Campus Innovation Challenge
The Spring 2012 application deadline has been extended to March 25th. CLICK HERE TO APPLY NOW
NYU Campus Innovation Challenge (CIC) Green Grants identify crucial campus sustainability needs and call on NYU community members to formulate and execute the most comprehensive, educational, operationally-feasible and economically viable solution in response. Applicants will receive the identified problem or need-gap in current operations, known caveats, previously explored solutions and, when relevant, pre-approved project locations and campus partners. The challenges are designed to provide a foundation upon which applicants can be imaginative, entrepreneurial and effective with our university’s and city’s diverse skill sets and resources. CIC Green Grants have the same scope, selection criteria, rules and deadlines as all other Green Grant projects, except as explicitly mentioned otherwise. If you have any questions about the CIC Green Grants or seek further clarification, please reach out to us at green.grants@nyu.edu.
NYU Urban Farm
Urban agriculture is increasingly common in New York City, with rooftop farms and community gardens established or emerging in all five boroughs. NYU seeks to join this expanding community by creating the first productive urban farm at an NYC university, which will serve as a living lab for academic research, student education, and public engagement.
A prospective space, a lawn facing Houston Street behind Silver Tower I, has been identified and would be subject to aesthetic standards and organic growing requirements in adherence to the aesthetic and maintenance levels used for all university grounds. In addition to these requirements, it is imperative that each grant application address the need for a part-time staff member to supervise the farm, manage volunteers, and liaise with the Office of Faculty Housing, who currently manages the property. While each application will be reviewed thoroughly for its innovation in land use, productivity and yield, interdisciplinary or academic inclusion, and sound planning and metrics, the application with the most feasible solution to supporting and securing part-time staffing--without personnel funding from the Green Grants--will be at a significant advantage.
Funding will be provided in May 2012 at the earliest and will be intended for the full March-November growing season of 2013. This means that the grantee will be responsible for seeing the project, at a minimum, through January 2014. The strongest grant application, however, will provide a plan for staffing and maintenance beyond this point, with since there may be potential for the project to continue beyond Green Grants jurisdiction and find other, more permanent sources of support after the first complete growing season.
In addition to standard GG requirements, the strongest applicants will provide the committee with the following:
- A plan or diagram showing garden layout and elevations
- Annual planting schedule showing when individual species are planted and harvested, broken down by month
- Source/strategy for funding dedicated part-time staff support
- Maintenance schedule for the garden during the on- and off-season including tasks to be performed, estimated time per week spent, and who will fulfill each role. The committee will be especially in favor of those who will be dedicated to maintaining the aesthetics of the garden through the off-season.
- Relevant experience of team members
- Intended NYU or public constituencies the garden will serve
- Earthmoving, landscaping, or hardscape needs the project will require
- Related infrastructure needs such as water, power, or fencing
- A watering plan or schedule
- Pests (including insects, fungus/bacteria, birds, and rodents) and weed control
- Soil amendments and fertilizer that will be applied
- Amount of groundcover, cover crops, or mulch that will be utilized
- A plan for composting on site, if relevant
- A soil testing plan to determine appropriate plantings and to determine soil safety for eventual consumption of produce
- Plans for season extension such as cold frames, if relevant
- Eventual destination for produce
Residence Hall Appliance Re-Use
Each year, residence hall occupants discard or donate thousands of pounds of useful appliances and other goods that could be re-used by future residents by collecting, storing and re-distributing them locally. NYU Operations encourages the development of a program that does this, based on observation of the NYU School of Law’s “Fall Giveaway,” which freely distributes old gear to new students within a 15 minute window during move-in, and Harvard’s program that stores unwanted materials in a trailer and then profitably sells them back to students months later. NYU Operations staff have offered their support in identifying on-campus storage spaces for a pilot program that will explore the best practices for re-using these valuable resources. It should be noted that this program will overlap (and could potentially collaborate) with the Green Apple Move Out, a very successful past Green Grant which asks students to bring unwanted materials to a collection point so that they may be donated to various local charities and has since been institutionalized by Residential Life. Our selection committee is looking for proposals that improve upon current operations in terms of environmental sustainability, NYU community engagement and education, social sustainability within and outside the NYU community and new economic advantages.
Restroom Paper Towel Composting
Many bathrooms at NYU have trash cans full of paper towels that could potentially be composted to divert the amount of waste going to landfills and better use the material for new purposes. NYU Operations staff have noted that because these bins are often directly below dispensers, the paper towels are already mostly source-separated. NYU already has a formalized relationship with a contracted waste service (Action Carting), who could collect these materials and bring them to an upstate windrow composting facility. Alternatively, local on-campus composting is a potential solution, though previous attempts to compost food materials in residences halls encountered difficulties when seeking permissions from the University administration. The Green Grants Selection Committee is seeking proposals with the most robust operational and educational work plans. An example proposal for this project can be found in the appendix of the Application Toolkit on our website.