Dorm vs Dorm Sustainability Competitions » Further Discussion

Lessons from the Oberlin Ecolympics

admin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:15:05 +0000

Lora DiFranco, Ecolympics coordinator at Oberlin College, wrote a great post on the It’s Getting Hot in Here blog in which she shared things that went well, things that didn’t go well and things she would change in future Ecolympics at Oberlin.

Thanks for taking the time to make that post, Lora! All too often, we don’t spend the time to reflect on our work and share lessons with one another.

Learned a lesson the hard way? Share so others don’t have to!

admin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:04:01 +0000

Have you run a campus sustainability competition? Did you try some things that didn’t work out so great? Or, maybe you didn’t try some things that you later realized would have been great? Share those lessons here so they aren’t lost! Others will benefit from your experience.

Field Trips / Open Houses

Sam Hummel — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:50:57 +0000

If your campus has interesting sustainability projects going on, a great event for your competition is to have an open house or field trip to the project. Students can earn points for their dorm or win door prizes for attending the event.

You can also organize field trips to things that aren’t necessarily shining sustainability projects. For example, how about organizing a tour of your on-campus steam plant? Or, the local land fill?

Another option is a sustainability project or program that is in the community. For example, a tour of your local recycling plant. Or, a local organic farm.

Post your video response here!

Sam Hummel — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:20:25 +0000

If you post a video on Google Video or YouTube or somewhere else, but want users of this site to find it, create a post in this section that describes your video and links to it.

Scavenger Hunt

Sam Hummel — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:12:43 +0000

For years Environmental Alliance has talked about running an eco-scavenger hunt as part of the Eco-Olympics. The idea would be to have teams from the dorms compete to find sustainability related places and things on campus. For example, the winning team would be the first ones to return with digital photos of themselves standing in front of the coal pile at the steam plant, the LEED Silver Certification plaque in the engineering building, the dean’s office at the School of the Environment and so on.

There is no question it would be great fun and highly educational (especially if you put the winning team’s photos on the website so everyone else can see the coal pile, LEED plaque, etc…). However, it can take a good deal of time to organize, which is why it hasn’t been attempted yet at Duke (to my knowledge).