The STARS reporting system is quite impressive in terms of covering all the sustainability bases. The credits my group was responsible for was Grounds landscape management and biodiversity. I chose these credits because of my past connection to the grounds department as a summer position in 2019. I enjoyed my time in grounds, and I was curious about the sustainability of the department.

Upon beginning this project, I outlined several steps for Lily and myself to accomplish in the coming weeks. These include:

• Read all credit questions
• Identify people on campus able to help answer questions
• Contact these people with their credit questions attached & meet
• Enter answers on the STARS database

The Asana task tracker was used to organized the progress of completion of our credits by entering these tasks.

I met with my professor, Pam Morgan, for the biodiversity credit during my lab a few weeks ago. She was able to help me with many of the research initiatives taking place on campus which relate to significant species and habitats as well as sustainability and climate change. Pam was very helpful in filling out the STARS report as far as research goes. But there are definitely other research and sustainability initiatives for biodiversity that could be elaborated.

For landscaping, I met with both Greg McKellar and Shawn Descoteaux. They helped me understand the basis of the sustainability of the grounds department, however it wasn’t as sustainable as I would have hoped. Sustainability seemed of lower importance to them, however there were certain sustainable landscaping strategies used that were quite beneficial. Both Greg and Shawn were pretty helpful in obtaining the information for STARS, but I noticed, though, that the grounds department may not have a good understanding of what sustainability entails for landscape management.

The process of finding the information and filling out the STARS database was rewarding, in the sense that I gained experienced searching for information from specific people across campus. I enjoyed learning about the sustainability of grounds, given my history with them, and it has encouraged me to really think about all the sustainable initiatives the grounds can implement.