CSU Monterey Bay walked away with two awards for being “green” at the 2011 Higher Education Sustainability Conference. Now in its 10th year, the conference – held July 10-13 at Cal State Long Beach – is the only one of its kind in the state that brings together the California State University, the University of California and the California Community Colleges as well as private colleges and universities as both organizers and attendees.

Mike Lerch, CSUMB’s associate director of facility services and operations, accepted the award for best practices in the energy retrofit category. CSUMB modified the operation of the Tanimura & Antle library to reduce the amount of time air conditioning is required. That resulted in an energy savings of approximately 20 percent.

“This is a great project because it exemplifies basic principles in thermodynamics and control theory and required no physical modifications to equipment,” Lerch said, “only reprogramming of computer sequences.”

The university was also honored in a category that was added this year –campus-community partnerships.It honors projects that extend beyond campus boundaries and into the surrounding communities for opportunities and partnerships around sustainability efforts. CSUMB was recognized for the Chinatown Renewal Project in Salinas. Professor Dan Fernandez accepted the award. While the focus of the Chinatown project has been on neighborhood revitalization, sustainability has been a consistent theme. Among those projects: a community garden where organic food is grown; workshops on natural building techniques; a composting enterprise; a solar-energy-generating gazebo; and a vermiculture micro-enterprise.

The conference is a system-wide exchange, aimed at fostering collaboration among campuses, governments, businesses and non-profit agencies. It enables staff, faculty and students to showcase best practices for sustainability, from curriculum to campus operations. More than 1,100 people attended.

Rebecca Kersnar, a lecturer in the Division of Science and Environmental Policy, and Megan Tolbert, the university’s transportation planner, represented CSUMB along with Lerch and Fernandez.