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), Energy Action Reduction Team at Hopkins(EARTH), and the Sustainable Hopkins Infrastructure Program (SHIP), 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

Students, interested faculty, and professional staff will convene for a “kick-off” brainstorming session in which ideas for making the Homewood campus more sustainable will be introduced, discussed, refined, and gauged for level of interest.  While members of the Sustainability Initiative will offer suggestions, the students will be the primary source of ideas and will be expected to promote 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.  Once the ideas have been presented and defended by students, participants will chose the top one or two projects that are the most promising. 

Over the next month, the groups will form project leaders and divide the research and project development tasks among group members. Each group will have at least one faculty member and one operations staff member as an advisor. During the second meeting, both groups will convene and present the details of their project, along with timelines and specific elements needed to complete the project successfully. The discussions with help further refine the proposals into workable projects.

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 completed projects to school administrators, faculty and peers.

Please complete and submit the appropriate application based on your need for funding to Kim Dubansky at kldubansky@gmail.com by October 22nd:

Proposals requiring funding
Proposals not requiring funding

For more information contact Saharsh Patel at sapatel89@gmail.com.

The Green Idea Generator will take place on Friday, October 23rd at 2pm in Mattin 162.