Mizzou Dashboard aims to raise awareness

The organization seeks to encourage reduction in energy consumption.

By David Conway

Published Oct. 16, 2009

The first Mizzou Dashboard meeting, held Tuesday, focused on choosing a direction for the recently formed project. The initiative, which aims to inform students of their energy usage and motivate them to reduce it, enters the year with a budget of $44,000, said senior Ben Datema, creator of the Mizzou Dashboard project.

Datema outlined the projected budget, which is funded by a grant MU received from the Accelerating Campus Climate-Change Initiatives program this summer. The project will use half of the funding it received for the purchase and installation of data loggers, which record the energy usage of a building. The amount of energy used is then put on the Mizzou Dashboard Web site.

"We install data loggers that take information from the electric meters and send it to a server, which translates the information into easy-to-read graphs," Datema said. "That's the point. It puts energy usage into a number and allows you to try to reduce that number over time."

Datema said Mizzou Dashboard intends to hold a month-long energy conservation competition in April, with Memorial Union and Respect, Responsibility, Discovery and Excellence residence halls mentioned as potential locations for new data loggers.

Mizzou Dashboard held a similar competition last spring between Schurz, Hatch and College Avenue residence halls. The contest, which lasted one week, was intended to test the Dashboard system and display its capabilities. Schurz Hall won the competition, reducing their energy use by 3.4 percent over the week, though Datema said he was hoping for a reduction of up to 15 percent.

"It's hard, but it's doable," Datema said. "We're working on improving awareness."

Increasing student knowledge of Mizzou Dashboard was a focal point of the meeting. Those in attendance split into three groups -- one for event planning, one for marketing and one for implementation -- and discussed methods for raising awareness of the project.

"We've already got a Facebook and Twitter page," Marketing Chairwoman Lauren Hasler said. "We're just looking to find as many ways as possible to get our message out there."

The three groups will remain in place, and in the future, meet separately. Implementation Chairman Pat Margherio said he hopes this will be the best way to address the multiple goals of the initiative.

"The whole reason we got this money is twofold," Margherio said. "First, it was to see how we could influence individual behavior on campus to reduce energy consumption. The second part is education. We need to tie people to their energy use."

Despite two former Sustain Mizzou presidents in Datema and Margherio and a former Greeks Going Green president in Hasler leading the initiative, Datema said Mizzou Dashboard is still trying to find its footing among the many sustainability organizations at MU.

"We're just an initiative for now," Datema said. "We might be starting a student group. We'll probably be working with Sustain Mizzou and right now we're working out of the Sustainability Office. It all depends on what will be the most effective way to proceed and what makes the most sense."

That decision, like most of the others Mizzou Dashboard is making, focuses on improving awareness.

"Ben's always saying, 'Get Dashboard on the minds of as many students on campus as possible,' " Margherio said. "That's what we're trying to do right now."