'Green Brick City' Selected as Winning Proposal in Honors College Biodiversity Initiative
NJIT’s Albert Dorman Honors College held its First-Year Seminar Biodiversity Initiatives colloquium, in which six student-led proposals were presented to renovate an area next to Kupfrian Hall.
These student-driven initiatives allow for the Urban Ecology Lab (UEL), ADHC, the Real Estate Development and Capital Operations (REDCO) and the Office of Sustainability to team up together to make NJIT’s campus into a more sustainable and biodiverse community.
“Service is at the heart of what we do here in the Honors College, all the scholars are required to do 60 hours of service a semester, that's 40,000 hours a year of service,” said Louis I. Hamilton, dean of ADHC. “That service will grow and someone asked me, ‘what will success look like?’ And for us in the College, success is going to look at how we expand opportunity, both in the college and out in the community.
“How are we expanding the opportunities that we have here at NJIT, and in the Honors College in particular, out into our community here in Newark, out in the state of New Jersey and nationally,” he said.
“Year by year, we're increasing the reach of these projects on campus,” highlighted Caroline Devan, university lecturer of biological sciences and co-director of UEL.
She shared pictures of how one of the projects that started in one of these colloquiums, the Newark Rooftop Therapy Garden, has grown abundantly just as the garden behind the Honors College.
The winning proposal, “Green Brick City,” has two goals with their proposed project: to restore ecosystem function within the NJIT community and to reduce the effects of urban pollution and greenhouse gasses present within Newark.
They plan to add three new plants to the area. The Downy Willowherb because it will reduce concentration of VOCs, oxidants and uptake of soil contaminants; the Roundleaf Serviceberry which tolerates sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of industrial processes; and Beach Pea to aid in soil retention.
Andrew P. Christ, senior vice president of REDCO, announced the winner after highlighting the excellent work from all six groups. Christ highlighted that the portrayal of the history of Newark, and the impact on the current environment was well done by the winning proposal.
“Thanks to the Albert Dorman Honors College, and the Urban Ecology Lab for the collaboration and inviting us to interact with the students,” he added. “We do a lot of things behind the scenes for you all, but we don't get to interact with you, and it is truly the best part of our jobs when we do.”
The plant species selected are native to the former estuary and forest ecosystems of New Jersey, support at least 141 pollinator and bird species whose ranges cross over Newark and will create ecological corridors for other ecosystem fragments.
We can put something on campus, test and see how it works and maybe adjust it or implement it elsewhere.
Girish Subramani, a first-year honors scholar majoring in biochemistry, pointed out that the public has a big perception that ecosystem issues are separate from what happens in society, but with “Green Brick City,” they wanted to show how both issues are connected.
“Other countries have tried to revitalize their ecosystems, and even in the United States, there's been a lot of difficulty with that. And that all stems from the inability to connect to our own communities within the city,” he said. “We can't just separate out nature, and what we're doing here, all those systems are interconnected.”
Jonathan Morse, a first-year honors scholar majoring in computer science, added that they hope their project idea can be applied far beyond Newark.
“One thing we're aiming to look at is trying to make this applicable not just here on campus, but in the wider Newark area and maybe even elsewhere,” said Morse. “That was a lot of the inspiration that went behind this.” His hometown in Texas has an oil refinery in the middle of the city, and it helped him draw parallels with what he saw in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“That's a lot of heavy industrial processes happening in the middle of the city, and that affects contaminants and emissions happening around the urban biodiversity. So that was the implementation, we can put something on campus, test and see how it works and maybe adjust it or implement it elsewhere.”
Subramani, an Edison native, is also an EMT and has firsthand experience of seeing patients suffering from chronic diseases caused by air and soil pollution in cities nearby. “I can see patients in less demographically privileged or affluent areas have more chronic disease issues as a result of air pollution, and potentially soil pollution as well.
“And so the sort of thing behind this proposal is that we have to tailor them to the realities of the area where they're going to be applied.”
