2009 Spring

“SCU’s Sustainability Squad Cuts the Crap at Preview Days” By Tracey Mangin

Every year accepted students have the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Santa Clara University during Preview Days. (April 18-19, 2009) SCU successfully made this year’s Preview Days more sustainable than ever. Invitations were sent via e-mail instead of through the mail, water was served in compostable cups instead of water bottles, tables at the table fair were given the option of pledging to be more sustainable, and the amount of waste was greatly reduced with the integration of composting. Twenty two students volunteered this weekend to assist guests with proper waste disposal during breakfast, lunch, and at snack station locations. These volunteers, comprised of members of the Sustainability Squad were diligent in their efforts to keep compostable and recyclable materials separated from landfill waste. The main task for these volunteers was to help those attending Preview Days separate their materials at resource recovery stations. (designated areas with bins marked for compost, recycling, and landfill waste) The students volunteering memorized which items were compostable (plates, utensils, napkins, food, and cups), recyclable (paper, plastic, glass, aluminum, and tin), and considered landfill waste (condiment packaging, chip bags, and ice cream wrappers). When guests came up to the resource recovery stations, members of the Sustainability Squad helped them sort their material and answered questions about sustainability at SCU.

Katrina Jaber (Class of 2012) remembers seeing volunteers last year when she attended Preview Days as a high school senior. Last year about five volunteers helped guests keep recyclables separated from all other material. In just one year the amount of volunteers for this event has more than quadrupled, and the amount of waste diverted has increased due to the integration of composting. In general, people were excited about how much of an emphasis was placed on sustainability. Parents were not only impressed with the fact that Santa Clara is making such an effort to reduce the amount of waste sent to the landfill, but also with the assistance provided by the Sustainability Squad. One parent commented that she could tell that the university as a whole really cares about sustainability because so many students were assisting as volunteers for the Sustainability Squad. Overall it seems that the weekend successfully conveyed the University’s commitment to sustainability.

Jenny Gore, Sustainability Intern & Tracey Mangin, Recycling

Intern, help a Preview Day attendee properly sort waste

EnviroNews

Newsletter of Santa Clara University Environmental Studies Institute

Volume XXX Spring 2009

What’s Inside…? ESI Seminar Series: Spring 2009………………………………………………..2 Fall 2009 Courses………………………………………………………………....2 GIS Lab Updates……....................................................................................……3 Team GIS Research cont’d....................................................................................4 USES & Sustainability Decathlon…………………………………………….....5 USES Agenda …………………...……………………………………………..6-7 Green Club’s Earth Week Events…………………………………..………...…8

SCU Celebrates Earth Day April 29th

Environmental Studies Institute SEMINAR SERIES

Spring 2009

April 3 What matters more than coffee: Why better livelihoods depend on more trade Beth Tellman (Environmental Studies) and Allie Dunne (Individual Studies) (Casa Italiana Commons) ___________________________________________________ April 17 The Global Warming Diet: Food Climate Connections Eugene Cordero, Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology, SJSU (KennedyCommons) _______________________________________________ Swimming with robots, and other Adventures of an eco-geek Mike Hamilton Ph.D., Blue Oak Ranch Reserve Director, University Of California, Natural Reserve System *(2:30-3:30 p.m. in Alumni Science 120) Co-sponsored with the Biology Department _______________________________________________ May 29 The Quicksilver Story: History and Legacy of California Mercury Mining Stephanie Hughes ChE P.E. Consulting Engineer/ Environmental Studies Lecturer, Santa Clara University

(Kennedy Commons) ***********************************************

Seminars are 12:00 p.m.1:00 p.m. *unless noted otherwise.

Join us for coffee and cookies at 11:45 a.m.

If you have a disability and require reasonable accommodations please call (408) 551-7086 at least 48 hours before the event.

Visit our website at www.scu.edu/envs

FRIDAYS AT NOON

Fall 2009 Courses: ENVS 1A: Critical Thinking & Writing I: Analyzing Green Rhetoric ENVS 2: Energy and the Environment ENVS 11: Intro to Environmental Science ENVS 11A: Cultures & Ideas I: Nature & Imagination ENVS 98: Outdoor Leadership Expedition ENVS 110: Statistics for Environ Science L&L ENVS 115: GIS in Environmental Science L&L ENVS 146: Agri, Env & Dev: Latin America ENVS 196: Environmental Education Praxis ENVS 198: Environmental Proseminar ENVS 199D: Interdisciplinary Research: ENVS

ENVS 11: Introduction to Environmental Science ENVS 120: Intro to Envt’l Law and Regulation ENVS 145: Environmental Technology

Summer 2009 Tentative Course Offerings

Hot Topics in Biology

April 22: Christelle Sabatier What do mad cows say about Alzheimer's Disease? April 29: Justen Whittall Next-Gen sequencing and its utility in ecology and evolution. May 6: Carol Kearns Still Bee there in a century? Examining the fate of pollinators in our modern world. May 13: Craig Stephens What the heck is MRSA and why should we care? May 20: Elizabeth Dahlhoff The state of the oceans May 27: Anja Rossinni Immortality: Can it be achieved? June 3: Sally Lehrman Science and the media: Race and human genetics.

*The above seminars take place on Wednesdays in Alumni Science 120 from 5:00-6:00 p.m.

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What’s New in ESI’s GIS Lab? If you have peeked into the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) lab lately, you probably saw several student groups hard at work. There is Lindsay’s “Team Sustainability” gearing up for several on- and off-campus events. Jenny Gore, Sustainability Intern, put together a very thorough and useful handout together titled, “Suggestions for Greener Living,” which is already frequently used for community outreach. GIS is a software that allows you to make cool maps with a number of overlays and to do a “spatial analysis” on your data. Recently “Team GIS” has expanded by several projects: Patty Guzman, who was recently joined by Betsy Purner, is using GIS and statistical analysis to investigate the determinants and effects of successful educational gardens in elementary schools throughout Santa Clara County (CA). The prime goal is to evaluate resource inequity and to provide a scientific basis for the establishment of county-wide elementary school garden education programs.

Cont’d on page 4 GIS Lab

*Attention**Attention**Attention**Attention**Attention**Attention**Attention* If you are interested in learning more about GIS, and using it for your own projects, consider taking

ENVS 115: GIS in the Environmental Sciences (Fall 2009) which meets MWF at 10:30 a.m.! It fulfils SCU’s Old Core technology requirement AND the New Core’s STS requirement. Many employers are looking for GIS skills! It has no prerequisites (you do NOT need to be a science major) and can be applied to almost any subject area! You will be able to do your own final project. Ask anyone from Team GIS about it.

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GIS Lab cont’d from page 3 Miranda Melen and Marta Langland are using GIS to investigate whether ethnic neighborhoods in San José carry most of the burden resulting from pollution and redevelopment. While the growth of industry (especially high-tech industry) in San José and the related restoration and redevelopment efforts along the Guadalupe River are generally perceived as improving the quality of life for the citizens of San José, the impact on low income and marginalized ethnic neighborhoods over the past decades has gone largely unrecognized. This must be seen as an environmental justice issue warranting systematic analysis.

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Our exchange student from the Universität Münster (Germany), Holger Fritze, has been at work expanding on a prior study by Iris Stewart-Frey using GIS and matlab scripts. He is examining if the very recent warm years have produced a statistically recognizable acceleration of snowmelt-dominated streamflow timing changes. He has also undertaken the Herculean task of visualizing this mass of data and is programming a Java application for Nasa World Wind. Hopefully we’ll have a demo of that very soon. If you have not met Holger yet, please stop by the GIS lab and say hi - he will be here until July 31st.

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Undergraduate Science & Engineering Symposium May 8th & 9th 2009, Kennedy Commons

We are happy to announce the 2nd Annual Undergraduate Science and Engineering Symposium (USES)! Due to the outstanding and diverse student research projects on our campus this year, we have expanded USES to two days in the afternoons of May 8th and 9th, 2009. In addition, on the morning of May 9th (9 a.m. – 12 p.m.) the seven Bay Area high schools competing in the Sustainability Decathlon will present their efforts to expand environmental education, conservation, and social responsibility at their schools. Please see here for more information: http://www.scu.edu/sustainability/service/decathlon2009.cfm The primary goal of USES is to bridge the gap between students and faculty, and to actively engage students in the many research opportunities here at Santa Clara University. Additional goals of this symposium and workshop are to expose newly declared majors to the research process, to improve recruitment and retention in the sciences, and to allow student researchers to present their work (or that of their labs) in a professional format. Although SCU students receive excellent hands-on learning in the classroom setting, active participation in research is a unique opportunity to apply their knowledge and creative thinking toward a distinct goal. USES not only allows students to highlight their accomplishments, it provides an avenue for younger students to learn about the research opportunities that can complement the rich academic experience here at SCU. The symposium will consist of sessions divided according to similar disciplines. The basic schedule for each of these sessions will be as follows: • 10 minute talks by students (3 – 5 talks per session) • An informal panel of the student researchers at the end of each session to answer questions on the talks. • Followed by a general discussion of careers and the culture of science in that discipline.

We will have coffee and snack breaks between sessions to allow students to interact with one another. On Friday evening, Dr. Heather Tallis of the Natural Capital Project will give a keynote address on careers in research science. Please see here for information on her work and the Natural Capital Project: http://naturalcapitalproject.org/people.html#Tallis. On Saturday evening we will finish the symposium with a reception & awards ceremony. FACULTY: Your participation in this event is critical to its success! Please attend and learn about your students accomplishments. If you are teaching a course this quarter with newly declared majors, please encourage (or even incentivize) students to attend. For more information, including full abstracts and agenda, please see the USES webpage: http://www.scu.edu/cas/environmentalstudies/research/uses/

2008 USES Participants

The St. Lawrence Academy Sustainability Decathlon team with their mentors, Rose Saltalamacchia & Maribel Alvarez. Katherine Quinn-Shea not pictured.

USES Agenda: 8 May 2009

(Presenting authors are underlined, advisors in parentheses)

Session I: Biology & Biochemistry

Jason Buenrostro and Michelle Mattson (C. Stephens & J. Whittall) “Program for data acquisition: Measuring gene expression in real time”

Debbie Caswell, Justen Jarrell, Brenda Alvarez, Rachel Badua, Tim Butler, Margaux Chan, Stephanie Chin, Christina Eavis, Alyssa Erickson-Wagner, Kendra Garcia, Rachel Munsen, Whitney Porter, Matt Weiss, & Kekaui Zukeran-Kerr (C. Stephens & A. Lieu) “Evolution of the Lac repressor family as a control system for digesting plant polymers in the aquatic bacterium Caulobacter crescentus.”

Dana Honzel (G. Jensen) “Antioxidants: fighting crime to keep you healthy ”

Alexandra M. Lewis, Christelle Sabatier & John T. Birmingham (J.T. Birmingham & C. Sabatier) “Excitatory Actions of GABA on a Stomatogastric Muscle in the crab Cancer borealis”

Christopher M. Rose, Mary E. Lucas, John T. Birmingham & Steven W. Suljak (J.T. Birmingham & S. Suljak)

“Determination of GABA Concentration in the Hemolymph of Cancer borealis through LC-MS analysis”

Session II: Engineering

Ke Li, Raymond Wu, Xuhui Sun, Wen Wu, Shoba Krishnan, & Cary Y. Yang (S. Krishnan) “Contact resistance in carbon nanotube interconnect vias”

Navid Akhavan Tafti , Toshiage Yamada, & Cary Y. Yang (T. Yamada) “A study on quantum capacitance and kinetic inductance in nanostructures”

Zefram Marks, John Jameson, Xuhui Sun & Cary Y. Yang (J. Jameson) “Electrical breakdown of carbon nanofibers due to direct and Joule heating ”

Laura Huston, Erin Justice, David Krauth, Jimmy Mack and Siddhartha Oza (A. Strawa, J. W. Skiles, M. Legg, & C. Schmidt) “Using NASA satellites to improve air quality monitoring in the San Joaquin Valley”

Daniel Bates (I. Stewart-Frey & E. Maurer) “Development of a GIS database to evaluate climate-induced streamflow timing changes in California”

Thomas Lloyd-Davies (D. Wahl) “Analysis of macroscopic charcoal amounts in Guatemalan lake sediment cores”

Session III: Environmental Science

Patty Guzmán, Betsy Purner, Miranda Melen, Marta Langland, & Kimee Goeggel (I. Stewart-Frey & P. Archie) “The garden as an experiential classroom: The dirt on educational gardens for Santa Clara County elementary schools”

Miranda Melen & Marta Langland (I. Stewart-Frey & P. Dicochea) “Improving the quality of life for everyone? Ethnic neighborhoods in San José bear the brunt of pollution and redevelopment” Keynote Address: Dr. Heather Tallis, Natural Capital Project

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USES Agenda: 9 May 2009

(Presenting authors are underlined, advisors in parentheses)

Session IV: Costa Rica Field School & Ecology

Michelle Bezanson “Field work and field schools”

Christinah Barnett (M. Bezanson) “The ecological role of the prehensile tail in black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi)”

Kelly Ferron (M. Bezanson & S. Watts) “Focal fecal follow of fascinating feces: The fundamental function of primate frugivores in the rainforest”

Christina Hagerty (S. Watts & M. Bezanson) “Leafcutter ants (Atta sp): A systematic and observational study of pheromone usage”

Christopher Melisi (S. Watts & M. Bezanson) “The effects of microhabitat type on poison dart frog populations (Dendrobates auratus, Dendrobates pumilio, and Phylobates lugubris)”

Kristin Sterling (M. Bezanson & S. Watts) “Canopy density and animal interactions with the river”

Khaaliq Dejan (J. Edgerly-Rooks) “Vibrational communication: A language of its own” Session V: Sociology & Environmental Studies

Dr. Regina Davis-Sowers “The need for interdisciplinary research at the undergraduate level in the search for social justice”

Meghan Mooney, (L. Calero) “Working at the margins: Access to recycling cooperatives as a means of social inclusion for catadores (waste pickers) in Salvador, Brazil”

Nick Obradovich (mentor?) “Declining smoking rates and burgeoning obesity: the law of unintended consequences”

Elizabeth Tellman (L. Gray) “Can poverty be solved by exporting cash crops? A case study of two coffee farms in El Salvador”

Alexandra Dunne (L. Gray) “Quality of life: The impacts of gender, emigration, health, and education in coffee-producing communities.”

M. Klipa (J. Farnsworth) “How much energy could the university save by simply implementing an energy plan in the Library?”

Pizza & Awards Ceremony

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Laughlin Barker, Ulistac Intern visits a booth at the 6th annual Celebration of California Plants at Ulistac Natural Area

EnviroNews is prepared by Leah Nakasaki. Comments or Suggestions? Send to [email protected].

www.scu.edu/envs

Environmental Studies Institute Santa Clara University 500 El Camino Real

Santa Clara, CA 95053

Phone: (408) 551-7086Fax: (408) 554-2312

ESI Email: [email protected] Website: www.scu.edu/envs

The events for GREEN Club's Earth Week are as follows: 4/27 9 AM - 1PM Trash Audit on Santa Clara Mall Santa Clara students dig through dumpsters to sort out everything that should have been recycled 4/27 7 - 9PM Film "Journey to Planet Earth" on Kennedy Lawn Movie featuring Matt Damon about the human impact on our planet 4/29 9 AM - 1 PM Earth Day Festival on Santa Clara Mall Festival promoting sustainability! Activities will include tie dye, rock climbing, reusable bag decorating, face painting, and a variety of vendors and SCU Clubs representatives. 4/29 9 PM - 1 AM Battle of the Bands in the Bronco [email protected] 4/30 7 - 9PM Slow Food Dinner in Kennedy Commons Come learn to cook food that is delicious, healthy, and sustainable.

For more information on these events, please contact Kate Bradley, GREEN Club Representative [email protected]

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