America East Schools Team Up to Champion Sustainability

Whether or not it’s on the sphere, courtroom or monitor, UMass Lowell is normally competing towards the 9 different Division I colleges from the America East Conference.

However relating to sustainability, everyone seems to be on the identical crew.

America East just lately created a sustainability community that can give its 10 member establishments a chance to share finest practices, construct on present partnerships and collaborate on new inexperienced initiatives. The community is a partnership with the America East Academic Consortium, which facilitates educational and administrative collaboration between its colleges.

And UMass Lowell is taking the lead. Director of Sustainability Ruairi O’Mahony is serving because the community’s chair and can symbolize UML at month-to-month conferences together with Ruben Sanca ’09, ’10, assistant athletic director for administration.

“UMass Lowell is delighted to work with our America East companions in main this endeavor,” says Chancellor Jacquie Moloney. “We now have had large success in combining our athletic and sustainability efforts to complement our student-athletes and improve the fan expertise. By working collectively, America East colleges can carve out alternatives on the athletic, educational and operational fronts whereas advancing sustainability throughout the convention.”

“I’m actually enthusiastic about it. It’s going to be a slam dunk,” provides O’Mahony, who pitched the concept to convention leaders final summer time, sharing how UML’s Office of Sustainability and Athletic Department have labored collectively to make athletic services throughout campus extra power environment friendly and environmentally pleasant.

On the Tsongas Heart, as an illustration, UML put in a Grind2Energy meals waste recycling system in 2018, changing into the primary school campus within the Northeast to take action. The college has additionally put in high-efficiency LED lighting and trash and recycling bins produced from recycled milk jugs all through the world. Final yr, two electrical car charging stations were added within the enviornment’s car parking zone.

Picture by Ed Brennen

Utilizing these profitable initiatives as a mannequin, one of many community’s first priorities is to create a “inexperienced sports activities playbook” that athletic departments can use to information their decision-making on facility operations and advertising. The playbook is being developed in partnership with Casella Waste Techniques, which just lately named UML its “Innovator of the Year.”

“We’ve discovered that there are loads of value advantages of going inexperienced,” Sanca says. “A variety of corporations wish to sponsor and contribute to those inexperienced initiatives by means of strategic partnerships.”

Plans are additionally within the works for an in-person sustainability convention at UMass Lowell in June 2022 that can deliver collectively college students, school and workers from throughout America East, in addition to nationwide and worldwide specialists from the business.

“Because the member colleges begin to work collectively underneath a selected sustainability framework, it opens up enormous potential for us to go after analysis grants, shared educating alternatives and even joint power purchases,” O’Mahony says.

He cites Mechanical Engineering Prof. Christopher Niezrecki’s joint analysis mission on power resiliency with fellow America East establishment Stony Brook College as an ideal instance. Final fall, the collaborative mission acquired $7.36 million in funding from the U.S. Workplace of Naval Analysis.

Partaking student-athletes and groups in sustainability initiatives is one other community purpose.

Athletics brings visibility to loads of packages, and it’s essential that we use the platform we’ve got to handle these points.
-Ruben Sanca, asst. athletic director for administration.

“Athletics brings visibility to loads of packages, and it’s essential that we use the platform we’ve got to handle these points,” says Sanca, a former Olympic marathoner and standout distance runner for the River Hawks.

Sanca says present student-athletes might volunteer with sustainability efforts in the neighborhood, and the community might have interaction with alumni who’ve gone on to skilled enjoying careers.

He provides that a number of NCAA athletic conferences throughout the nation have began to give attention to sustainability points, led by the Pacific-12 Convention — which America East has used as a mannequin for its new community.

In 2019, UML joined the Green Sports Alliance, an environmentally targeted nonprofit group made up of practically 600 athletic leagues, groups and venues from world wide. 

Director of Athletics Peter Casey says the America East sustainability community is one other alternative for UML to develop its efforts on the regional and nationwide ranges.

“River Hawk Nation understands its obligation of defending the surroundings and stepping up our inexperienced sport,” Casey says. “With our college companions’ assist, one in all our objectives is to teach and inspire our workers, student-athletes, and followers to take their very own actions in serving to shield the surroundings.”

America East, which spans from Maine to Maryland, hopes to determine itself as a nationwide chief in sustainable practices, analysis and management.

“It is a high-stakes challenge,” provides Marsha Florio, government director of the America East Educational Consortium. “We look ahead to working collectively to achieve an understanding of what our campuses are doing on this space and constructing on it collectively as a bunch to create greener campus communities throughout the America East footprint.”