Scheduled Earth Week Events
Saturday, April 21 Launch of Working Green@MIT Web site All day Charles River Cleanup 9:30 a.m. noon., Meet at Mass. Ave. Bridge (Cambridge Side) MIT's Environment, Health, and Safety Office Open House 10 a.m. 4 p.m., MIT Museum N52-496 Environmental Health Science: A Closer Look at Environmental Exposures 10 a.m. 5 p.m., MIT Museum N52-200, Large Conference Room Boston Underwater Walking Tour 25 p.m., Meet at E51 (Tang Center) lobby Sunday, April 22 Environmentally Safe Gardening Methods with GreenPort 2:305 p.m., Dana Park, Cambridge. Angels & Airwaves Concert 45:45 p.m., MIT Johnson Athletic Center Talk by TERC researcher LuAnn Dahlmann: Cold Enough For You? 68 p.m., MIT Museum N52-200, Large Conference Room Monday, April 23 to Friday, April 27 The Legacy of Bhopal Photo Exhibit: "We Are Not Flowers, We Are Flames!" MIT Stata Center lobby Tuesday, April 24 An Inconvenient Truth slideshow Noon, E25-119, RSVP required Boston Underwater Walking Tour 25 p.m., Meet at E51 (Tang Center) lobby Lecture by Professor William Thilly: Does the Environment Really Affect Your Health? 78:30 p.m., MIT State Center, 32-141 Wednesday, April 25 Walking Tour of MIT Green Campus Initiatives 11:30 a.m. 1:30 p.m., Meet outside on the steps of Stratton Student Center Lecture on Uncertainties in Climate Forecasts: Causes, Magnitudes and Policy Implications 4:30 p.m., 32-101 EcoExpo: MIT's Sustainability Showcase 57 p.m., MIT Stata Center TSMC lobby Talk by Boston University researchers: Global Warming, Up Close and Local 68 p.m., MIT Museum N52-200, Large Conference Room Thursday, April 26 MIT Earth Day Fair 10 a.m. 3 p.m., MIT Stata Center lobby MIT Solar Decathlon Earth Day Party 5:308 p.m., NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, 38 Chauncy St., 7th floor, Boston Talk on Plasma and the Environment 5:306:30 p.m., NW17-218 Friday, April 27 Garden Walk With MIT Facilities 121 p.m., Meet at Information Booth in MIT Stata Center lobby
Harvard University Leads Interactive Teaching Method
With neon green and purple chairs in tiered rows, the auditorium in Harvard's science center looks like a stadium theater. But the physics professor at the front of the room, Eric Mazur, takes pains not to behave like a sage on the stage.
Conservation Initiatives Funded to $70 Million
Seeking to become the greenest city in the country, Cambridge launched on March 29 a sweeping $70 million energy efficiency program to conserve energy in virtually every building within city boundaries, reducing emissions that contribute to global warming.
MIT Energy Council Update
Approximately five months after its formation, the MIT Energy Council is gearing up to release a "comprehensive communication for faculty, students, and staff" early next month, according to Ernest J. Moniz, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative.
EcoExpo to Showcase Student Groups
The first-ever EcoExpo will be held tomorrow, April 25, and will feature posters and displays from nearly 30 student-led groups concerned with environmental issues at MIT. Organized by the Students for Global Sustainability group, EcoExpo seeks "to convey the incredible energy and enthusiasm" at MIT and "to inspire new ideas, new connections, and a strengthened campus commitment to sustainability," according to the EcoExpo Web site. EcoExpo will be held in the TSMC lobby of the Stata Center, which faces the intersection of Main and Vassar Streets. Below is a sampling of the groups that will be featured at the event.
Getting Started on the Future Today
"We recognize it is an incredibly urgent issue … we don't have time to do five years of research," said Jason J. Jay G, as he talked about the challenge of creating a more sustainable future with new technologies and policies. Jay, a doctoral student who has an academic interest in corporate and social responsibility and the study of organizations, said that the challenge of sustainability is "for our generation what getting into space was for our parents."
Cap and Trade
<i>Richard Schmalensee '65, PhD '70 is professor of economics and dean of the Sloan School. He is a member of the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), a non-governmental bipartisan group which last week released a set of energy policy recommendations. The recommendations are comprehensive, addressing everything from guidelines for vehicle fuel efficiency to increases in research budgets, to, perhaps most importantly, the creation of a viable national emissions trading scheme. Here Professor Schmalensee talks about some of the issues at stake in controlling emissions, and the challenges that lie ahead for fighting climate change. </i>
In Short
A documentary on Darfur, Sand & Sorrow, will be screened on Thursday night at 710 p.m. in Room 6-120. There will be a panel discussion with the director and activists after the movie. Free and open to the MIT community. Dinners for the MacGregor dining pilot will be held on Tuesdays from 69 p.m. for the rest of the semester.
Nelnet Discusses Its Malpractices, Plans To Correct Problems
Nelnet, a major student loan company, offered on Apr. 20 a broad accounting of many often unpublicized relationships it has established with universities and their senior officials, including managing telephone call centers, paying college officials for speaking engagements and giving plane tickets to financial aid officers.
VA Tech Incident Sparks Discussion Among Colleges, Mass Text-Message Alerts Useful
In the wake of the Virginia Tech attack, administrators at college campuses across the country have been calling on a handful of companies that offer what once seemed like a nonessential: the ability to blast text messages to thousands of people within minutes.
Barclay Found Dead After Intensive Search Senior Found on Beach in Possible Drowning
A body that washed to shore on Cape Cod last Thursday was identified as MIT student Daniel J. Barclay '07, who had been missing since Sunday, April 8. Barclay was declared a missing person Friday, Apr. 13 and had been the focus of an area-wide search.
Daniel J. Barclay '07
Daniel J. Barclay '07 was found dead on Friday, April 20 in an apparent boating-related accident. He was 22.
Ivan D. Dimitrov '10
Ivan D. Dimitrov '10, a passionate, goal-oriented international student from Sofia, Bulgaria, died on Apr. 21 due to fatal injuries from a motorcycle accident. Dimitrov sustained the injuries in a crash at Storrow Drive in Boston and passed away at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He was 20.
Solar Panel Plant For a Greener Massachusetts
Since the beginning of his gubernatorial campaign, Deval Patrick has made clean energy a pet issue. He was the first major candidate to come out in support of the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. And as governor, he has pledged to make Massachusetts "the renewable energy center of the world."
Energy Special
As you may have noticed, MIT is full of people who are highly committed to energy and sustainability issues, from President Susan Hockfield with the Energy Initiative to numerous student groups involved in almost every imaginable aspect of environmentally-conscious action and innovation. Add to that the professors who have made it their business to pursue research related to sustainability issues, and the Facilities staff who oversee MIT’s own energy use, and you begin to get an idea of just how unlikely it would be that we could cover all the worthwhile projects happening on campus.
And Would You Like a Garden With That?
MIT's new Solar Decathlon Team is currently preparing for the construction of Solar 7, an 800-square-foot completely solar-powered house. The seventh solar-powered house to be built on MIT campus, this house, which will be near Technology Square, will have several unique features, including an interactive energy-monitoring system and the ability to be taken apart and shipped to any new location. It will also participate in an event that none of the other houses have ever attended: the Solar Decathlon Competition held in Washington D.C.
Man Behind the Scenes
Peter Cooper is the manager of sustainability engineering and utility planning in the Department of Facilities. He has worked closely with student groups on a number of sustainability projects, some of which arose from the Generator events and are currently in progress. He's the go-to man for everything you never knew you wanted to know about how MIT's physical plant is run.