Category: Colleges and universities

Linda Hall Library Fellowships 2018/19

The Linda Hall Library is excited to announce its 2018/19 fellowships. The Library awards diverse funding opportunities to pre- and post-doctoral scholars of exceptional promise in the history of science and related areas of science and technology studies. The Library offers scholars a setting for deep immersion in outstanding collections of primary and secondary sources as well as stimulating intellectual exchange with other fellows, in-house scholars, and members of the surrounding scholarly community. Fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis to support residential research stays from one week up to a full academic year for research that makes use of the Library’s outstanding collections. All fellowship applications are due January 19, 2018.

For the academic year 2018/19, the Linda Hall Library is proud to once again offer a 80/20 Fellowship. To prepare graduate students for diverse career possibilities within and outside the academy, 80/20 pre-doctoral fellows will spend 80% of their time pursuing dissertation-related research in the Library’s collections and 20% of their time working with a mentor to curate an exhibition that relates to his/her scholarly interest but is intended for the broader public. The 80/20 fellow will also oversee the planning, research, and installation of the exhibition and hold a public gallery talk in conjunction with the exhibition opening. All 80/20 Fellowships are 10 months in length and only pre-doctoral scholars are eligible to apply.

The Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, has emerged as one of the foremost independent science and technology libraries in the country. Its extensive primary- and secondary-source holdings document the sciences, technology, and engineering disciplines from the 15th century to the present. The collections are especially strong in the following areas: natural history, astronomy, engineering, physical sciences, life sciences, environmental studies, non-western sciences, Cold War sciences, earth sciences, infrastructure studies, aeronautics, and mathematics. The Library holds more than 500,000 monograph volumes (with over 10,000 rare books) and more than 48,000 journal titles, including a complete set of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, beginning in 1665.

For more information and to apply to fellowships, visit: http://www.lindahall.org/fellowships/

Beyond the Right Thing to Do: The Value of Sustainability in Higher Education

Download the document.

Discover how sustainability is smart business for higher education and learn how to more powerfully articulate the value of sustainability.

Soil Education Lesson Plans from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service

The Natural Resources Conservation Service has a variety of soil education lesson plans available for all ages (K-College). They also have training materials available for employees of agencies participating in the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS).

A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Wasted Food Assessment with the Reducing Wasted Food and Packaging Toolkit

This webinar series, part of U.S. EPA’s Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Web Academy, provides comprehensive guidance on conducting a tracking assessment using EPA’s Reducing Wasted Food & Packaging Toolkit. The toolkit includes a guide and a tracking spreadsheet to assist commercial and institutional food services in tracking and reducing their food and packaging waste by implementing reduction strategies. Reducing food and packaging waste saves money, reduces the environmental impacts of waste, and improves organizational image.

For more resources on reducing food waste, visit EPA’s Sustainable Management of Food site. The Tools for Preventing and Diverting Wasted Food page is particularly useful.

Food Loss Prevention Options for Grade Schools, Manufacturers, Restaurants, Universities and Grocery Stores

Businesses and organizations can learn to effectively prevent wasted food by taking source reduction steps such as inventorying supplies, changing processes and buying less. EPA has developed tip sheets for grade schools, food manufacturers, restaurants, universities and grocery stores that provide suggestions for ways these sectors can prevent food loss and waste.

EPA Launches 6th Annual Campus RainWorks Challenge

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching its sixth annual Campus RainWorks Challenge, a design competition that is open to colleges and universities across the country. EPA seeks to engage with students to foster a dialogue about responsible stormwater management, and showcase the environmental, economic, and social benefits of green infrastructure practices.
Registration for the 2017 Challenge is open from September 1 through September 30. Student teams must register in order to submit their entries by December 15. Winners will be announced in the Spring of 2018. Each first-place team will earn a student prize of $2,000 to be divided evenly among student team members and a faculty prize of $3,000 to support green infrastructure research or training. Second-place teams will win $1,000 for student teams and a $2,000 faculty prize.
Water pollution associated with stormwater runoff requires infrastructure solutions that are innovative, resilient, and affordable. Today’s scholars are tomorrow’s design professionals. The Campus RainWorks Challenge will harness their creativity and knowledge to jointly advance the agency’s mission to protect public health and water quality.

‘Zero-Waste’ Efforts May Lead Sports Stadiums Astray, Study Suggests

Read the full story from Environmental Leader. Read the full study here.

Sporting venues interested in reducing GHG emissions, energy use, and trips to the landfill may actually be shortchanging themselves by focusing too closely on the concept of reaching “zero waste,” according to researchers at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Rather, two specific aspects of waste reduction seem to far outweigh the rest in terms of reducing emissions or energy use: eliminating edible food waste, and recycling.