Service Learning Projects

ICLR coordinates with local jurisdictions to identify projects with components that fit well into existing courses, following the EPIC model. This allows city, county, or other entities to leverage no-cost student work to complete local climate change and sustainability projects, and provides a rich learning experience for the student while producing valuable deliverables for the client entity.

Projects may include:

• Outreach and education for electrification of buildings
• Outreach and education for incentive programs for energy reduction
• Development of EV Readiness Strategy
• Climate action planning and resilience planning activities
• Environmental justice and vulnerability assessments

Example Service Learning Projects

Significant opportunities exist for potential repurposing uses of the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Oil Refinery, according to preliminary analysis conducted by ICLR and commissioned by the Central Coast Economic Recovery Initiative (ERI).  The analysis was produced by two separate student-led projects at Cal Poly, and explored a half dozen different repurposing uses for the Phillips 66 facility that is slated for closure in 2023. Potential reuses analyzed for the site include desalination, green hydrogen generation, grid-scale battery storage, plastics recycling, an anaerobic digester for organic waste, and conservation. Read the full story at cceri.org.

• Sustainable Land Initiative
  • BRAE Equipment Development
  • LAES Website Creation
  • GRC Educational Material Design
• Community Choice Agencies
  • Rooftop Solar Incentivization
  • EV Incentivization
• Repurposing Phillips 66
  • Conceptual Desalination Environmental Constraints Analysis
  • Conceptual Multipurpose Site Redevelopment Analysis
• Optimal Offset Calculator
• Resilient Energy Assessment (REA)
• ResilientSLO
• Innovative Carbon Sequestration

Curriculum Development

ICLR supports faculty developing new curricula related to climate change and sustainability, or adapting existing courses to include a project-based service learning component.

Example courses:

• NR 310 - Global Climate Change. This junior-level Natural Resources Management course is a general education course open to all majors and covers global climate systems, methods of inference used in climate science, how global warming affects the human and natural world, and policy impacts.
• BIO 470 - Biology of Climate Change. Biological consequences of climate change at different levels of biological organization and various environments. Atmospheric chemistry, global and regional climate dynamics and history, consequences for human populations. Possible mitigation actions and their contribution to CO2 emission reduction.

ICLR is also working with the Academic Senate Sustainability Committee to develop and revise the campus-wide Sustainability Learning Objectives (SLOs) for courses. These objectives help identify courses that are sustainability-focused or sustainability-related, and courses that meet 2+ of the 4 SLOs are subsequently added to the Sustainability Catalog (SusCat), a resource designed to help students find sustainability courses on campus.

Finally, ICLR is working with the Sustainability Office and Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences to produce a Sustainability Literacy Assessment. This is Cal Poly’s third assessment of this kind. Since 2023, this version has been deployed in classes across campus as a 15-minute survey to test students’ sustainability literacy and values, and to attempt to determine whether Cal Poly’s curriculum is adequately fostering sustainability literacy. Over 900 students have been surveyed between 2023-2024. Read about the initial analysis here.

Professional Development

ICLR offers workshops and courses through Extended Education that promote sustainable practices and allow professionals to pivot towards sustainable pursuits within their chosen career.

Courses include:

• Carbon Farm Planning. For farmers and agribusiness professionals to learn about low-carbon and regenerative farming techniques and implementation. This course is offered through cooperation with the CAFES Center for Sustainability.
• High-Performance Buildings. For HVAC professionals to learn about automated control systems and new electric alternatives to gas appliances (heat pumps, thermal energy systems, etc).
• LCA Literacy. For city staffers and managers of industrial operations to learn about Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) data; how to interpret it and how to incorporate it in the decision-making process.
• Climate Action Planning. For city staffers and elected officials to learn about the process of developing a community plan for decarbonizing at a municipal level.

Events

ICLR helps host a variety of climate and sustainability events on campus in the community. Events center education and engagement.

Events include:

• TCTAC webinar on 10/30/24. This webinar centered two of the EPA’s 16 centers in the Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (EJ TCTAC) Program, the WEST EJ Center and SDSU’s CCEEJ. The two speakers shared information about each center’s services with technical assistance when applying for environmental justice grant opportunities in different EPA regions. Watch the recording. (This event was co-hosted by the SLO County Climate Justice Alliance.)
• “Cooked: Survival by Zip Code” screenings on 9/22/24 at the Palm Theatre and on 10/20/24 at Cal Poly. From award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, “Cooked” reveals the ways in which class, race, and zip code predetermine unequal response and recovery to environmental disaster. By linking the deadly Chicago heat wave of 1995 to the underlying manmade disaster of structural racism, Helfand's film delves deep into one of our nation's biggest growth industries: Disaster Preparedness. (This event was co-hosted by the SLO County Climate Justice Alliance.)
• Bringing Beavers Back to Coastal California on 5/18/24 at Cal Poly. This hybrid educational event centered the major role beavers can play in improving and maintaining ecosystem health if they are able to return to coastal watersheds in California. It featured presentations from experts in the field, interactive discussions, and tours of local beaver habitat the following day. (This event was co-hosted by SLO Beaver Brigade and Morro Bay Open Space Alliance.)
  • Watch the recording of Cooper Lienhart’s talk on “Process-Based Restoration: mimicking beavers to restore stream health”. Cooper is the President of Nature’s Engineers.
  • Watch the recording of Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman’s talk on “Lessons Learned and Replicable Strategies for Connecting with and Bringing Beavers Back in California”. Kate and Brock are the Co-Directors of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center WATER Institute.
  • Watch the recording of Steph Wald’s talk on “Creek Lands Conservation- Protecting and Conserving Small Coastal Watersheds of the Central Coast”. Steph Wald is the Watershed Projects Manager at Creek Lands Conservation.
• Climate Solutions Now from 10/25-10/27/23. Our third annual conference boasted 75 talks and discussions in 12 parallel tracks, such as Climate Communications and Forest Carbon, and brought together 821 attendees.
• Climate Solutions Now from 10/26-10/28/22. Our second annual conference boasted 65 talks and discussions in 12 parallel tracks, such as Built Environment and Sustainable Aviation.