Dominion Foundation Grant Fuels Conservation Efforts on Campus

In the spring of 2012, a grant was created by Dominion Foundation to, “Encourage the development of programs for post-secondary students aimed at developing a skilled work force in areas critical to Dominion,” according to the foundation’s website. The Corporate Foundations and Government Relations Office contacted Josh Stoffel, the Sustainability Manager at Conn, about applying for it.
“Once I was notified about the Dominion grant, I began pulling together ideas for a grant proposal with help from a number of students, specifically Genevieve Harding ’13, the COST Program Coordinator, Peter Horgan, our Manager of Energy Systems and Dr. Chad Jones,” said Stoffel. “Together we pulled together a grant proposal for this opportunity.”
Conn was awarded a grant of $40,000. According to Stoffel, it will be used for the “Establishment of a student-led energy conservation and engagement program that we are calling the ‘Reduce Your Use’ program.” The money will be used to monitor five buildings on campus and limit the energy consumption in each. A Program Coordinator will oversee all the activity in the particular building to which he/she is assigned.
“The program coordinators will use a variety of community-based social marketing techniques to help support building occupants to adopt more sustainable, low-energy behaviors,” Stoffel said. “They will also participate in discussions about how to engage with people about energy conservation who wouldn’t normally be interested in such a topic.”
Mary Buchanan ’14 is one of those program coordinators. “Our jobs are funded by the grant,” Buchanan said. “Basically our goal is to work with the people who work in these buildings to reduce energy use in ways that are going to be compatible with their work and sustainable over the long haul.”
Buchanan is in charge of reducing the energy in Hale Laboratory. The other four buildings targeted are Blaustein, Becker House, Cummings and Olin.
“We don’t want to hassle anyone, so part of our job is figuring out how we can engage with people about energy issues in ways that will resonate with what they care about. We also want to make it easier and more convenient for them to adopt energy-saving behaviors,” Buchanan said.
The goal is to get everyone on campus involved with tracking energy consumption in the buildings, which is why the academic buildings most frequently used are being targeted.
“They [the program coordinators] are very conscious about the fact that only a small percentage of people care enough about the environment to change their behaviors. Thus, they will be also using other facets of energy conservation to engage people,” said Stoffel.
The economic effect of energy consumption is one of the other facets of energy conservation.
“Even students who aren’t that interested in the environment might care about the economic consequences of wasting energy, because money that the college saves on energy usage can then be used for plenty of other things instead,” Buchanan said.
Natalie Bennett ’16 agrees with this, “If it’s only in academic buildings, I don’t think I will be affected much because I don’t spend that much time in them, but it does make sense to try to reduce the energy consumption as a whole because of the economic costs associated with the overuse of these resources.”
Another way the program coordinators are getting the campus community involved is through electrical meters.
“The grant is also providing funds for the installation of electrical meters in each of the five target buildings,” said Stoffel. “With the installations of these meters, the students will be able to track energy consumption over time and to see if their efforts have any impact on the energy consumption in their building over time.”
This program is a surefire way to get more people involved with sustainability on campus. “I think this is a good idea because it’s a way to give people information without overloading them with it; it’s subtle and more universal than something that will just affect a club and it will be throughout the whole year and years to come,” said Alex Tritto ’16.
Since this is just the beginning of the program at Conn, the Office of Sustainability and the program coordinators are hoping to shape this program so it can be built upon in the upcoming years.
“We have designed the program to allow each program coordinator to develop a deep understanding of the people who utilize their assigned building, so that they can use the community-based social marketing techniques and support information that will have the biggest impact on their target audience,” said Stoffel.
Buchanan agreed, adding, “Once we know more about how to successfully reduce energy usage in these buildings, we’ll be able to apply that knowledge on a wider scale across campus.”