AASHE Conference-UST Campus Tour

Join us for a tour highlighting grassroots, collaborative efforts at the University of St. Thomas to design and implement sustainable infrastructure and curricular innovations that also serve as experimental platforms for student research and collaborative community initiatives. We'll start at the UST Stewardship Garden, one of our three research gardens that combine urban agriculture research with community outreach. We'll visit the aquaponics research facility, which serves as a platform for interdisciplinary student research on converting eutrophic urban lakes into food production centers to improve water quality. We'll tour our two greenhouses and see how a student-run experiment growing vegetables with vermicomposted coffee grounds launched an innovative program distributing produce to corner stores in low-income neighborhoods. Along the way, we'll view several student-led campus sustainability projects. We'll also highlight curricular initiatives including a new Sustainability Living Learning Community and view independent student research projects focused on sustainability. In addition to these grassroots efforts, we'll tour the LEED Gold certified Anderson Student Center. We'll end the tour with a round table discussion that we hope will provide us with ideas and guidance about how to infuse more sustainability initiatives into our curriculum, campus life, and institutional structure.

The tour will take place on 10/28

9-9:30am:  Stewardship Garden and Brightside students  

9:30-10am:   Living Learning Community in Geology lab 

10am-10:20am:  Aquaponics in OWS Greenhouse

10:20-10:30:  Walk to ASC and view CSF projects along the way

10:30am-10:50am:  Cookie/coffee break in ASC; Student research poster display and informal discussion of integrating sustainability across curriculum

10:50-11:10am: Tour of ASC solar panels  

11:10-11:30am:  ASC LEED Gold certification tour