Vincent Boudreau
What does it take to both talk the talk and walk the walk toward a cleaner energy future for a college and its local community? In this episode of From City to the World, learn how sustainability pedagogy and praxis are alive, well and often working hand in hand at The City College of New York (CCNY). President Vincent Boudreau hosts a conversation with CCNY Sustainability Specialist Jake Weinberger and Katherine Gloede Silverman, assistant director of the Sustainability in the Urban Environment program. Hear about their work, where it intersects and ways it engages with community members, environmental advocates and government initiatives. Additionally, explore how a deep commitment to sustainability — from solar-powered EV chargers for campus and community to energy-efficient heat pumps and climate-adaptive infrastructure — is driving decarbonization across this historic Harlem campus.
Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau
Guests: Jake Weinberger, CCNY Sustainability Specialist, Department of Facilities Management; Katherine Gloede Silverman, Assistant Director of the Sustainability in the Urban Environment master's and advanced certificate program
Episode Transcript
Vincent Boudreau
Well, welcome to From City to the World. I'm your host. Vince Boudreau, the President of The City College of New York. From City to the World is a show about how the work that we're doing at City College matters to people across the city and throughout the world. We'll discuss the practical application of our research in solving real-world issues like poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges, affordable housing, and a range of other issues. Today we'll be talking about sustainability and the work we're doing at City College in that direction.
So in a recent article from the New York Times announcing the plans of the administration around climate change and with the latest news of the firing of some of the nation's top scientists, it's important to talk through the work of City College that we are continuing to do in the field of sustainability and something we'll talk about a lot over the course of the next hour, decarbonizing the grid. On this campus we have made deep and institutional commitments to this kind of work, and those commitments continue despite changes in, shall I say, the federal climate around these issues. So last night, sorry, last month we spoke in depth about tech in climate initiatives with the building of the virtual power grid that we are undertaking across Harlem.
And this month we'll be continuing that conversation around sustainability, specifically on how we're moving towards the future of clean energy at CCNY. Now, today's show is going to be a little different than our normal format because rather than having one person from City College and one person from the community, we will have two CCNY representatives talking about sustainability projects on campus, but in very different ways. And they'll each talk to us about how they're working to minimize our footprint in the community. So our first guest today is our sustainability coordinator at CCNY. He is Jake Weinberger.
He's focused on decarbonizing the campus by implementing various sustainability initiatives on campus and engaging students and faculty in these projects. And so let me tell you just a little bit about him. At the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, he led marine debris removal initiatives in the Florida Keys, engaging over hundreds of volunteers and eliminating tons of waste while promoting sustainable business practices. As a water conservation project coordinator for Broward County in South Florida, he led efforts that saved millions of gallons of water and boosted public engagement through strategic outrage.
His work as an environmental consultant included modeling sea level rise to support resilient infrastructure planning, and he has further advanced sustainability through educational media and habitat restoration projects. So Jake's current projects are supported by the Environmental Bond Act and will provide real-world data and programs as part of the academic curriculum. The CCNY campus comprises 18 buildings, and that totals 3.4 million gross square feet. The Bond Act projects are focused on making those buildings more energy efficient, reducing our use of fossil fuels through the electrification and utilizing solar and battery storage.
For example, in our library, which is in our north academic complex, it has a rare book collection and the building overall is susceptible to high humidity. And of course that creates problems for anything in an archival setting. So instead of using a central plant boilers for hot water reheats, a heat pump will be installed to provide hot water dehumidification, which is both more energy efficient and will go a long way in preserving some of those precious materials. So we're going to discuss the various projects that Jake works on at CCNY and the way that he is working towards reducing energy while inspiring students and the community to participate in this work.
So Jake, welcome to From City to the World.
Jake Weinberger
Thank you. Honored to be here,
Vincent Boudreau
Really happy to have you both on the program and at the college. And so let's start from the beginning and I use the phrase decarbonizing the grid, but what does that mean, both in general and how are you applying the concept to CCNY?
Jake Weinberger
Absolutely. Decarbonizing the grid means shifting our reliance of energy sources from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy, and that's an example of solar, wind, hydroelectricity, geothermal. And for CCNY, back in 2019, the New York City passed the Climate Mobilization Act and the different legislation to shift away from fossil fuels and also set limits and specifically targeting large buildings. CCNY has a lot of large buildings, specifically the NAC, which we are in right now.
And one of the great things that we're doing, we're getting a lot of support from the state and the city and our targets for the city and the state, 40% reducing our emissions by 2030 and 80% by 2050. And not only are we trying to shift away from fossil fuels and more towards renewable energy, but we also want to reduce our energy use and that's in a form of energy efficiency retrofits and just education and awareness.
Vincent Boudreau
For those of you who are listening who aren't familiar with the City College campus, you'll hear us talk about the NAC. That's the North Academic Complex. If you come down Amsterdam Avenue, it is the big gray building that stretches almost three blocks from 135th Street, past 138th Street, and it is massive. The project providing heat and cooling and energy to that building is similarly massive and it is a real focus of some of the work.
And so Jake, in the introduction, we talked about one of the specific projects that you have that's located in the NAC, that's the installing heat pumps to help preserve our archives. But could you give us a kind of tour of some of the other projects you're working on across campus and what their impact is slated to be?
Jake Weinberger
Absolutely. The Environmental Bond Act, which was passed in 2019 by the governor, that allows us to fund a lot of these capital projects. For example, for the NAC I mentioned the rare book library collection. Right now it's dehumidified with the central plant boilers. It's pretty inefficient. So the plan is to install a heat pump and the heat pump, it acts as a transfer device. It transfers the heat from the surrounding air into the system that dehumidifies and circulates the air around the rare books. And so it improves energy efficiency. That's one project. Another project is in the Marshak building, the science building.
Another heat pump is going to be installed there. That will specifically be heating the hot domestic hot water in the building and also the pool water. And then one of the other projects is with the south campus parking lot. Now with the north campus parking lot, which is just outside of this building, you'll see the solar canopy also 10 existing EV chargers, that's going to be in service pretty soon. And we'll get another five EV chargers on the Convent Avenue. The existing chargers are on 135th. It will also be paired with battery storage and that will hopefully down the line, possibly power the surrounding buildings.
But for the south campus, the funds from the Environmental Bond Act, it will help essentially duplicate that infrastructure on that lot. If you went to the south campus parking lot right now, it's a bunch of gravel, dirt with cars on it, and waste bins. It's not really a pretty site, but we're in the process of RFPs for proposals and I'm really hoping that we can get that rolling soon. And then we'll also for each of those sites have an interactive display for public to engage with and to learn more about these projects and how they can get involved.
In addition to the Environmental Bond Act, we're also working with our consultants to implement or come up with different scenarios for campus-wide decarbonization plans. We'll get into this, but we have several different ideas for geothermal, hydro from Con Ed, but I think we'll get into that more.
Vincent Boudreau
And just going back to solar canopy, the one on the north campus, which is at the corner of 135th Street in Convent Avenue and what we call the south campus, really extends down closer to 135th Street. These are facilities, we talked about it last month, that are both generating solar power for the campus, can be used in storage, but it's also going to be some of the first electric vehicle charging stations that exist in Harlem. I mean, anybody in our community who wants an electric vehicle has a problem figuring out where to go to charge your car. These charging stations powered by solar energy are going to be some of them available for community use once the project is fully implemented.
But it's also very important, I think, that apart from all of the decarbonization and the generation functions of these facilities, it's also an educational facility. So there'll be displays for community members to come in and sort of see how this works and learn more about how solar power can be used, but also it's going to link up to our engineering school. Where we are teaching the engineers of the future how to manage these sorts of energy sources. So I think really important for an institution like City College to talk about this work, both in terms of taking care of its own shop, making sure that our facilities are being decarbonized in the way they use electricity, but also that we have a training and education and community outreach function.
So let's talk about our shop, our city college. It is a dense historic site. The old campus, it was inaugurated in 1907. Some of the walls in those buildings made of stone are six feet thick. What are the challenges? And then in addition to that, on the south campus you have these advanced, very, very technical science buildings that are only about 15 years old. And so what are the challenges of trying to reach a more sustainable place for a campus that is structured the way ours is?
Jake Weinberger
When we are having meetings with our consultants, two of the biggest problems that we're facing, space limitations and old infrastructure. A lot of the clean energy infrastructure requires a lot of space. Water tanks would be massive, and we have very limited space. We have the two parking lots, we have green spaces, but it's just a lot of limitations. We're coming up with different scenarios, different ideas, and then engaging infrastructure with pipes specifically. When we're talking about putting in heat pumps, it requires pipes to go all over.
And if you're dealing with pipes going back to the 1900s, it's very difficult to replace them, but it's not impossible. So we're continually working with these consultants and coming up with new ideas for decarbonizing our campus.
Vincent Boudreau
I mean this brings up I think a really important point. A lot of times when we talk about sustainability, the first thing that people think about are, do we have recycling bins out? A lot of the really big work is deep reconfiguration of infrastructure, like going from oil to oil and natural gas to electricity. And these are jobs for engineers and people that really can get into the guts of a building and reconfigure it.
Jake Weinberger
A lot of what I do besides having meetings with these consultants about clean energy transition is including improving our recycling efforts. We just did a waste audit. I'll get into that a little bit later, but we did a waste audit yesterday and we figured out that a lot of the waste that we're producing specifically in the Marshak building, which is where we did the audit, was paper and cardboard. And it comes down to education and making sure that students and faculty are aware of our practices.
Vincent Boudreau
I want to go back now to something in your past that my eye really came to looking over your resume. You worked on things like marine debris removal and water conservation in Florida, and a lot of that was done in relationship also to community volunteers. And you really had to mobilize large numbers of people who weren't necessarily on anybody's payroll, but were just interested in this work. And so how does these experience shape your approach to sustainability here on an urban campus, in an urban city, and on a college campus?
Jake Weinberger
A few years ago, I was in the Florida Keys working on a marine debris removal project, and it was a massive undertaking. And it required, like I said, hundreds of volunteers to help out with cleanups. And in that effort and also with the water conservation project in Fort Lauderdale, I had to speak with a variety of people from fishermen to business owners to politicians just to get their understanding. I think that was one of the most important things that I took from those experiences. The perspectives, not everybody has the same idea about what's going on in terms of sustainability.
And just hearing them first, instead of just talking to them about facts and all this information that I have for you, it's about hearing them. And I believe that experience and working in an urban setting in Fort Lauderdale, it helped me formulate communication, methods, videos, photos, just engaging with people in outreach. It really helped me communicate with the campus here and will help me specifically with the campus screens. That's really what I'm targeting right now. A lot of people learn visually and are visually attracted and will learn better. So that's really what I got from those experiences.
Vincent Boudreau
So can you talk a little bit more, I mean, it sounds like we just sort of scratched the surface about how you are trying to involve the campus community into these efforts. Talked a little bit about screens and the waste audit, but what are the other ways that you're thinking about involving students, faculty, and staff at City College in this effort?
Jake Weinberger
So about a month or so ago, we had a campus sustainability council. It started a while ago, but I really restarted it and I wanted to include faculty, staff, and students. And this is a way that we can share what's going on sustainability wise, ideas, events, suggestions, and to get them engaged. We also have ad hoc working groups, so we have a waste working group, and I spoke to them about what I would hope that a waste audit would look like and how they can be involved.
And in addition to those, I'm trying to engage some of the sustainability clubs, CCUNY Green Club, CCUNY Outdoors Club. And like I said, with the campus screens, you might have seen it around the campus, but with the Environmental Bond Act projects, I made a little video that was on the screen and it broke down briefly the projects just so people are more aware of what's going on. And I'm hoping to have a bigger campaign outreach going on with that, just to really engage with the students and faculty.
Vincent Boudreau
Could you kind of walk us through the waste audit, how you involved people and what it looked like? You mentioned that one of the important findings was that the bulk of the waste was paper and cardboard and that kind of stuff, but in terms of getting it started and getting people involved in it, what did that look like and how hard is it to motivate a community to participate in this kind of work?
Jake Weinberger
So going back to the Waste Working Group, I tried sending out emails and working with a representative from clubs. And in that we were able to start with a pilot study with my internal team going to Marshak the loading dock and getting supplies, working with the custodians, and setting up waste bins around tables, sorting different categories. You had a metal, glass, plastic, and cartons as one sorting bin. You had paper and cardboard, you have trash, you have compostables. And forming them right before it starts, we're taking out a bag of trash or of waste and sorting it and having them to see where the specific material goes to. It really opens their eyes.
Sometimes they don't know where the stuff goes. And it's a really difficult procedure, I guess, to really improve recycling habits. And so that's what I'm going to do in the future with the future audits to engage as many students as possible. And so that's really how it goes.
Vincent Boudreau
Do you find... You can't do a lot of this work by fiat. A lot of it is around mobilizing people's enthusiasm, and part of that is students, but we also have a massive facilities crew. And if this is going to work, it's going to work by inspiring custodians and people in facilities. Do you find a level of enthusiasm around this when you speak to that group and staff?
Jake Weinberger
I do. I do. And they're very helpful with helping me with the audits, and I'm going to be working with them to help sort of train the custodians and make sure that they're aware of not only just helping us with our waste, but also understanding where the waste should go. And so we're really working hand in hand with that and definitely in the future they're going to be very helpful.
Vincent Boudreau
So we talked about the solar panels and bond storage and some of the other things that are involved in the Bond Act. Are there future kind of campus-wide initiatives or tech roll-outs that you're anticipating that we should also be looking forward to?
Jake Weinberger
There are a couple of exciting projects that I'm looking forward to. One is the Marshak roof renovations going on right now. That is going to include a multipurpose athletic courts, running track, plantings, green spaces. And the green spaces will help reduce the heat loss and cool the building down. That's very important in the summer months when we have extreme heat from climate change, reducing our energy bills. I'm really hoping that we expand on that for a lot of the campus buildings. The other project that I'm looking forward to is that we're looking into, in terms of improving recycling efforts, I found a company that creates these AI bins.
And so essentially what it looks like a sensor and a camera and a screen that gets fitted to any of the trash recycling cans. And when somebody walks up to it, it shows on the screen what they have. So if it's a coffee cup, they show it to the sensor. On the screen, it shows them how to separate the materials of the coffee cup and which bins to put it in. And I think that is a game changer, in my opinion, for improving recycling habits. So I'm looking forward to hopefully getting them and creating an awareness, a campaign around that, engaging the students, having student ambassadors with the program. And it's such an exciting project that I'm looking forward to.
Vincent Boudreau
What about some of the real kind of deep engineering moves that we need to make on campus? I mean, we're still using fossil fuels primarily to heat our buildings. I don't know how efficient that is. I don't know if there are ways, even though you're still using fossil fuels to use them in a way that it makes them more sustainable or more efficient. Are we thinking about those kinds of improvements or is that still kind of over the horizon?
Jake Weinberger
I think... And right now we're using a combination of natural gas, fuel oils, but also a little bit of renewable energy. Some of our energy comes from Con Ed and Con Ed also produces hydroelectricity. The other things that I learned from my past experiences is two things. One, to have a lot of patience. And two is to have sort of trade-offs. What I mean by that is these infrastructure projects will not occur just like that. It will not occur overnight. It takes a few years to several years. And with trade-offs, what I mean by that is sometimes one thing doesn't work, but if you can come up with a solution that's similar and it works for you, then proceed with that.
See how that goes. There's a lot of trial and error, and I know that climate change is a pressing existential threat, but we have to make sure that we are open to all possibilities in order for this to work. So it's very important to work with as many people as possible, get people involved, ensure that people know they have agency when taking action. I think that's extremely important.
Vincent Boudreau
I mean, I was going to ask you about, so much of what we've been talking about is the introduction of new technology or new infrastructure to campus, but at the heart of this is a kind of behavioral change and you're asking people to live lives a little bit differently. And so far that really seems to be the focus of the waste management stuff. But what about in other aspects of the work that we do on campus? Are there other kind of behaviors that bracketing recycling and waste that you think we need to inspire in our community?
Jake Weinberger
I think organizing is a big item. A lot of people are really focusing right now on organizing with the community, getting them involved, having the opportunity to tell them... One of the big things that I think is awareness is key. If you don't know something, you won't care about it. And showing them ways that they can help in terms of sustainability and the climate, improving recycling, turning off your lights. It's the little things that they come together as a combination, they make a big impact.
But mobilization really coming together as a community, involving the community, making sure that there isn't this concrete wall physical and metaphorical between the community and the campus. It's erasing those barriers and really just reaching out to them.
Vincent Boudreau
So when you say community, in this sense, you're not talking about students, faculty, staff, you mean people that live close to City College?
Jake Weinberger
Exactly. I'm talking about campus community and the Harlem community because we're all in the same area and we're on the same planet, so we have to work together in order to make these things possible.
Vincent Boudreau
So let me just ask you about that. If I'm a member of the... Let's say I live three blocks north of City College, what do you hope I see when I look at City College going through these moves and where would I see it? What should I be noticing if I'm a Harlem resident or someone from Washington Heights coming down?
Jake Weinberger
Right now, there's the solar canopy and the EV chargers, and there are a lot of green spaces on campus currently. And what we're going implement are more sustainability, recycling initiatives, more green logos. I think having more green roofs, even though most people aren't going to see from aerial footage. A lot of green, a lot of plants, just people engaging with them on recycling, but also just different sustainability efforts. I think that's going to be coming in the next few years, that I'm really excited about.
Vincent Boudreau
One of the things that on campus, we're now in the process of a master planning process. And master planning process really looks at the physical infrastructure. That's where if you need a new building, it gets into the master plan or you need to do some renovations in the master plan. Part of that is involve with landscape and what are we going to do with our green spaces, which you just mentioned. And there is a pretty strong argument in what we've seen so far that as you know, City College is right... In terms of altitude, we are way up on a hill. And as climate change brings more water to our region, the water hits the college and runs right down into the Harlem community.
And we've seen that really have devastating effects in the past. There is a pretty strong argument to start building water reservoirs into our green spaces so that the water doesn't run immediately down into Harlem, that there are underground storage facilities. Maybe even something like a pond on campus that would capture some of that rainwater and preserve it. And so I think if we're talking to people off campus, outside City College, there's a lot to pay attention to on campus and know that we understand that sustainability isn't isolated to a campus lot. It involves the relationship between our spaces and community spaces. And we're all kind of in this together.
And now joining the conversation is Katherine Silverman. I'd like to tell you a little bit about her. She's the assistant director of the Sustainability in the Urban Environment Program at SCity College. This is our Master's of science program in sustainability. A terrific program that you're going to hear a little more about. She fulfills both administrative and advising duties for this unique interdisciplinary graduate program. Outside of her role at City College, Katherine is working on her dissertation in the constructed environmental PhD program at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.
And while at UVA, Katherine was a teaching assistant both in sustainability courses and for the global sustainability capstone class. Before joining City College, she was a resiliency planner at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and a data journalist focused on green building in Hanley Wood publishers of Architect and Builder Magazine among other trade publications. While completing her MA in environmental conservation education at NYU, Katherine served as the assistant to the program's director.
She holds a BS in Geography and Environmental Inquiry from Penn State University. Though she's lived in New York City for years, she is somehow proudly originally from New Jersey. I didn't say that, by the way. That was a script. They put that in there and I just read it, but don't get mad at me, New Jersey. Katherine, welcome to From City to the World.
Katherine Silverman
Thank you so much for having me.
Vincent Boudreau
So let me ask you a little bit about, let's start with the environmental sustainability program at CCNY. It is a unique program, a master's program. And at its core, its interdisciplinary. It operates between the worlds of architecture and engineering and science and social science. So tell us a little bit about the program.
Katherine Silverman
Sure. So we are a thirty-credit master's program and also recently added a twelve-credit advanced certificate, so a post-baccalaureate AC. And we're truly interdisciplinary, so we're shared among four divisions at City College, which is really quite rare. We're situated under the provost's office. So even though there are a lot of programs in the CUNY system that are shared maybe between two departments, we are truly running the whole landscape of sustainability as an interdisciplinary program.
We also, through the study of climate adaptation, want to be as adaptable as possible to every type of graduate student. So you can study fully on campus and work on campus projects with Jake and his team, or you can be fully remote in another part of the country or even occasionally the world.
Vincent Boudreau
Before we move off describing the program, talk just a little bit about the kinds of professional trajectories, both what does it look like to be someone who's qualified to apply for the program and what happens once you leave it?
Katherine Silverman
It's really hard to say what our typical student is. We don't really have a stereotypical student, but a lot of students will come to us from engineering, architecture, more social sciences research. We have several sociologists in the program right now, a few anthropologists, but we also have a growing number of students that come to us from the humanities and the arts. And so we will occasionally require our students to take a physics class before they join the program, just so they are ready for some of that more technical coursework that you'll see in a Master of science degree program. But really any academic background can join us if you're passionate about urban sustainability and climate adaptation.
I would say in line probably with most of City College students, our students are very civically minded, so they often are thinking about roles in the public sector that can have a really demonstrable impact here in New York City. So a lot of our students do go on to offices like the Department of Housing Preservation and Development that I came from, the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, Department of Environmental Protection, Parks Department. But we also have students who go into the private sector and sort of bake that urban sustainability into their existing careers in architecture and engineering firms.
And we do have a number of students also go on to PhD programs at the CUNY Grad Center and elsewhere. So pursuing a full research career.
Vincent Boudreau
So let's talk about that a little bit. Personally, you've done some very hands-on policy-oriented, results-oriented work. You're also en route to getting your PhD, so there's a professoriate. That you may be entering the professoriate as well. Can you talk a little bit about the contributions you think academic study and academia as an institution can contribute to the real practical and urgent work of sustainability these days?
Katherine Silverman
Absolutely. So I think especially here at City College, an educational setting is really a living laboratory where students can think outside the box. They have the space and the time and the coursework structure to think about new and really innovative solutions to sustainability problems. There's not going to be one silver bullet solution to a lot of the challenges we'll be facing in the climate crisis.
And so giving students the opportunity without necessarily the confines or constraints of a nine-to-five job, think about what are the most wild opportunities that can come from climate adaptation, what opportunities in design and technological innovation can really be made. And in addition to that, they have the opportunity to work on building those really critical technical and research skills. So once they are done and they're out in the world, they have created a toolkit of things that they can do that will make them interdisciplinary thinkers and interdisciplinary workers.
Vincent Boudreau
And so staying on this just for a second, the master's program is a little bit unique in the sense that you graduate with an undergraduate in engineering, you can get a master's degree in engineering. You graduate from an undergraduate degree in, I don't know, biology, you get a master's degree in biology. Taking these students from all different backgrounds, including you said, increasingly students from the humanities.
What does that do for the program to have a student body that comes at these problems from all these different directions? You said that it allows students to, as individuals, be interdisciplinary thinkers, but does it also sort of constitute a student body that's approaching these questions a little bit differently?
Katherine Silverman
Absolutely. Climate change is a wicked problem that touches on every field, and to put all of those various experts in the same room together is an essential part of doing this work. And so we're kind of doing it in a microcosm of a larger reality that they'll see in these careers. And I typically tell our incoming students, you're going to learn so much from faculty here at City College, but you're also going to learn almost as much from each other.
They're coming from different experiences within the climate crisis themselves and different expertise in terms of their academic backgrounds. So there's so much just knowledge and information sharing among our student body, and making sure there is as many seats at the table as there really should be.
Vincent Boudreau
I want to talk just a little bit about the sort of specific urban nature of our campus and so many of our students. A lot of them come from all over the world, but so many of them come from Harlem, the South Bronx, east New York, all these places with very distinctive, very pressing sort of sustainability projects. Is there a kind of emphasis on that kind of sustainability in the program? And do you find your students have a particular motivation around issues and problems that are rooted in the urban environment?
Katherine Silverman
Absolutely. We see that through our environmental justice coursework, especially students who are native New Yorkers or who have recently moved here are already experts in their own community and of their own community. And so they bring that knowledge of, for example, environmental injustice wrongs that need immediate solutions to the work that they're doing in their classroom.
So for example, a lot of our students will also do work with the CUNY, the New York City Climate Justice Hub, which is a partner organization of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, working with a number of CBOs, community-based organizations, across the city working on environmental justice work. And a lot of our students already have a relationship with those organizations. They've grown up in the neighborhoods with those organizations, and they want to better assist in the progress being made in those places.
Vincent Boudreau
Now, I understand that one of the things that students undertake towards the end of their career in this program is a capstone project where they take what they've learned in the classroom and do something big with it. Could you give us an idea of, I won't say your favorite capstone projects, but some of the ones that you've found most striking that you've seen?
Katherine Silverman
Sure. So we do have a number of teams that will partner with climate justice hub organizations. So for example, one right now is working on mapping environmental justice with the Point CDC and Hunts Point looking specifically at last mile warehouses. So that is something that the organization at the end of their project will get to take and use in order to try to push policy and legislation further to address air quality issues and traffic congestion in the neighborhood.
Vincent Boudreau
Could I just ask, you said last mile warehouses?
Katherine Silverman
Yes.
Vincent Boudreau
Tell me what that is.
Katherine Silverman
So those are the facilities like your Amazon and your food facilities that will be taking the products the last mile from sort of distribution and large distances directly to people's homes.
Vincent Boudreau
I see. So there's that project.
Katherine Silverman
There's that project. We also have a team that's been working with our NOAA center here at City College on Living Shorelines in Jamaica Bay. We have several teams that have worked with the facilities' management office and with sustainability initiatives on campus, including one that was led by Professor Stephanie Rose. And the team actually did facilitate sort of an early iteration of a waste audit that Jake and his team are undertaking now. And additionally, we had a teamwork with Professor Ahmed Mohammed in engineering on thinking of a circular microgrid on campus for the NAC.
Vincent Boudreau
Tell me what that means.
Katherine Silverman
So sort of a full energy loop, and Jake, if I'm misrepresenting this in any way, feel free to jump in, but thinking about how we could generate renewable energy and sort of use all of the energy that's generated in a closed loop system around the North Academic Center on campus.
Vincent Boudreau
So that would be solar and wind generating facilities-
Katherine Silverman
Biogas, everything.
Vincent Boudreau
Could we generate biogas on campus? Is that-
Katherine Silverman
Well, some of our students have set up an anaerobic biodigester in Marshak, in Professor Kyle McDonald's labs. So they're starting to do it on a very small scale and thinking about ways that we could scale it up on campus.
Vincent Boudreau
That is so exciting. Any others that come to mind, or is that a pretty good representation?
Katherine Silverman
I mean, the projects are so interdisciplinary and also exciting. In the very beginning of the pandemic, a team worked on thinking about rapid conversion of midtown office space to affordable housing and doing that with passive house design in mind. And that was something that was totally out of the box, probably not possible in New York, and five years later it's happening.
Vincent Boudreau
Hang on, hang on. I'm going to do it again to you. Passive house design, tell us what that is.
Katherine Silverman
Yes. So passive house is using sort of low energy building elements to create a more energy efficient and climate adaptive environment within buildings. So it is actually a certified design option. So it's kind of like lead. You can get a certification, but more and more builders and architects are also just layering passive house strategies into what they do because it is much better for the return on investment in terms of your energy use in a building.
Vincent Boudreau
This is very, very cool. I want to make sure if you're listening, you're not missing the point. This is a very broad spectrum of impactful deeply, deeply interesting projects that people are equipped to do coming out of this program. And so if you are listening to this from outside of the campus and you're not yet a City College student, or if you're a City College student getting ready to graduate, there are interesting possibilities for you in the sustainability program.
Let me ask about the theme for this month, which is clean energy and how is the sustainability program helping students to contribute to energy transformation projects like those that Jake was mentioning that have this impact on the infrastructure of City College. This is where we go from micro projects to looking at a building like the NAC and saying, how can we make it more sustainable?
Katherine Silverman
So we already talked a little bit about the capstone projects, and that model definitely enables students to do things specifically on campus. We also have a number of teams working with Michael Bob Kerr, who I know was on the show recently.
Vincent Boudreau
Just last month. Yes.
Katherine Silverman
With the CUNY Building Performance Lab on a larger project on the Harlem Retrofit Accelerator. And then just within our coursework, students all receive sort of an introduction to what the energy transition could look like, and then if that's what they want to focus on, there are electives that we offer with Professor Ahmed Mohammed in renewable energy. So that's shared with the electrical engineering program. And so students are in the engineering coursework with Professor Mohammed.
And we will also offer this coming fall to special topics courses from a visiting faculty member in thinking about just energy transition. So not just the typical thoughts on solar and wind, but also what it really means to modernize our grid infrastructure in a just manner and thinking about opportunities like community solar and virtual power plants and other innovative solutions to our energy grids problems.
Vincent Boudreau
Those sorts of solutions are not... I mean, this goes back to something we were talking about with Jake earlier. They're not just technological solutions. They require a kind of interface between technology and community organization and mobilization. Do you a lot of time in the program addressing that aspect of sustainability solutions?
Katherine Silverman
Absolutely. Through some of the core coursework in cities and sustainability, which is pretty New York focused, and our environmental justice elective students have the opportunity at the end of the course to actually put on a public meeting as part of that. So it's very much embedded in working with the community and community-based organizations.
Vincent Boudreau
So it's a real public meeting. It's not like an exercise that you do. They convene a community to talk about... Wow, that's really terrific. This is probably a good moment just to take a breath because a lot of times a graduate program will... You come in to study sustainability, but there are certain kind of tracks that you can take to emphasize one or another skill set or professional trajectory. Do you have that in the sustainability program? And how might somebody specialize once they get inside it?
Katherine Silverman
Yes, we do. So the way I sort of describe our electives' menu is choose your own adventure, and then through academic advising, we'll find a course structure that works really well for a student so they are getting those specific skills that they want to get. So a lot of our students will work with Professor Kyle McDonald, who was also on the show recently on NASA research that will help them gain remote sensing skills. A lot of our students will work with Professor Kimberly Huppert in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences on GIS.
And through their electives, they can sort of find their footing in both the more technical hard skills that they want to build, and also those really important soft skills in terms of career development, just presenting, writing a memo if they're thinking of working in the public sector. Running a public meeting, if that's something that is a goal for them eventually.
Vincent Boudreau
You mentioned students working with individual professors in their area of expertise, but is there a kind of larger overlay of collaboration between the sustainability program and other kind of institutions on campus? And are there new institutions on campus that you're just starting to work with that are exciting?
Katherine Silverman
So we often will partner on some of our events where we spotlight student work, NYPIRG, the New York Public Interest Research Group. Sorry.
Vincent Boudreau
Yes.
Katherine Silverman
With Justin Yulo and NYPIRG, we've had collaborative events with CCNY Green, with local organizations that are not necessarily campus-based, but a lot of our students go on to work at, places like WE ACT for Environmental Justice, which is a Harlem based organization. And we do that... Usually the entry point is through planning events together that will give students sort of a platform to talk about the great work they're doing. But in addition to that, it's thinking about ways that we can support the work of all of these organizations in tandem and thinking about more broadly the climate justice work and policy work in New York City.
Which will soon culminate in a new chapter of TREEage, which is a youth climate justice organization starting here at City College. A few students reached out to me about starting our own chapter. So a lot of this work has sort of brought to fruition that we are a campus for climate policy and climate justice work, and students will be starting that in the fall.
Vincent Boudreau
So I want to go back to at some point, whatever else someone's interested coming into a program like this. They're interested in jobs and careers, and you have a range, not just of the master's degree, but of certificates and professional certifications. Could you talk a little bit about the relationship between some of those credentials that the program offers and where that can take you in the job market?
Katherine Silverman
Absolutely. So for example, in the summer with the Spitzer School of Architecture, we offer a passive house design course. So back to passive house,
Vincent Boudreau
Now that we know what that means. Good.
Katherine Silverman
Yes. So that course is actually taught by an alum of our program, Ben Lear, and it will train the students to be able to take the exam at the end of the course to become certified passive house designers. So that is a really important credential that students can earn while they're in the program that will definitely help them on the job market if they're interested in building decarbonization.
We also offer a number of classes with the CUNY Building Performance Lab on energy efficiency and different components of building science and engineering that will help train students to be prepared for local law 97 energy efficiency guidelines and laws now that are in New York. So training them very specifically for things that are happening here in the city with policy implementation and addressing through energy audits and building decarbonization our overall decarbonization strategy for the city.
Vincent Boudreau
I want to end with a question for both of you. Jake is still with us, although he's been quiet for the second half of the program, but I want to know we're in a difficult moment for this kind of work. I mean, certainly there's been an emphasis on federal government attacks on diversity programs and gender programs, but climate change sustainability is no less kind of on the list of things that support funding is moving away from and some kind of, wouldn't call it yet a tax, but it borders on a court of a way of undermining this work from the federal government.
I'd like to hear both of you sort of talk a little bit about how this is affecting your work and what you think the response to that might be over time.
Jake Weinberger
For me, a lot of the funding for these projects on a federal level is being taken away unfortunately. However, in the state for New York, thankfully, we have governors and mayors who are serious about taking action and supporting our initiatives. And I think when I was talking about agency, I was referring to the power that an individual has to make change, and that's in the form of mobilizing with community, recycling, zero waste, which is something that I forgot to talk about, but I think it comes down to community. We have become very disconnected from each other.
I think it's very important that we come together, whether it's just fun, community events, community fairs, different social events, just talking with people. A lot of our lives are lived online right now, and we're facing all these existential threats that are doom and gloom. And I think if we can come together and share positive environmental news stories, it will boost enthusiasm and morale. And so that's something that I'm really focusing on right now in this role just to work with the community, work with my colleagues on what we can do to achieve our objectives and focus less on the, like I said, doom and gloom.
Vincent Boudreau
It's such a daunting problem that I think anything that people can hold onto that suggests that we can make progress against this is going to be helpful. Katherine, the future of sustainability in a hostile climate.
Katherine Silverman
April 22nd, this past Earth Day, we co-hosted an environmental justice summit with a number of the organizations that I talked about. Our focus for this year was thinking about local policy wins in spite of what's happening at the federal level. And that gave me a lot of hope, hearing from students and local organizations that so much is being done, but it also, whenever we have one of these wonderful events, it reminds me that I just want to include even more people.
This is an all hands on deck problem, and I hope that due to what's happening at the federal landscape, people will be doubling down and feeling even more mobilized to take climate action and to be a part of this community because we want everyone involved.
Vincent Boudreau
Let me end by asking you if somebody wants to get involved in the sustainability program, either as a student or as a community-based organization that feels there's room to collaborate, how do they go about doing that?
Katherine Silverman
They can just... If you Google CCNY sustainability, you'll have all of our contact info. You can also find us on various social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Bluesky, and I would love to say we're this huge shop and there are so many people responding to these messages, but even if you just DM us on Instagram, it's me that you're going to, and I would be happy to hear from anybody who wants to collaborate.
Vincent Boudreau
Yes. I mean, leverage on these problems is taking a small, committed group of people and producing the greatest possible effect. So thank you for being City College's answer to that. Thank you for listening to From City to the World. Special thanks to our guest sustainability coordinator, Jake Weinberg, and Assistant Director of the Sustainability Program, Katherine Silverman. You've given us... Both of you have painted a picture of real hope and possibility, and I'm grateful for the work that you're doing and for the account of your work that you've provided me today and our listeners.
This show was produced by yours truly, Vince Boudreau and Tiffanie Burt. The board operator is Tiffanie Burt. Take care, everybody.