Enjoy this succinct, two-page summary of a concurrent session from SCUP's 2010 annual conference. You'll be reading a 50-page set of such summaries that until very recently were only available to SCUP members and others who attended SCUP-45 in 2010. We've left the page open for you to "How Do Smart Meters Make a University More Intelligent?" Just click on the image below.

With the help of SmartSynch, the University of Mississippi (UM, or Ole Miss) has embarked on an ambitious energy-management pilot. SmartMeters transmit data on individual buildings’ real-time energy consumption, providing analysis capability that is yielding granular understanding of buildings’ efficiency levels and occupants’ utilization habits. Social media is being used to disseminate the data transparently, engaging the campus community. Financial reward programs will drive deeper engagement and more behavior change. Dashboards will facilitate comparisons and analysis, with the insights leveraged to inform policy decisions and intelligent building design. The program’s educational and societal value will be compounded when graduates spread its philosophy and practices far and wide.

Consider visiting and contributing to SCUP's LinkedIn discussion about if and how college and university campuses may be inventorying and valuing their trees, and how integrated that is to master planning and overall planning work. We're looking for people to share current best practices.

It turns out that a campus tree has more value, and more kinds of value, than most people would think. A 2006 study of the value of New York City's tree inventory is one of a number of such studies, reflecting a growing number of institutional entities which consider trees to have both capital and operational value. If your campus is planning in an integrated way, in fact, it makes good sense to understand your tree inventory and its value to the institution.

• The article linked-to here, mentions i-Tree, a free software suite that lets people managing tree inventories to do so while taking many important variables into account.
• If you have an interest in campus heritage landscapes, you should visit SCUP's Campus Heritage Planning Network where, among other resources, there are several reports on campus-wide heritage landscape planning.

Trees provide solar reflection for energy savings, clean air pollutants, and intercept water to reduce stress on storm water runoff. New York figured that measuring the value of its 600,000 trees in this way results in a savings for the city of nearly $120 per tree, annually. Figure in aesthetics and things like property value, public health (visible trees reduce the length of hospital stays), stress, and so forth, and another $90 per tree per year in value brings the total to $210 per tree.

In New York City, that is a total of $122M in benefits from a department of the city that spends less than $15M on trees and forestry staff, resulting in an annual net positive value to the city of more than $100M, from urban trees.

We heard some pretty rational thought and conversation about climate change and about energy on NPR last week, on Science Friday.

Planners will enjoy the story and interviews about the American military's work to save money by energy efficiency. And also to save lives: A retired general spoke about saving $1B and many American lives by vastly reducing the number of shipments of fuel/energy to troops in the field. Fewer trips, less cost and fewer American's killed by attacks during the dangerous trips.

The other segment was on Americans and Climate Change and brought together a recent report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale University and Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC). No one yells at anyone else. It's a nice discussion.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to the this resource: Powering Down: Green IT in Higher Education

This is a publication of EDUCAUSE's research arm, ECAR. The extensive Key Findings, Table of Contents, Roadmap, and Survey Instrument are available for free. The entire report is available for ECAR subscribers, for a fee to EDUCAUSE members, and for a larger fee to others. We've looked at the full report and it will be of interest to IT planners, resource and budget planners, sustainability planners, and facilities planners.

This 2010 ECAR study of green IT examines the stance institutions and their central IT organizations are taking on environmental sustainability (ES), the progress they are making on a variety of key initiatives, and how the work they are doing is helping them become more environmentally responsible in their business, instructional, and research activities. This study provides chief information officers and others with information about the state of ES practices in higher education and identifies practices that are associated with positive outcomes. Based on a literature review to define the issues and establish the research questions, along with consultation with higher education IT administrators and ES experts to validate survey questions, ECAR conducted a quantitative web-based survey of EDUCAUSE member institutions that received 261 responses, 77.8% of which were from the institutional ClO or equivalent. This report is based on results of the survey as well as on qualitative interviews with 31 higher education IT leaders and staff.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to the initial source for Ringo Speaks Out on Oil Spill Crisis and Energy Policy

SCUP–45 plenary session speaker Jerome Ringo has more than 20 years of experience in the Louisiana petrochemical industry, including deep water oil rigs:

 "Now, as more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil pour into the Gulf of Mexico each day, I see the jobs that will be lost, the families and communities that will suffer and the impending devastation of our $2 billion seafood industry.

Think about the fishermen, the truck drivers, the restaurant owners and so many others who depend on this industry. Think also about the fish, birds, sea turtles and other marine life whose ecosystem has just been turned on its head.

There is a better way: clean energy.

While many countries have already embraced clean energy and adopted national policies to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewables, the United States continues to suffer from a reactive, outdated energy strategy. It's been nearly a year since the U.S. House of Representatives passed its energy and climate bill (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), but the Senate has yet to begin serious debate on its own legislation.

Our policymakers are fiddling while Rome burns - or rather, while oil rigs burn and pollute our oceans and coasts."