As I walk around our campus I notice small acts of environmental awareness increasing in frequency. Reusable coffee mugs, use of sidewalk chalk for event advertising, deliberate reduction of printing in offices – these all add up. Our campus community has a long-held reputation for acting with social awareness and concern – we are now engaged in active and timely conservation.

Support of the retrofitting of our beautiful but ageing campus is another opportunity for faculty and staff to make a substantial impact on conservation. Better boiler rooms, well sealed windows, lighting upgrades and other retrofits can result in an annual savings of more than $1.7 million and prevent approximately 6,874 tonnes of CO2 from being released in our atmosphere. We need your help to accomplish this objective.

You can join those you work, teach and study with in greening the University of Guelph by giving generously to the Energy Conservation Fund. The fund is a student initiative that supports energy efficient work, study and research environments. We have used donations received to date to begin many of the necessary retrofits.

Donations can be made either through a payroll deduction or a one- time pledge. Contributions made by students, staff and faculty are matched by the University, which doubles the impact and speed of the pace of change.

I am grateful to the members of our campus community who have supported the energy Conservation Fund and other campus initiatives.

To learn more about U of G’s energy retrofits or to make a donation, please click the link below and select Cornerstone from the drop down menu. To make a one time gift via credit card, please click: http://www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/cgi-bin/online_giving.pl
To make a monthly payroll deduction pledge, please click: http://www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/support_cornerstone.htm
For further information on how to donate call extension 56695
To learn more about the Energy Retrofit project please visit: http://www.pr.uoguelph.ca/sustain/retrofits.html

Posted by Alastair Summerlee at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The middle of fall is always characterized by mixed emotions: the change of seasons; that gap between the exciting start of the semester and the run up to the end of the semester and the winter holidays; the lowness that comes from mid-term time; the impact of marking those mid-terms (and receiving the marks back); and the beginning of the season for fund-raising.

Once again, the University community is embracing the United Way campaign with extraordinary vigour. It is incredible to see how the community responds to the challenge with all sorts of wonderful tricks and events to raise money and our communal spirits. And in the middle of this fund-raising season comes Halloween and the now standard "Trick or Eat". This evening of fun was started some years ago at Guelph. Students (many dressed in weird and fabulous costumes) go out into the city and ask for donations to the Guelph Food Bank. And every year, the seekers return laden with more booty than the year before. This time that raised a staggering 35,000 lbs of food. Congratulations to everyone involved.

The middle of the fall is when we invite potential students for next year to campus. It is really hard to believe that some parts of the University are already working hard recruiting for next year but ............ it's true. This year again the sun and the weather cooperated and we welcome over 2,500 people to campus on Saturday - an absolutely enormous number (bigger even than the double cohort year). The prospective students and their families were filled with the sense that the University of Guelph was really going somewhere and they needed to be part of the action! Most of the people I spoke to were not concerned about which University to choose but whether their marks would be good enough to be able to come to Guelph.

So ............ at this time of year when sometimes the end of the semester seems a bit far away ............ hat's off to everyone.

This place is going somewhere and the ride (though rocky at times) is incredible fun.

Posted by Alastair Summerlee at 05:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)