The Center for Sustainability is offering fee grants to any Georgia Southern University student, faculty or staff member who wishes to undertake a sustainable project in 2018.

The deadline to apply for a grant is March 31 at 5 p.m.

The sustainable fee grant is a program, started by the CFS in 2014, that offers $1,000 to $100,000 in grants.

Anyone wishing to apply must email the CFS at cfs@georgiasouthern.edu with their complete project proposal before March 31.

The guidelines for proposals, as well as the proposal form can be found on the CFS Website under the grants and awards tab.

Once proposals are in, they will be reviewed by the student sustainability committee, which consists of student government members and several faculty members.

The proposals that win will then receive funds for the next fiscal year.

Since 2014 when it went into effect, the sustainability fee grants have given nearly $1 million dollars of funds towards sustainable projects. This has resulted in LED lights in GS parking lots, solar-powered golf carts and solar patio tables outside the Engineering Building, according to the CFS director Lissa Leege.

These grants have already had a significant impact on GS, according to Leege.

“We have cut costs on our energy use…we are already conserving more water than we would have…[and] we are leaving the water cleaner on our campus,” Leege said.

The winners for the 2017 fee grants were recently announced as well.

They include:

• Golf course tree planting, CRI, Patrick Reinhardt, $4,300

• Bicycle repair stations, University Housing, James Farquharson, $4,000

• Water fountain refill stations, University Housing, James Farquharson, $8,086.50

• Lower PAC parking lot LED lighting upgrade, Facilities Services, James Grigg – Director of Operations, $13,700

• Henderson lighting controllers to take advantage of daylight savings, Facilities Services, James Grigg – Director of Operations, $4,950

• Solar powered ground mount cart charging stations, Facilities Services, James Grigg & Dr. Rami Haddad (Electrical Engineering), $14,312

• Healing landscapes: additional bioswales plantings at Akins Blvd and pollinator planting along campus Greenway trail, Facilities Services, Chuck Taylor – Campus Landscape Architect, $15,000

• Old Register Road: multipurpose trail phase 2, Facilities Services, Chuck Taylor – Campus Landscape Architect, $66,800

• Development of platforms to access data on sustainable biodiversity on the Georgia Southern campus. Department of Biology, Drs. Michelle Cawthorn, Ray Chandler, Lance McBrayer & Jamie Roberts, $32,572

• LED modular retrofit project: RAC – Free Weight Area, CRI, Jason Schmidt – Facility Coordinator for Physical Operations, $7,955

• GROW ZONE at the Botanic Garden: building a “plantastic” place for everybody to learn how to grow just about anything, Botanic Garden, Carolyn Altman – Director, $13,000

• Dutch elm disease resistant cultivars for campus environmental sustainability, Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Management, Dr. John Dryden, $3,135

• RAC walking trail new solar lighting, Facilities Services, James Grigg – Director of Operations, $16,250

• Rehabilitation of Beautiful Eagle Creek (Phase 2), Department of Biology, Drs. Checo Colon-Gaud, Alan Harvey & Jamie Roberts, and Facilities Services, James Grigg, $27,850

• FabLab filling station, Business Innovation Group, Dominique Halaby – Director, $1,650

• Quantification of the reduction of chemical waste produced in the organic chemistry teaching laboratories at Georgia Southern University by conversion to Microscale, Department of Chemistry, Hans-Jorg Schanz, $7,500

• Bottle fill stations, Russell Union Facility & Event Services, Marcya Barreiro – Asst. Director, $3,000

Leege said, “It is a very exciting time to be involved with sustainability at Georgia Southern, because we are making advances by leaps and bounds, and that’s all thanks to the student sustainability fees.”

Detailed information on previous year’s winners can be found on the CFS Website.