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A six-member Technology Clinic team is working to find environmentally-friendly alternatives to some of the College’s current practices.
Tech Clinic is a hands-on course founded in 1986 that brings together students from different majors to help solve the real-world problems of a business, non-profit organization, or government body.
The team consists of Trustee Scholar and biology major Katie Hamerslag ’08 (Martinsville, N.J.); history and government & law major Sara Walter ’09 (Kempton, Pa.); mathematics-economics major Felix Forster ’09 (Rostock, Germany); anthropology and sociology major Doug Appel ’08 (Marlboro, N.J.); and A.B. engineering majors Matt Vanderwall ’08 (Webster, N.Y.) and Ashley Luke ’08 (Scarsdale, N.Y). Team facilitators are Dan Bauer, professor of anthropology and sociology, and Will Dohe, AIA of R+D Architecture in Easton.
Earlier this month, the students presented an environmentally sustainable plan for Lafayette to President Dan Weiss, which included many ways to make the campus more environmentally conscious.
The plan includes actions such as a carpool system; converting unused parts of Metzgar Fields to meadows; creating an administrative position to regulate the “greenness” of campus; updating the College’s steam plant; using the College’s location to create renewable energy through wind and water turbines; regulating the lighting in campus buildings; decreasing campus water flow; instituting a more efficient recycling plan; adopting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design guidelines for future building installation; reducing the amount of bottled water consumed on campus; implementing optimal indoor environmental quality strategies; and creating a “green” education program for students, staff, faculty, and administration.
While the students set out to improve environmental practices at the College, the course improved upon their knowledge and education.
“The learning in Tech Clinic is two-fold,” says Forster. “First of all, I acquired valuable project management skills. Through the application of these methods to our topic of environmental sustainability, I learned about the significant contributions most academic disciplines can make, and how the overall creative process can excel the productive outcome.”
Vanderwall believes he has expanded his environmental knowledge through the class and is excited to work with Tech Clinic next year.
“Tech Clinic was by far my favorite class of the semester, and I look forward to working on it again next semester,” says Vanderwall. “All members of the group worked together on the entire project, and, as it was, during the first semester of the project most of the effort was put into brainstorming and research for what it would take to make the Lafayette campus more environmentally sustainable.”
Weiss listened to the students, even making some suggestions.
“At our presentation, President Weiss was very enthusiastic and supportive of all of our ideas. He even had many [ideas] of his own,” says Vanderwall.
“President Weiss said that he very much appreciates the seriousness and thoughtfulness with which we are advancing the work on environmental sustainability for Lafayette,” adds Forster.
Forster, who would like to pursue a career as a development economist, believes Tech Clinic prepares students for situations they may encounter in the future.
“In order to be able to do well on a math exam, one needs to do practice problems beforehand; simply studying the theory is often not good enough. Similarly, courses like Tech Clinic provide students with the practice for real-life challenges,” he says.
Vanderwall agrees about Tech Clinic’s influence on his future plans.
“While I still have some time to decide what I’m doing after graduation, I can definitely use what I have learned about teamwork, and managing a project as far as budgeting time and gathering information through interviews and research, as a foothold towards finding a job,” he says. “I would not have benefited from these experiences in a regular class, as opposed to the hands-on, real world experience of Tech Clinic.”
Past Technology Clinic projects: