Campus News in Brief

EPA honors green purchases

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partnership, started in April 2006, tracks colleges and universities with the highest green power purchases among collegiate athletic conferences.

The Individual Conference Champion Award recognizes the school that has made the largest purchase of green power within a qualifying conference. Carnegie Mellon University has been recognized as the 2009–2010 Individual Conference Champion, meaning that the university uses more green power than any other school in its division (the University Athletic Association).

This year, Carnegie Mellon purchased almost 87 million kilowatt-hours of green power. This purchase represents 75 percent of the school’s annual electricity usage. The EPA estimates that this purchase is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emitted by the electricity use in 8000 average American homes each year or taking nearly 12,000 passenger cars off the road annually.

Carnegie Mellon’s contribution represents the majority of the UAA’s collective green power purchases, with 87 million of more than 92 million kilowatt-hours of green power. Other members of the UAA include the University of Rochester, Brandeis University, Case Western Reserve University, and Emory University. Member universities are located in Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New York.

All colleges and universities are invited to enter the challenge. For more information, visit www.epa.gov/greenpower/initiatives/cu_challenge.htm.

Students to attend nationals

Carnegie Mellon’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) will be attending a national competition in Minneapolis, Minn. from May 11 to May 13 after winning a regional competition in Philadelphia in the spring.

In three corporate topic competitions, SIFE also placed in the top 20 as national finalists to receive $3000 in prizes.
The awards were provided by the Robert Half International Success Skills Competition, the HSBC Financial Literacy Competition, and the Sealed Air Business Ethics Competition.

To gain this honor, 11 projects were completed by 225 Carnegie Mellon SIFE students, revolving around the six pillars of SIFE, for a total of 7880 hours of service for the past year.

The six pillars are market economics, success skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, business ethics, and environmental sustainability. Some of the 11 projects included Project Pulse, Project Nicaragua, Project Panama, Eco-market, Global Economy, and Global Threads.

Coached by Anthony Stanton, a teaching professor of graphic media in the Tepper School of Business, students from all seven colleges at Carnegie Mellon are represented, and, according to SIFE’s website, the team has quickly grown from a “rookie” to competing on the national level.

On a global scale, over 1500 universities in 40 countries actively participate in SIFE .
For more information, please visit www.cmusife.org.