs looking at EOL working with richer, more computable data. You helped us get off the ground, and we’re gaining momentum. The next five years are going to be even more exciting.

Key Features for Students

Students have the ability to search and apply for all types of NASA internship, fellowship, scholarship opportunities in one system. A single internship or fellowship application places students in the applicant pool for consideration by mentors for all NASA internships or fellowships.

Students may search other opportunities at the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute here:  http://gphi.umbc.edu/