EEOS Students Bike Toward a More Sustainable Campus

BUMP!—Bike for University of Massachusetts Power—is a sustainability initiative to reduce the campus energy footprint by introducing energy saving LED lighting systems and “energy bikes,” connecting exercise equipment to the electrical grid via generators to produce human powered electricity. On June 19, three members of the BUMP! team who are students in UMass Boston's Earth, Environmental, and Ocean Sciences Department (EEOS)—Hayley Schiebel (PhD student, EEOS), Kristin Osborne (PhD student, EEOS), and Vijaylaxsmi Kesavan (MSc, Environmental Sciences)—attended the Global Climate Coalition Workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was co-organized by Yale University, Fundação Getulio Vargas in Brazil, and UMass Boston. Along with several other international universities, including institutions such as the University of Copenhagen, the team benefited from an exchange of best practices and lessons in sustainability applications across diverse campus environments.

Schiebel, Osborne, and Kesavan were also fortunate to be a part of the UMass Boston delegation that attended Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held June 20–22. The numerous panels and workshops provided a broad offering of learning opportunities that catered to the varied skillset and academic interests of not only the team, but the faculty and fellows from the Center of Governance and Sustainability who formed the UMass Boston delegation in Rio.

Together with teammates Ian Paynter (PhD student, Marine Science) and Charles Major (undergraduate student, EEOS), the BUMP! team is poised to implement its new and improved sustainability initiative, honed with the collective support lent by the Global Climate Coalition Workshop. They look forward to collaborating with the institution's staff, faculty, and community at large in driving a community-based platform for promoting sustainability on campus. BUMP! plans to launch in the Fall 2012 with a smaller scale installation and will share progress updates with the University through a website currently under development.

The BUMP! Team would like to acknowledge the Chancellor's Office; the Earth, Environmental, and Ocean Sciences Department; the Center for Governance and Sustainability, and their partners for their support in making this incredible opportunity possible.