Prairie State College: As Green as they Come
Prairie State College (PSC) has become one of four community colleges in the state of Illinois to participate in the Behavior Change for Energy Efficiency Pilot Program. The program reduces energy usage by monitoring the amount of energy used and changing the behavior of its participants.
“One of the most exciting and important things about this project is its collaborative nature,” said Prairie State College Sustainability Coordinator, Allessandra A. Cairo. “Multiple departments on campus were heavily involved in making it a success, including facilities and operations, information technology, student life, and marketing and communications, as well as students from the Bloom High School green team and local residents of Chicago Heights.”
Prairie State College was awarded a grant from the state of Illinois to participate in the program based upon the quality of their facilities and the program initiative they submitted with regards to behavioral changes.
The goal is to learn how much energy can be reduced through behavioral changes. The funding from the state came in the form of the energy monitoring equipment and the labor used to install it.
As part of the Behavior Change for Energy Efficiency Pilot Program, PSC installed the Energy Management System last May which monitors both gas and electricity usage in real time via meters on both utilities which displays on a 47 inch monitor as the real time energy use. The monitoring meters are located at the Health Tech Center, a building on PSC’s main campus, which has its own meter which makes monitoring the energy and utilities easier.
This allows the PSC staff to analyze the data it receives from monitoring and make changes as necessary to conserve energy. In addition, general information on sustainability at the college, information on how the system works and what it is monitoring,
“We are overall trying to integrate sustainability into the daily operations of the college and to do so we are doing many different types of programs with energy efficiency, recycling initiatives, as well as running some behavior change campaigns to help faculty, staff and students understand some of these programs and how they can help us to achieve our goals,” said Cairo.
“I think it’s great, I think that everyone should do their part in that and they have lots of groups for that and that’s really cool,” said Prairie State College student Tashea Nichols about the green initiatives Prairie State College has.
PSC is a member of several different organizations charged with making the state of Illinois more sustainable such as; South Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium, U.S. Green Building Council (IL Chapter) and Calumet Stewardship Initiative Smart Growth.
For more information visit http://prairiestate.edu/student-life/sustainability-at-psc/index.
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