University of British Columbia Campus Wide Sustainability Reform

The reform I am initiating at TCU circumferences the ideology of sustainability. Being from California, there is a noticeable difference in the attempt to preserve the environment at home compared to that of Texas' initiatives. While TCU has taken steps towards practicing sustainable living by increasing the amount of recycling bins across campus, I think there is a better way to influence students to recycle. At various locations in California statewide, there are places where you can recycle and you get 5 cents back for every plastic bottle you recycle, and 10 cents for some larger bottles and glass bottles. I think this is in the best interest of TCU not only to help decrease the university's carbon footprint, but to invite students to recycle with a reward. 

In researching other university's that have implemented some form of sustainable reform, it was difficult to find a university in America. I'm not sure if I was using inaccurate search words or what the deal was, but I found a university in English speaking Canada (so basically the U.S) that initiated a major sustainability reform. The University of British Columbia (Okanagan campus) underwent a series of environmentally savvy changes to improve the sustainable living status of the students campus wide. This initiative was sparked by just a few individuals, so it was inspiring to me to think that I could potentially make a difference. 

The article heavily focused on the importance of educating the community first about the environment, its current state, and to emphasize that a single person, especially a university, can make a difference in bettering not only their community, but the nation, and even the world. The article also stated ways in which the university could implement these changes. While this initiative was predominantly to educate the community about sustainable living, the university developed an entire sustainability sector on campus with the goal of helping students, faculty, and staff to learn and live a sustainable life. 

The initiative includes myriad opportunities for students to get started in living a sustainable life. To name a few, there are sustainable food opportunities, ranging from the on campus farm, local and sustainable food options, and a place to compost food. Students are encouraged to choose suitable food options at campus eateries, compost their food waste, get involved in campus gardening, and attend food-related events. UBC has also began a water initiative in which they have decreased their water usage by 50% in the past few years by developing a plan and sticking to it. They also have a stormwater treatment plant on campus. The campus also is constructing green buildings that not only use sustainable resources in construction, but that use less energy, emit less toxins into the air, and use less water. 

Although I am not trying to turn TCU into a green zone (mostly because I feel as though that is a lost cause) I feel like implementing a small change that will inspire students to recycle is something that would be beneficial to students and would make an impression on everyone involved to respect the environment after they move on from TCU as well. 

Advancing campus and community sustainability: strategic alliances in action., Bilodeau, LeanneInternational Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education (ISSN: 1467-6370), 05/01/2014 Vol. 15 No. 2 

HTML Rookie

So as it turns out, learning the basics of HTML through Dreamweaver isn't that scary!!! (as long as you have tutorial videos to guide you the entirety of the way). I wasn't in class on Tuesday, so I immediately felt behind. In order to compensate, I fell down a rabbit hole of Dreamweaver tutorials on Youtube. While I do feel a lot less intimidated by the software, I came to the conclusion that my brain definitely is not wired to write code. I am more than willing to learn and I am really excited to not only be able to add Dreamweaver to the skills section of my resume, but to be able to employ this skill in the future in order to make my own website.

The Adobe Dreamweaver tutorial titled "Define page structure with HTML" really put in perspective how much Dreamweaver basically holds your hand throughout the entire code writing process. My favorite feature is that you don't even need to include the greater than or less than signs (I'm not sure what these are called in programming terms and/or if they are called the same thing) or the backslashes when adding another element of HTML because Dreamweaver adds them for you. However, outside of the code aspect of the program, all of the different tabs and sections on the program are challenging to comprehend.

Overall, I feel a little less pessimistic about this Unit 2 project. Although there are still a lot of things I need to figure out about Dreamweaver, and I am also rather behind on my website, I am excited to learn how to use both Dreamweaver and HTML and I think that having at least a little bit of knowledge of both of concepts is vital in today's technologically run society.