By: Katie Koenig
MassArt Sustainability Initiative
Not every college sticks exactly to the Living Lab structure, but many still promote sustainability among student projects.
Massachusetts College of Art offered its students funding and platforms to promote their sustainability-related art projects through a program called the Sustainability Initiative. Although it only lasted from 2013 to 2017, MassArt is currently striving to bring it back on campus.
Any student enrolled at MassArt was eligible for the grants offered by the Sustainability Initiative. Ranging from repurposed fast fashion to hydroponics, each project has considerable thought put into it and incorporates the audience within the work, whether in public display and interaction or in involving the community in the project construction itself.
One project, which was one of the winners in the 2016-2017 school year, was the Evans Way Installation. The artists, four students ranging from sculptors to photographers, designed their project to involve community clean up of litter in Evans Way Park. For several months, these volunteer clean ups provided the trash that the students then used for their art project. They took the trash and cast it in resin to inlay it in a glass container in the shape of the park. Finally, they inlaid solar-powered, colored lights and suspended the project from wires to create a play of light, glass, and opaque materials.
Northeastern Climate Change and Sustainability Research Teams
Northeastern has taken a slightly different approach. Similarly to UC Davis’ Innovation Institute for Food and Health which offers students summer internships, Northeastern’s Department for Climate Change and Sustainability has multiple institutes that offer internships and are even building doctoral research programs.
The Coastal Sustainability Institute exemplifies Northeastern’s projects. The institute relies on Massachusetts’ natural ecosystems nearby for field research focused not only on improving the ecosystem but also on supporting coastal communities with an interdisciplinary focus on social initiatives, public policy, and marine science.
Northeastern’s research promotes an interdisciplinary focus overall. Rather than fixating just on biodiversity or other aspects of marine science, the Coastal Sustainability Institute recognizes the necessity of addressing causes of environmental degradation. Their solutions are just as interdisciplinary, working on technological innovations to aid data collection, analyzing habitat change and flooding along the Mississippi River to address the effectiveness of man-made flood prevention tactics, and even analyzing the chemical composition of shelled ocean creatures to understand ocean acidification.
Conclusion
Among universities, it’s a fact that much of their research centers around the faculty sphere. Student work is easy to lose track of, so to say, when looking at university research and creations, including environmental research and art works.
However, many universities also make an effort to offer students access to these research spheres and the associated funding. As students, we can look beyond our classes and involve ourselves in communities and opportunities to gain more resources and publicity for our work. To a certain extent, it’s already a common idea at college, especially at Emerson. And yet, it has benefits beyond a utilitarian, forward-looking perspective like resume building and career preparedness.
Research opportunities like UC Berkeley’s X-Labs and art grants like MassArt’s Sustainability Initiative also allow students to participate in the greater community of art and research.
So often, I’ve been told that college will help prepare me for the “real world.” Well, it’s a bit silly to consider my current life, let alone every one of my fellow students’ lives, to not count as “fake” in comparison. Any action we take, project we make, or line of research we investigate has an impact on the world around us.
“Real” or “fake,” the work we produce at college has an impact. Many colleges recognize this, and it’s just up to us to identify these opportunities in order to reach a greater audience and have a larger impact than just our class communities.