The UA Visitor Center, on the corner of University Blvd. and Euclid Ave., is the first place prospective UA students and families go to find information, take a campus tour, and get their first feel of what the University of Arizona stands for.
Members of ECOalition, a UA student organization, are working with the Visitors Center administration, UA Facilities Management, West University neighborhood, Tucson Electric Power (TEP), Technicians for Sustainabilty, and UA faculty to transform this building into one which exemplifies environmental stewardship and serves as a model for sustainable campus facilities in the future.
Planned improvements to the Visitors Center emphasize solar energy and rainwater harvesting. Cisterns will collect and store roof runoff for use in outside irrigation, and passive rainwater harvesting techniques such as microbasins will supply water to native plants. TEP is donating photovoltaic panels through their Greenwatts program.
Educational signs, funded through the Metropolitan Energy Commission (MEC), will be affixed to tabletops in sitting areas to explain these improvements to visitors and the campus community. The makes the Visitors Center a functional "green" facility and an educational tool.
For more information about this project, contact Leona Davis:
A recent goal of ECOalition was to construct a map and database using geographic information systems (GIS) which show all potential water-harvesting sites on the University of Arizona's campus. Creating the database required a collaborative effort among students, professors, and the staff of Facilities Management. A group of three students from ECOalition and Dr. James Riley's rainwater harvesting class (SWES 454) led fieldwork around campus and mapped the elements involved in rainwater harvesting. The final product, which is near completion, will be given to Facilities Management to help that office better locate sites on campus that have water-harvesting potential.
For more information about this project, contact Renee Johns:
As part of the SWES 454 course, students are split into groups to tackle various water harvesting projects associated with the University of Arizona. During spring semester of 2007, the construction of a water harvesting display at the Tucson International Airport was among these projects. Casey Ferns (a senior majoring in wildlife and conservation management), Cody Dieffenbach, and Kaolin Young (both environmental science majors) worked from February through the end of June to complete it. They spent all but the last two months brainstorming about the approach that would best represent the importance of harvesting rainwater in arid lands. They met with several people from the Tucson Airport Authority and consulted with their professor, Dr. Riley. The students developed the design (the house, window frame, roof, and cistern) as an image of progress and possibility.
The display is located at the airport in the east corridor past the baggage claim on the lower floor (on the way to the car rental garage).
The students would like to give a special thanks to the Tucson International Airport for donating the case and Habitat for Humanity's Habistore for its supply donations.
For more information, contact Kaolin at:
Solar stills can take polluted water and convert it very simply to pure, clean water through the process of evaporation and condensation. This was the motivating principle behind a series of graduate seminars on the subject of solar stills. In 2004, the first class wrote a successful proposal for a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's People, Places and Prosperity (P3) program, with the goal of providing solar stills capable of removing arsenic from the local groundwater to the small Mexican community of El Ejido del Desierto in northern Sonora, Mexico.
The following year's seminar class designed and evaluated a prototype passive-system solar still that has been delivered to the local school in El Ejido del Desierto and has offered to provide the materials for more stills. Several bilingual students provided support to the school to explain the still's basic operation and maintenance.
Finally, a third seminar developed a 'mini' still that has been incorporated into MESA's (Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement) southern Arizona student design competition for the past two years. The goal of the competition is to design a small still that produces the cleanest water during a fixed time trial.
Please contact Jim Washburne for more information:
© 2008 Arizona Board of Regents
