Grant goes to EcoReps
The residential colleges will get a lot greener now thanks to an Envision Grant recently awarded an EcoRep program proposal. Starting this semester, the program will receive $1,500 to pay a student in each college to encourage recycling, sustainability and energy conservation.
The EcoRep will have six main duties: facilitating recycling, reducing waste in the serveries, conserving energy, promoting environmental issues, maintaining contacts with Facilities Engineering and Planning and Housing and Dining and administering the Green Dorm Initiative, a program which certifies dorm rooms meeting certain environmentally friendly requirements, such as keeping thermostats at 76 degrees in the summer.
The EcoReps are paid eight dollars an hour for two to four hours of work per week. By making the position paid and outlining specific duties for it, Student Association Environmental Committee Chair Lauren Laustsen said she hoped to correct for inconsistencies in environmental efforts from college to college.
Laustsen, a Sid Richardson College senior, Environmental Club Vice President Jeremy Caves, Rice Student Green Building Initiative President Alex Tseng, RSVP Environmental Committee Chair Niki vonHedemann and Environmental Club publicist Jessica Coe collaborated on the proposal.
Envision Grant Administrator Jennifer Murray said the Envision Committee found the proposal both well-written and well-thought out.
“The committee was impressed with the quality of the proposal and believes this endeavor will go far in helping the Rice Community, as well as developing habits beneficial to students well beyond their time at Rice,” Murray said.
The EcoRep position, which will be similar to that of the Student Maintenance Representative in the colleges, is an expansion of a pilot program implemented last year at Martel College where one EcoRep for the entire university was appointed by Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson.
Sid Rich EcoRep Andrea Dinneen said the position was based on something she saw when studying abroad at Cambridge University. There, she said, dorms had designated students who helped make them more environmentally friendly.
The initial costs of the EcoRep program, which is estimated to cost $4,370 for the first semester, could be offset by the nearly $10,000 each college will save from switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs, implementing energy-saving programs on computers and moderating heating and air conditioning usage. The bulk of the money saved, an estimated $6,900 per college, would come from raising the thermostat two degrees in the summer and lowering it two degrees in the winter.
Dinneen, a senior, said she hopes the EcoRep position would gain enough momentum this year to continue after many of the founders had graduated.
“I’d like for people to really know about it and have it be something that goes beyond this year because I know a lot of people participating in it this year and people who helped create the program are graduating,” she said. “It would be great to get more people excited and interested so that they could get more involved in it for the next years.”
The EcoRep Program and Green Dorm Initiative was one of five projects proposed to the Leadership Rice Office. The other proposals were for the Rice Science Review, to Promote Awareness of North Korea, for Open Magazine, and for Project OASIS. One award from spring ‘07 for the Partnership for the Assistance of Immersion of Refugees is still receiving funding.
Envision Grants are funds open to all Rice students through Leadership Rice. First awarded in 1995, they were created by Advisor to the President Maryana Iskander (Wiess ‘97) who was SA president at the time. Envision Grants provide between $200 and $2,500 of startup funding to individual or group projects striving to impact both Rice and the larger community. Murray said her office looks for proposals that are well-conceived and thoroughly researched and show evidence that applicants have already made some contact with the different entities that would be involved in the project.
This academic year, in the hopes of increasing the number of applicants, there were only two rounds in the fall and spring to apply for the grants. In previous years, applications were accepted in the fall, winter and spring. However, Murray said her office still received the same number of proposals as it had in previous years, which is between five and eight applications per round.
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