The Johns Hopkins University has made a commitment to improving environmental stewardship and reducing negative impacts.  Focusing mainly on water consumption, energy use, solid waste, and storm water management, there are many opportunities to improve the profile of the Homewood campus.

Student Involvement

Students are a great resource, contributing fresh ideas and enthusiasm to ongoing environmental improvements on the Homewood campus.  Through student groups such as Students for Environmental Action (SEA), Hopkins Energy Action Team (HEAT), and Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), students have spearheaded many actions that have had the impact of reducing our energy consumption, improving the ecological foundations of the campus, increasing the recycling rates, and creating new designs for storm water management.

Institutionalizing Student Contributions

The premise of the “Green Idea Generator” is to leverage the interests and dedication of the students by matching them with faculty experts and operations professionals to identify meaningful new projects that can be implemented within one school year.  The addition of faculty oversight ensures that projects promote academic growth and learning.  The contributions of operations professional staff ensures that projects are focusing on areas of high concern and results are incorporated into broader operational objectives.

Structure of Green Idea Generator

Roughly 60 students, interested faculty, and professional staff convened on November 16, 2007 for a “kick-off” brainstorming session in which ideas for making the Homewood campus more sustainable were introduced, discussed, refined, and gauged for level of interest.  While members of the Sustainability Initiative offered suggestions, the students were the primary source of ideas and promoted the merits and benefits of each potential project idea.  Faculty and operations staff will evaluate the ideas and offer recommendations for refinement throughout the projects.  After the presentations and defense of ideas by students, participants chose the top three projects that they found most promising.  Of the 12 ideas presented, the three projects chosen were:

Waste Vegetable Oil Project     
Green Roof Project                      (link coming soon)
Paper Reduction Campaign      (link coming soon)

Details on specific projects are available on each group's webpage, including their progress, members, and faculty advisors.  For the remainder of the academic school year the groups will actively pursue the projects, completing the projects by the end of the school year.  The groups will then present their competed projects to school administrators, faculty, and peers.