A community partnership between Science in Society at Northwestern University, Siemens and William F. Gurrie Middle School (GMS, LaGrange IL) is helping develop the next generation of leaders in energy sustainability.
Acting as mentors, students at Northwestern, lead by Michael Kennedy, Director of Science in Society, collaborate with a group of students, the Gurrie Green Team, to plan and build the school’s first organic garden and continuing to expand their role at school with cafeteria food waste, recycling and reducing overall energy consumption.
The partnership is highlighted on page 11 of the ISEN brochure (Initiative for Sustainable Energy at Northwestern), in addition to numerous other successful projects and programs.
The collaboration between Northwestern and Gurrie began last year using the NUIT desktop videoconference service, powered by Vidyo. With GMS not having videoconference resources, the technology can be easily extended to partners of Northwestern for research and academic projects.
Today was the start of the second year of the collaboration which will continue with weekly sessions between the NU mentors and the students at headed up by Steve Driscoll and Matt Eigel at Gurrie. Using a laptop with a few accessories, the students have portable videoconference access to the NU team in any room in their school.
Below are pictures of GMS students using desktop videoconferencing to connect to a videoconference room in the Tech Institute building (MG51). This will be their point of operation for their weekly meetings, but the NUIT desktop videoconference service will enable them to collaborate from anywhere on or off campus.
