SIU Day Of Giving

The Green Fund Grant program helps Salukis put sustainability-minded ideas into action right here on SIU’s campus! Every current SIU student, faculty, staff, or campus unit is eligible to apply for a Green Fund project grant. Grants have been leveraged to support academic coursework, student and faculty research, student life, and campus operations.

In addition to those students, faculty, and staff who are directly involved with projects; the entire campus community is impacted as the Green Fund supports the creation of a campus as a learning laboratory – where visitors can see examples of sustainability in action.

Some examples include:

• We’re keeping Campus Lake healthy, funding student projects such as stationary bicycles and solar powered fountains.
• Bike lanes added along Lincoln Drive and Normal Ave. provide 10,200 linear feet of painted bike lanes to encourage the safe and efficient use of bikes on campus.
• Designed and built by students, the Mother’s Room in Morris Library provides a sanctuary for nursing mothers, supporting maternal and child health.
• Dining hall food waste isn’t wasted at SIU! Our forced-air compost facility processes dining food waste with other natural materials, to create a usable fertilizer for campus use.
• We’re helping to build one of the Midwest’s premier multi-use trail systems! We’ve contributed funding for survey and planning work by dozens of people, supporting Touch of Nature Environmental Center’s 30-mile system being constructed on 114 acres.
• The SIU Community Dental Center has reduced its x-ray film usage by approximately 107 films a day with a new digital x-ray sensor. 
• We’ve purchased 100s of plants for Campus Lake shoreline to prevent erosion and improve lake aesthetics.
• We’re saving an estimated $14,493 in annual HVAC costs for Furr Auditorium with energy efficiency measures implemented through a funded graduate assistant position.
• With new LED lights, student filmmakers' equipment now uses 10,000 less watts of energy during an average 4-hour shoot, conserving 780-watts per hour.
• Our Agriculture Building has a green roof! About 150 students, volunteers, faculty and staff installed the green roof system in September 2010.
• You can do basic bike repairs and maintenance at the seven do-it-yourself bicycle fix it stations that we helped fund on campus.
• Our Dental Clinic cut paper use by about 240,000 sheets each semester by transitioning to a paperless electronic records system.
• We’re helping you connect with Mother Nature in Southern Illinois. SIU students helped create a web-based trail map to promote awareness and use of natural areas near campus.
• Students identified an opportunity to install occupancy motion sensing lights in two engineering computer labs, and now we’re preventing a pound of greenhouse gases from being emitted every day in each of two labs.
• McLeod Theatre’s industry-standard LED lighting is 75% more efficient and longer lasting. 
• SIU is a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly University. We funded student work that resulted in earning the recognition.
• We’ve reduced energy usage by 12,350 watts at our Student Recreation Center. We did it by funding installation of 186 new LED light fixtures which run 57% more efficiently.
• We funded Touch of Nature Environmental Center’s first forest management plan. It involved inventorying over 300 forest plots on 3,200 acres, processing and aging about 200 tree cores and completing 100s of hours of GIS mapping and invasive species sampling. 

For more information about our program, check out our Green Fund Grant Program page.

For more examples of impact, check out our funded projects page.

To see some of our project-specific videos, follow the links here:

• Campus Lake Eco Recreation Project
• Bicycle Fix It Stations
• Solar Powered Charging Table
• Green Wall in the Agriculture Building
• Water Bottle Refill Stations
• Marked Bicycle Paths Video