Fairmont State University’s Creative Sustainability Council (CSC), a campus organization focused on sustainability initiatives for the University and community, has been awarded a grant of $27,120 from the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation (ASF) to implement two sustainability initiatives on campus this summer. These initiatives have been designed in partnership with Aladdin Food Service and the Fairmont State Foundation.

The CSC, a group of students, faculty, and staff whose goal is to enrich and extend sustainability practices on campus, is guided by Dr. Erica Harvey, Abelina Suarez Professor of Chemistry at Fairmont State University. Harvey is using her Suarez professorship to support student-centered sustainability initiatives that are fun and community-building, in addition to being practical and impactful.

The first initiative, a glass recycling program, will introduce a glass crusher to campus. This equipment converts glass waste like pasta sauce jars and soda bottles into sand that can be used for a variety of applications. Glass waste generated on campus by employees and students will be converted to sand for use in campus landscaping projects, offsetting the expense of buying sand each year. Community members will be able to use the crusher to recycle their own glass waste into sand, which they can take home and use for personal projects.

“Facilities trade workers will spruce up the new glass crusher location on the first floor of the parking garage. This location should lend itself to a drop/pick-up and go operation,” Stephanie DeGroot, construction project manager, said. “The identified compost location was agreed to by all parties involved and will be located at the top of the stairs leading from Prichard Hall to Pence Hall. It was a great central location with easy access for all contributing groups.”

The second initiative will introduce a composting program on campus. With over 3,800 students, Fairmont State University’s dining hall generates around 100 pounds of total food waste per day. To reduce the amount of waste being hauled to landfills in half, two commercially available, in-vessel systems will be installed behind the Falcon Student Center. The combination of food waste and carbon source materials (yard and grounds waste) in the vessels are anticipated to generate 18 tons of compost and greenhouse gas reductions of approximately 7.5 metric tons per year. The University’s facilities department, the CSC and Aladdin Food Service will collaborate to design, test and refine the composting system. The final product will supplement the landscaping needs on campus and provide a template for future composting initiatives on campus.  

“This is sustainability for our customers and clients. It helps us educate them about waste. It’s all about waste control, we’ll set up a weigh station when we first set up the compost and show them actually how much they are wasting in a day,” Jeff Swaim, Aladdin Food Services Director, said. “We want to be a part of sustainability and that’s why we want to do this, also to decrease the waste and chemical input in our landfills.”

Both projects are underway, with construction and installation scheduled for this summer. As students return to campus in the fall, these programs will be operational, with opportunities for student engagement for data collection and analysis.

After implementation and analysis in the coming year, the CSC will host an environmental science and sustainability workshop for public school teachers and community leaders in the summer of 2021. The CSC will share the details of environmental and fiscal impact these programs have and encourage the investigation and adoption of these practices. 
Harvey and the CSC believe the proposed collection of creative sustainability initiatives will provide an opportunity to have approachable, ongoing campus and community conversations about collective energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. They look forward to identifying both economic and environmental benefits of these changes and sharing what is learned.

“Our CSC members are honored and excited to receive this support from ASF,” said Harvey.  “Three student members will undertake composting research this fall. Students will be calculating greenhouse gas emission reductions from the project, and we are all looking forward to crushing our glass!  The ASF grant projects will elevate the sustainability work at Fairmont State, nicely complementing our existing solar panel array and newly donated electric vehicle chargers from an anonymous donor.  Thanks to ASF, we have also initiated collaborations with the sustainability department at Marshall University, and hope to build a statewide sustainability network.”

The Appalachian Stewardship Foundation was created as a result of a settlement with Longview Power that set up a mitigation fund to correct the damage to the environment caused by the mining and burning of coal. To date, ASF has awarded more than 1.3 million dollars in funds to promote their mission.

This grant was made through the Fairmont State Foundation Inc., the non-profit organization that solicits and administers private donations on behalf of the Fairmont State University.

Spies like us: Fairmont State University's National Intelligence Program

Four intelligence analysts are hunched over a computer screen. On the wall behind them are various maps of the world and three clocks that show the hour in different times zones. They have tracked everything from the Russian military’s involvement in the Ukraine to vulnerabilities with NASA’s Hubble Telescope.

But on this particular Tuesday afternoon, with the lights off and computer screens bright, they are diving into the nefarious underworld of email scams. The project’s codename is Operation Trident.

The lab is known as OSIX, short for Open Source Intelligence Exchange, and it’s run by the cream of the crop from the school’s National Security and Intelligence (NSI) program. Out of the department’s approximately 200 students, only 16 are currently working in the lab. “We take our best and brightest and put them in that environment,” explains Professor David Abruzzino.

Students in the OSIX lab sift through court records, public databases and, now more than ever, social media posts. When the devastating floods ravaged West Virginia towns in the summer of 2016, a group of FSU students were monitoring Facebook and Twitter for people in need. “OSIX was instrumental in identifying somebody who had a need for police assistance and then notifying the state authorities,” says Professor Todd Clark, who mentors the students in the lab. “Social media monitoring really paid off. It’s a key to a lot of what we do.” The advantage these students have, he says, is that they grew up with these technologies. “They have a sixth sense of where to look on social media. They have a fresh perspective.”

Nick Oliveto, a 29-year-old native of Fairmont, was one of the first students to partake in the OSIX lab before graduating FSU in 2012. After school, he got a job with Lockheed Martin before moving on to law school. He’s now working as a counter-terrorism analyst in the Maryland suburbs. “The program gave me the professional foundation needed to pursue my career,” he says. “I use what I learned at Fairmont every day.”

Oliveto credits his success to teachers like Abruzzino who, before arriving at FSU a decade ago, was in the CIA where his area of expertise was the heroin trade in Afghanistan. “In many cases when we’re talking about concepts that are expressed in their textbooks, I can bring up a real-world experience I had where I faced that situation and can explain to them how it played out in a real-world scenario,” Abruzzino says.

Students have come from across the country – as far away as Oregon – to enroll in Fairmont’s NSI department. The school’s proximity to the national security community in D.C. makes having guest speakers easy. And the FBI office in Clarksburg comes to campus to recruit students for internships.

Alumni have landed gigs at dozens of national agencies – including the CIA, FBI and NASA. Many have opted to stay in the region and work for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and the West Virginia Army National Guard. An NSI master’s program is in the works for those students who want to further their education even more.

Back in the lab, the team of students are prepping a presentation they will be giving at the state capitol in Charleston. There, they will meet state delegates and senators and show them the latest project they are working on. It may not be the CIA, but it’s a step in the right direction. As a sign on the wall declares: “You don’t have to start out as an expert. You just have to start.”