College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Songul Atacan
Jamie Brown
Tony Dibernardo
Alan Jehamy
Wilford Kowalik
Sarah Krause
Reuben Ward
Michelle Weihe
Sarah Woerner

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The goal of our project is to set up a fund to provide the Associated Student Body at SDSU with money to make SDSU a more environmentally friendly campus. SDSU is already known for its efforts to become a more environmentally friendly campus, the purpose of this fund is to provide a steady inflow of money to continue these efforts. The way in which we will raise these funds is by adding a small fee to the tuition at SDSU. This fee would be called the Green Fee. As part of our project we worked to raise student awareness of the Green Fee and have it placed on a referendum next semester to be voted on by the students of SDSU.

The project was started last semester by two MBA students. This semester our group is continuing the project. After talking with these students we found that they needed to research the costs of renovating the campus and to survey 800 students to see what their views are concerning SDSU’s efforts to become more environmentally friendly, and to see how strongly students are interested in contributing to these efforts. Our group also worked on methods to raise awareness on campus of the Green Fee proposal.

The fee would be a $5 increase in tuition each semester and would be spent on green renovations of campus buildings. Our research showed that the most effective use of the money would be to start by concentrating on energy and water conservation first. We found that the best way to do this would be to renovate many of SDSU’s current buildings. These renovations would include replacing currently used light bulbs with more energy efficient versions, replacing current toilets with models that conserve water usage, replacing windows with more efficient models, and planting more trees around campus to improve heating and cooling efficiency.

The results of the survey show that most students are interested in contributing to SDSU’s efforts to become a more environmentally friendly campus. At this point only about half of the students surveyed said that they would vote in favor of the proposal. However, approximately a third of the students surveyed said that they did not know how they would vote, and that they would like more information before they made a decision. This is where the advertising portion of the project comes into play. We recommend a variety of ways in which to raise awareness of the project and educate students about it. However these methods were not started this semester because the proposal will not be voted on until next semester.

We created flyers to be placed around campus giving a brief description of the green fee proposal as well as a link to the website we created. The website contains more detailed information on the Green Fee for students to view. It describes what the Green Fee is, how much it will cost, and when it will be placed in a referendum to be voted on. Initially we planned to run an ad in the Daily Aztec about the Green Fee but discovered that this would be very costly so we decided to write an article instead. The article will be run next semester closer to the time of the referendum. It will give a description of the green fee and what its purpose is.

We feel that we were successful in meeting our goals this semester. We conducted the research to show how the green fee could benefit the university. We conducted the surveys that were required, and which showed that most sdsu students are willing to contribute to SDSU’s efforts to become a more environmentally friendly campus. And we were able to devise multiple ways to raise awareness on campus of the green fee.

We feel that preservation of the environment is very important. SDSU is a large campus that continues to expand and grow, and with that growth comes more responsibility. The larger SDSU becomes the more it impacts the local environment, and it must be careful to monitor this impact. We feel that it our responsibility as students at SDSU to contribute in at least some small way to SDSU’s efforts to be an environmentally friendly campus. We also feel that if each student at SDSU contributes a small amount toward these efforts that a much greater good can be accomplished for all the students at SDSU by providing current and future students with a clean environment in which to live.