Does Thanksgiving dinner equal extra gym time?
Tuesday November 27, 2012
Which bowl game are the Aggies going to?
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Blue Goes Green awards grants BY LIS STEWART staff writer
A master plan to pro-� tect recreation and open spaces for student use will soon be underway thanks to a grant funded by the Blue Goes Green student fee and Campus Recreation. The grant is one of five awarded for various educational sustainability projects around campus. “What we found is if you don’t do something like this, campus planners tend to look at space that was recreational playing fields and they think that was a great space for a parking lot or something,� said Kevin Kobe, Campus Recreation director. Kobe said the master plan was proposed by David Smith, a student who was on the commit-� tee that oversaw construc-� tion of the Legacy Fields. Through the building pro-� cess and noticing how stu-� dents were searching for places for open recreation, it was determined the uni-� versity needs a recreation plan to be implemented in its master plan. With a master recre-� ation plan in place, future campus planners will have to consider open green spaces when figur-�
ing out construction proj-� ects on campus, according to Kobe. “At that point it will guide Utah State, so we’ll always have open spaces for students,� Kobe said. The plan will be the end result of planning meet-� ings and focus groups comprised of students, according to Sean Damitz, Student Sustainability Office director. The plan should be ready to present to students at the end of the spring 2013 semester. Damitz said the grant is one of five awarded Nov. 15 by the Student Sustainability Office. The total amount of grants funded by the Blue Goes Green fee this semester was $21,000 and two of the grant projects will receive matching funds from various places, he said. The grants are written by students, though the most successful Damitz said he has seen are those created through collabo-� ration between students and professors or campus departments. This fall’s Blue Goes Green grant awardees focused primar-� ily on education in addi-� tion to their sustainability focus. The Students for Sustainability club sub-�
mitted a proposal and received a grant to build a new bike rack on the TSC’s east side. Twenty U-�racks will be built next spring, according to Crista Sorenson, the club’s president. Plans call for a QR code scanner for smartphones that will lead students to informa-� tion about bike routes and places to park around campus, she said. “We wanted to have it be a place where people can get information about bike routes on campus about the benefits of bik-� ing and commuting, not just personally but as a community as a giant whole, and things like that,� said Chris Binder, a graduate student in land-� scape architecture who helped write the grant for the bike rack. Damitz said the bike rack project was awarded $5,000 in a Blue Goes Green grant and Facilities is matching the money to total the cost of the bike rack to $10,000. Binder received a $765 grant to purchase a bike trailer for Aggie Blue Bikes. Binder said he had the idea to apply for it when he moved in August and was looking for a fuel-�efficient alternative to move large items that
SIX PROJECTS WILL BE FUNDED BY the Blue Goes Green grant this Fall. One of the projects is an additional bike rack on the east side of the Taggart Student Center. JESSICA FIFE photo
would not fit inside his car. The trailer will be useful for many students who ride bikes, whether it is transporting a project or large instrument.
One of the barriers to choosing to commute via bicycle is transporting large objects, Binder said. “I mean you’ve got the hills, you’ve got the
weather, you’ve got the fact that people just can’t take enough stuff with them,� Binder said. “And I
See GREEN, Page 2
Guitar professor honored in D.C. BY TMERA BRADLEY news senior writer
MICHAEL CHRISTIANSEN PLAYS guitar in his office on Nov. 26. The USU professor was recently awarded “Professor of the Year.� SAMANTHA BEHL photo
Michael Christiansen, professor of music at Utah State University, has been playing the guitar for more than 55 years. He has been teaching at Utah State University since 1977. Recently, he was hon-� ored as Utah’s 2012 Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on Nov. 15. Out of 300 nominees across the United States, 30 were selected to receive the award. Christiansen was one of two professors in the arts to be honored. He was nomi-� nated by USU professor of physics David Peak, a past winner of the awards, which are administered by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE. “It’s quite a process,� Christiansen said. “It’s not just like they put your name up.� He said nominees have to write a self-�assessment letter, put all of
Michael Christiansen
“
Guitar professor
I love to per-
form and I love to play, but I really had a passion for teaching and still do.�
their teaching materials together and have outside letters of recom-� mendation form students, col-� leagues and community members. Christiansen and his wife flew to Washington D.C. for the awards ceremony and reception held at the Folger Shakespeare Library on
Capitol Hill. “It was really cool because they asked me to play, and so I got to play at the National Press Club before the awards,� Christiansen said. “It was kind of cool because they had me stand up at the awards and thank me for the music so USU got a lot of press out of it. They really rolled out the red carpet for us.� Christiansen got his degree in music education from USU. “I love to perform and I love to play, but I really had a passion for teaching and still do,� Christiansen said. Christiansen began his contract with USU 36 years ago. He is the founder of the university’s guitar program, which started when he realized teaching 90 private stu-� dents week was too much. He cut down and combined the lessons into classes taught for credit. “At that time you really couldn’t
See GUITAR, Page 2
New methods may make fuel from carbon dioxide BY KATELIN CHRISTENSEN staff writer
What if the air you breathe out could be used to help solve the world’s energy crisis? Lance Seefeldt, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at USU, has been working with a team of biochemists to figure out a way to do this. Seefeldt and a team consisting of under-� graduate and graduate stu-� dents, as well as a collaborator from Virginia Tech, have been researching a way to convert carbon dioxide into methane. The research started after an unexpected discovery dur-� ing another project studying organisms that live in the dirt.
Seefeldt said the team has been researching bacteria that live in the soil for about two years. The team discovered the bac-� teria could take some of the gasses that live in the air and convert them into entirely dif-� ferent gasses, Seefeldt said. “In the process of doing that, it occurred to us that they bacteria might be able to turn carbon dioxide into methane,� Seefeldt said. Seefeldt said if the team were to find a way to convert carbon dioxide into methane, the world would see lower levels of carbon dioxide and useful fuels being produced from cheap, abun-� dant compounds. The process wasn’t successful at first. The area around the
bacteria where the chemistry occurs was too tightly packed with carbon dioxide. “We asked ourselves, ‘Can we give it more room?’,� Seefeldt said. “So, using genetic engi-� neering, we did that. When we did that, it worked. Now carbon dioxide could get in there and get turned into methane.� Seefeldt said while the dis-� covery is important, the small amount of methane the bacte-� ria produced is not the most important thing the team dis-� covered. “We were really excited about that, not because we think the enzyme will be used, but because we can learn from it,� Seefeldt said. The process is far from hav-�
ing been perfected, Seefeldt said. He said there are still many things that need to be understood about the process as a whole before greater prog-� ress can be made. “What we need to do is understand the whole picture first,� he said. “Then we will apply those principles we learn to the design of better cata-� lysts.� Seefeldt said another chal-� lenge with the project is how small the enzymes they’re work-� ing with are. “These enzymes are micro-� scopic,� Seefeldt said. “For us, it’s a challenge to understand how they’re working when we can’t even see them with a microscope.�
He said the discovery is important for many reasons. “It offers, for the first time, some insights on how we can take this very abundant gas and convert it back into valu-� able and useful compounds,� he said. Zhiyong Yang, a graduate student studying biochemistry, is a member of Seefeldt’s team. Yang said he thinks the project could possibly revolution-� ize energy and ecology in the future. “When I found this reaction, I was so excited because one thing is reduction of carbon dioxide is very hard,� Yang said. “Even in basic chemi-�
See RESEARCH, Page 2