Final Personal Project Post

The final results of the Energy Challenge came my way this past week which was exactly what I needed to round out my personal project. From the beginning, I had wanted to devise ways to get residents involved in sustainability measures in their own community and the Energy Challenge was a great vehicle to test that with. Leading up to this past week, I had no idea how Teter Quad had fared in saving energy and water during the month of October and whether or not the programming I conducted with students had made any sort of impact on actual usage.

Below is the breakdown of how much electricity and water Teter Quad used during the challenge in relation to their baseline. Here, the baseline is calculated by taking the previous year's usage and correcting that data with base 65 heating degree days (L. Walters, personal communication, December 4, 2013). The units are percentages of baseline usage on any given day, i.e. on October 17, Teter Quad used 115% of their baseline resource usage as calculated from the previous year.

What I was interested in is if there was any correlation between the programming I put on and a drop in usage after the programs. The programs we held in Teter revolving around the Energy Challenge were a movie night on Tuesday, October 29 and an Ugly Sweater Party on Friday, November 1. The basic idea of the Challenge was explained to residents and there was food and prizes available at both events to entice participation. Unfortunately, in looking at the data, there doesn't seem to be much correlation between the events and the impact it had on usage. In fact, it seems the opposite may have occurred. Between October 29 and the end of the challenge, resource usage increased a few percentage points compared to the baseline. 

This is discouraging, considering that I actually got a lot of positive response from residents verbally and in a short survey we administered at the events. The students who did attend (approximately 80 total between the two events) admitted to understanding more about sustainability after the events and even said they would use that new knowledge in their daily lives moving forward. I suppose this is a small proportion of the Teter Quad population (about 14%) so the effect that small of a group can have on a larger building may be minimal. 

However, in a way, I still see this project as a success. The fact that 80 student attended programs dedicated to sustainability and conserving energy and positively received the programs is supremely exciting and I hope to ride that momentum into next semester's challenge.

Moving forward, in reviewing my plans for the RA sustainability workshop I will be conducting in the spring, I would love to get the feedback of RA's to use to tweak the presentation. Then, with an edited and honed down presentation, I would hope to use the presentation to inform many student groups in the residence halls about the importance of sustainability. This could include floor communities, student governments, community councils, academic leadership councils, etc. The opportunity to train so many students in short little increments is immense in the residence halls and I look forward to exploring this idea in the upcoming semester.