Spring Grants

These projects were funded during our Spring grant cycle, where projects receive more than $5,000 for projects that take between one to three years to complete. 

Latinxs in their Element

Project Description

Latinx in their Element will be a project funding eight (8) student fellows to conduct environmental research projects during the academic year. This project was created with the

intention of supporting students as they explore the field of environmental sciences and guiding them in doing research on a specific element they are interested in. We will be hosting a series of workshops in order for research fellows to gain an understanding of the elements prior to conducting their own research. L&E has the intention of offering students...

BerkeleyMoves! Parking and Transportation Program and Data Evaluation Intern

Project Description This project will address several aspects of parking and the environmental impacts between pricing for permits and comparison of TDM programs to benchmark ourselves with developing a new transit and mobility plan to better serve the campus; finding out about impacts of an optional carbon offsetting program and fee, which may be optional to the user, to support additional mobility programs supported by findings of the LRDP but also the TDM strategic plan; identifying the correlation of students who commute to campus and making the case to the University about...

Healing the Pavement on Campus

Project Description

Recycling concrete offers a sustainable path for pavement maintenance. Massive concrete wastes are generated in the civil and environmental engineering (CEE) structural laboratory every year because of undergraduate education and scientific research demand. The existing waste concrete disposal such as “landfill” is expensive ($400/ton) and unsustainable. This project aims at wasted concrete recycling for campus infrastructure repairing, mainly focusing on the maintenance of cracked pavements, to fulfill a win-win situation for both the CEE department and Berkeley...

Zero Waste Coalition Vice Chair

Project Description

The Zero Waste Coalition (ZWC) is comprised of over a dozen organizations, both departmental and student-led, focused on waste-related work at UC Berkeley. Since its founding in 2019, ZWC efforts led by the Chair and Vice Chair include: Establishing and supporting the implementation of a Non-Essential Single Use Plastic Elimination Policy by 2030; Establishing and facilitating a Zero Waste Lab of undergraduate student researchers; Collaborating directly with the Student Environmental Resource Center and the Students of Color Environmental Collective (SCEC) to host...

Vermicomposting by Zero Waste Resource Center

Project Description

The vermicomposting bin has been actively processing organic food waste from the Clark Kerr Kitchen primarily, as well as the Crossroads Kitchen, since then. Currently, around ten gallons of food waste are being added to the bin per week, but it has the capacity to increase. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, coordinating food waste pickup while abiding by city and university public health guidelines has been disadvantageous, but we plan to increase the volume of food waste added to the bin once pandemic conditions allow. We have built up a system...

Heated and cooled chairs for comfort

Project Description

Demonstrate the comfort effects of heated/cooled chairs for UCB students, and also their energy benefit, in a total of three campus buildings. The goal is to encourage campus-wide adoption of PCS. The approach is: 1) design and fabricate 10 battery-powered heating/cooling cassettes that attach to chairs on UCB’s purchase list; 2) demonstrate comfort effects for students in a library and a common room in a dorm; 3) quantify the HVAC energy savings potential in one open-plan office space.

Project Links

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Scholarships for Environmentalists of Color

Project Description

The Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC) requests $36,000 to allocate 15 $2,000 scholarships for environmentalists of color over the course of 3 years that will serve to uplift students of color in the environmental field. We will ensure funding goes directly towards students and their specific requests to enable them to succeed while being a BIPOC student at UC Berkeley. Selected students will share reflections after receiving their scholarships, on how the additional funding supported them during the academic year....

Project RISHI Rainwater Harvesting

Project Description

The first goal for our proposed project is hosting a sustainable design and development-focused summit where we will invite UC Berkeley students from diverse backgrounds. This will serve as an opportunity for Berkeley students to apply their skills and knowledge about sustainability to a real-world project, and to raise awareness about water-insecurity projects, development, and technology. Through collaboration with students and organizations across campus, we will redesign our RH system and implementation process, improving their longevity, cost-efficiency, and...

Circularity

Project Description

Circularity fills this void by providing environmental justice learning materials for free -- centering accessibility and actionable steps towards incorporating EJ fundamentals into everyone’s work. In this way, campus organizations have access to readily available tools that move past basic education and engage all students on campus with concrete environmental justice organizing and action, allowing for collaboration that leads to impactful projects. We will provide this access through a free social app, recurring guides available for purchase, and a website,...

The Role of the Underground to Realize a Zero-Carbon UC Campus Energy System

Project Description

The overall goal of this project is to determine whether geothermal is a viable decarbonization energy solution for UC Berkeley and to engage graduate and undergraduate students in the research and the subsequent decision-making and the real application of this technology on campus if it proves feasible. The project will assess the role of the UC campus underground to meet the zero-carbon target.

Project Links

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