Advancements in manufacturing technologies have allowed 3D printers to literally become household items, making them relatively inexpensive rapid prototyping devices for engineering, research, and teaching purposes. This has made them incredibly common on UW’s campus, as they can be found in many classrooms, engineering spaces, and laboratories across disciplines. This invaluable resource has come with a significant environmental drawback as a large amount of the material (known as filament) used to create 3D prints is wasted in the process of creating a final print.
3D Printer Material Recycling Program
Amount Awarded: $8,910
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
8th Annual Legacy Soiree - Black Student Union
Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed
This formal celebration and banquet centers excellence within the black communities at the University of Washington and in the greater Seattle area. More importantly however, the Legacy Soiree is an essential effort in creating a scholarship for underrepresented students.
Africa Now Conference [Virtual]
Amount Awarded: $20,500
Project Status: Completed
The African continent is home to the largest youth population in the world. With the increased access to information and new platforms to mobilize, youth across the continent are fighting to address corruption and create ways to contribute to the growth of their specific country. This revolution is one that cannot be ignored; the African continent has abundant resources and limitless potential that generally goes unacknowledged and continues to be exploited by outside actors.
Bike Tube Upcycling
Amount Awarded: $800
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase
The ASUW Bike Shop is a student run, full repair bicycle resource for UW students, staff and faculty. Through its affordable drop-off services, do-it-yourself repair, and maintenance classes, the shop seeks to make biking accessible for the UW community as a sustainable alternative to other modes of transportation. The Bike Shop continuously looks to support the campus cycling community’s commitment to climate response. Every year the Bike Shop generates between 150 to 250 pounds of used tube waste, as recycling centers do not accept bike tubes.
BIOSWALE UW: San Juan Basin Regional Green Stormwater Infrastructure Facility
Amount Awarded: $92,568
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
In the first phase of BIOSWALE UW, the student-led team will support and engage with the piloting of a regional green stormwater treatment approach being conducted through the design and construction of the San Juan Basin Green Stormwater Infrastructure Regional Treatment Facility (SJB-GSI) in conjunction with the new Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB) in south campus. Through CSF funding, BIOSWALE UW will contribute a portion of the material costs of the SJB GSI.
Camas Meadows Monitoring at Burke Museum
Amount Awarded: $20,481
Project Status: Completed
With this project, we are proposing a highly collaborative approach to work directly with the Burke Museum and their representatives to engage in the interpretive planning practices and approaches already being developed for the recently installed, on-site Camas Meadow by museum staff and partners. Through this process we anticipate learning a tremendous amount regarding the historical and contemporary importance of this habitat type and source of nourishment for the Indigenous tribes of the Coast Salish region and all of Washington State.
Carbon-Labeling Initiative
Amount Awarded: $140
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
This project is beginning a carbon-labeling initiative at the University of Washington which would bring awareness to the campus community about the environmental impacts associated with the food agriculture business and allow for people to make more environmentally conscious decisions with their food consumption habits. We are doing this by displaying informative posters on campus food stores and dining halls with an estimated amount of CO2 emissions and water intake it takes to produce particular food products.
Electrochromic Glazing System for UW Health Sciences Education Building
Amount Awarded: $65,000
Project Status: Completed
The electrochromic glazing system will contribute to UW campus sustainability by maximizing energy performance, and improving the classroom experience while showcasing a building envelope technology that sets new sustainability standards on campus. It is necessary for University of Washington to invest in new building technologies that can reduce building energy consumption while at the same time improving the student experience and supporting the institutional mission of the University.
Food System Coalition Campus-Wide Dolores Documentary Screening
Amount Awarded: $962
Project Status: Completed
In-line with our mission to increase UW community awareness of local and national food systems topics and issues, we are planning a free documentary screening for spring quarter at the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center Theatre. We will be showing the documentary, Dolores, which is about Dolores Huerta, a civil rights activist and the co-founder, along with Cesar Chavez, of the National Farmworkers Association (now United Farm Workers).
Fresh Food Recovery for the UW Food Pantry
Amount Awarded: $22,091
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
The UW Food Pantry is a flagship project of the Any Hungry Husky Initiative, which works to address food insecurity on the University of Washington-Seattle Campus. The Food Pantry provides foodstuffs such as canned goods, grains, fresh produce, and ready-to-eat meals free of charge to any Husky Card-holding student, staff member, or faculty member. The Food Pantry is currently undergoing a phase of rapid growth: in the last 24 months, total visits have increased over 500% from 748 visits in the 2017-18 academic year to 3,845 in the first two quarters of the 2019-20 year.
Healthy building certification for the UW Tower – education and demonstration
Amount Awarded: $999
Project Status: Completed
The student team would like to use the UW Tower, in particular, the newly renovated UW-IT space to demonstrate how to create a healthy workplace. Students in Professor Kim’s CESI 599 course will participate in a quarter long measurement and verification of indoor air quality, light, and other comfort criteria in addition to identifying and documenting relevant strategies that promote healthy workspace. The end product is to use the narratives as support documents to certify the newly renovated UW IT space as the possible Fitwel building.
Heron Haven Restoration
Amount Awarded: $35,000
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
Home to the largest Douglas-fir on campus and an imperiled heron rookery, Heron Haven has the profound potential to become a thriving, biologically-rich greenspace that students, faculty, and staff can engage with. If ‘empty’ spaces on the UW campus were looked at through the lens of an ecologist, many would be identified as ecologically unhealthy and in need of remediation. Heron Haven is currently one of these unhealthy spaces. Though the site beautifully frames a view of Mt.
Improving the Benefit-to-Carbon Cost Ratio for University of Washington Air Travel
Amount Awarded: $5,399
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase
With UW air travel nearly eliminated to reduce the spread of COVID-19, the UW community is looking to rethink our options. We want to take this opportunity to examine the unique benefits of travel to UW students, faculty, and staff in the context of the high cost of emissions from travel - especially as technological solutions for remote collaboration and learning are being rapidly improved and culturally normalized.
Living Art
Amount Awarded: $950
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
Working with the Office of Student Veterans, Living Art, is exploring the therapeutic benefits of artwork being turned into living art (living walls). There are many healing and therapeutic benefits from living walls, including increased productivity and relaxation and we aim to improve spaces associated with student veterans. We hope to bring visual therapeutic benefits, beauty, and overall enjoyment to students in the HUB, particularly students in the study areas.
No-Till Soil Health and Weed Management Toolkit
Amount Awarded: $14,500
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
The UW Farm will use this grant to purchase innovative new tools that will allow us to build soil health and sequester carbon in the soil for the long-term. Scientists and farmers have demonstrated that the long-term effects of agricultural tillage, or soil disturbance, can be devastating for soils. We will use these tools to reduce the amount of tillage that we do on the UW Farm, improve our efficiency, and create healthy, sustainable, production systems.
@uwfarm - instagram;
UW Farm - facebook
Preserving Natya UW
Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed
Natya UW is the University of Washington’s premier Indian Classical Dance team that strives to showcase the beautiful art form to a wide range of audiences. As members of the Indian Classical Dance circuit, we have opportunities every year to compete against Indian Classical Dance teams from other universities around the country. At these competitions, each team showcases a dance that communicates a story and/or overall theme about humanity.
Project IF - Phase II
Amount Awarded: $150,000
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
Project Indoor Farm (Project IF) is an organization run by students and community members aiming to create a more sustainable campus food system through urban indoor farming.
We envision three phases of operation for Project IF:
Phase I: Feasibility study (completed in December 2019)
Phase II: Full operation on the University of Washington campus (2020 and on)
Phase III: Transfer the successful experience to other suitable organizations (2022 and on)
Racial Justice and Equity in Environmental Science and Beyond
Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed
Amid the ongoing protests that followed the death of George Floyd, the student-led Diversity and Inclusion Group (DIG) in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences organized a department-wide conversation on race. Participating graduate students, faculty, postdoctoral researchers and department staff discussed problems and solutions within small groups and a consensus emerged that, as a precursor to becoming more anti-racist, we must educate ourselves about the history and the present day manifestation of racism within our field.
Student Sustainability Forum
Amount Awarded: $600
Project Status: Completed
Due to their overarching, multigenerational nature, the ongoing climate, environmental, and consequential social crises must inform decisions made in every field and profession. Although the current and impending destabilization resulting from these crises call for unified action, the global response has been disappointing at best. Even in a university famed for innovation and progress our actions have been inexcusably meager.
Sustainable Pots and Clamshells from Pulp Mold
Amount Awarded: $67,500
Project Status: Active: Planning phase
The goal of this project is to obtain a pulp molding machine capable of making sustainable pots to replace the plastic ones currently being used in the UW nursery. The result will be a decrease in plastic waste being generated, as well as less water and chemicals being consumed to clean the pots. The new pots will also utilize non-woody materials such as wheat straw, brewers spent grain, and even ivy collected from across campus.