Campus Water Matters Challenge
Introduction
One of the most urgent challenges facing the Southeast and the nation today is ensuring an adequate supply and quality of water for both humans and the environment. Growing populations and the resulting municipal, agricultural, and industrial demands for water diminish natural supplies and threaten the ecosystems that depend on those supplies. The SEC college campuses are microcosms of the larger-scale water challenge. Our campuses house sizable populations and cover expansive landscapes that contain multiple land uses and water bodies. The resources and teaching mission that our schools embody also offer an ideal opportunity to develop and showcase innovative designs for sustainable and resilient water resources. An intra-conference design competition, ‘Campus Water Matters’, is being sponsored by the 2017 SEC Academic Conference and Mississippi State University, with the goal of engaging students in designing sustainable water resource solutions on SEC campuses. This competition is similar in nature to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Campus Rain Works Challenge; however, projects in the Campus Water Matters competition will not be limited to addressing stormwater issues, among other differences. Participating students and faculty will be invited to attend the 2017 SEC Academic Conference, “The Future of Water: Regional Collaboration on Shared Climate, Coastlines, and Watersheds,” which is being sponsored by Mississippi State University and will be held March 27-28, 2017 in Starkville, Mississippi. Winners of the competition will be announced at the conference, where students will be able to participate in a professional conference and meet both faculty and student attendees from other SEC institutions. This document describes the ‘Campus Water Matters’ competition and outlines the guidelines for participation.
Objectives: The objectives of the Campus Water Matters intra-collegiate competition are to:
- Engage students to innovate, design, and communicate interdisciplinary solutions to enhance sustainable water resources.
- Use the SEC campuses to showcase innovative water resource designs that provide multiple benefits and expose students to practical research.
- Encourage collaboration between students and faculty across SEC campuses.
- Encourage student participation at the 2017 SEC Academic Conference.