Ecologue

Our students are OSU’s greatest resource. Not only because they are the future, but also because they are intensely interested in how the campus is operated.
Due to this ever-increasing interest, the Sustainability Office has begun a series of pilot partnerships with various academic units. In these partnerships, we offer students an opportunity for [...]

I’ve been asked a few times by administrators to investigate what energy savings OSU might see if we shifted to a 4 day workweek (each day 10 hours).  I don’t plan on posting my rather lengthy response here unless someone requests it.  But the short answer is, there is indeed some net energy savings potential [...]

The new OSU Sustainability website went live moments ago, and we’re still working through some issues and have some minor cleanup/fixing to do over the next few days, so please bear with us!
Along with much of OSU, we made the switch to using Drupal to maintain and expand our website.  Honestly, I was reluctant to [...]

Hello everybody,
For the past seven years, the Society for College and University Planning has planned a major webcast in October, when many colleges and universities celebrate their sustainability initiatives. I’m particularly excited about the program this year, because of the cross-section of panelists, and the program moderator is Andy Revkin, science editor for The New [...]

Who doesn’t like upgrades? We sure do, especially when the final result allows us to spend less time and effort with maintenance. Enter our new website, backed by Drupal. I am moving right along with converting our website into a more user (and management) friendly version. With some delays, I hope to have the new [...]

Today, May 13, marks the middle of a two week OSU test to see how much energy – electricity specifically – can be saved by wider implementation of computer power management settings.
While it may seem pretty trivial to look at powering down computers and monitors when not in use, the savings add up.  While we [...]

With apologies for the gap between blog entries, I thought it might be time to write a little (or a lot) more about the installation of “human power” harvesting at our Dixon Recreation Center.
The press coverage OSU received as a result of this innovative installation exceeded even my expectations, and responses have been overwhelmingly positive.  [...]

For years, people have been asking me and others at OSU why we don’t harness all that energy from people working out on stationary bikes and other exercise equipment.  There were some very good technical reasons, including a gap in technology available to convert this intermittent energy into the alternating current that buildings use.  One [...]

Happy New Year, everyone.  I’ve been getting some questions about what OSU is doing for the National Teach-In event coming up in February.  In an effort to be more efficient and avoid suffering from event overload (as well as speaker and audience competition), Linn Benton Community College and OSU are working cooperatively on two events [...]

This winter’s shaping up to be a stormy one, with major storms hitting before our transition to winter (the 21st of this month)  and more likely to come.  Roads are slick and sidewalks perilous; however, we are members of a university that never seems to close, so we must make our way nonetheless.
Biking is almost [...]