For health sophomore Samira Mortazavi, recycling is the only option. “If it’s a bottle, I recycle it,” she said/ The new bins’ purpose is to inspire more students to do the same. | Mary Dahdouh/The Daily Cougar

The 2013 Solid Waste Plan brings UH the new BigBelly program, providing compacting containers that will be seen across campus throughout the year.

The containers will be a more efficient resource for the inner core of campus and will be placed along sidewalks and outside of buildings. The units are solar powered with a side for trash and recyclables.

“The trash container itself replaces six to eight of the trash containers around it because of the compactor,” said Manager of Central Facilities Service Area 2 James Ballowe.

“We’re on campus every day picking those up. With the solar power unit, it automatically sends information back telling us when it’s full. They’re (operated by) Wi-Fi and the recycling portion is the same. We’re able to pull the recycling and trash containers away from the areas of the BigBellies. It’s our plan to have 90 of these units out on campus by the summer.”

With 250 recycling bins on campus and 322 small blue bins in campus buildings, the BigBelly containers will replace some of the older recycling and trash cans. The recycling portion is single-stream, where students or faculty can throw in plastic, aluminum cans, paper, cardboard and other recyclables eliminating the need for multiple recycling bins.

All on campus housing facilities also have recycling bins. Cougar Village has bins on each floor.

The University works with a company called Greenstar Recycling, after switching from Evergreen Recycling, to save an operating cost. Evergreen would pick up the plastic, aluminum and cardboard, but it was up to Central Facilities to sort the materials.

“We ran three different trucks. Now we run one truck. It’s saving personnel cost and operational fuel,” Ballowe said.

“With Greenstar they allow us to take the material to them and they do all the sorting.”

Program Coordinator for Sustainability for University Services Leah Wolfthal said recycling is important to minimize the unwanted ecological effects of waste. She said her understanding is that reduction and reuse are often the desired first steps in terms of ecological impacts.

In Fiscal Year 2012, the University generated a total of 546.9 tons of recyclable material and 2,738 tons of trash. Ballowe said he believes that 70 percent of the trash being thrown out is recyclable.

“Our diversion rate has been 25 percent this year. That’s the amount of what we took out of the trash to recycle. Our goal is to get to 40 percent by 2020,” Ballowe said.

Campus recycling is picked up twice a week for each half of the campus with one route for Mondays and Wednesdays and another for Tuesdays and Thursdays, consisting of 10 workers.

“We have one truck with a three person crew that picks up building-to-building. We have others that empty bins in parking lots and three others that go through campus picking up the rest of the bins. Monday and Wednesday’s route generates a 4.1-ton average,” Ballowe said.

“Tuesday and Thursday generate 3.7 tons. It’s pretty much equal across campus. Friday’s route we go to the offside of campus and downtown — the areas we don’t usually get to during the week. We don’t collect on the weekends.”

There are multiple recycling programs geared toward getting students involved with the University’s mission to be a greener campus by 2020.

A new program, Adopt-A-Spot, where student organizations adopt an area of campus to assist with recycling and cleaning efforts, is an additional method of participation.

“Anyone that wants to help can help by keeping track of waste audits, and they can talk to me to assist us with that,” Ballowe said.

“We’re going to set up tables around campus so we can hopefully really get the students that are out there to really be part of the campus.”

However, UH offers a program for the more competitive organizations to participate.

“RecycleMania is an annual program in which organizations and departments compete with educational and engagement events on recycling reuse and reduction topics; any individual or group can participate in this,” Wolfthal said.

“Aside from that competition, I’d invite all students to read an article, book, listen to a radio program, do a self-reflection exercise about their own consumption and waste habits, because learning and asking the questions is often the best first step in getting involved.”

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Thursday will be recognized as International Mother Language Day to the UH community thanks to a bill passed by the Student Government Association.

Authored by civil engineering junior Tanzeem Chowdhury, the bill has been in the works since Thanksgiving. With 20 sponsors backing it, it made its debut at a senate meeting two weeks ago and was approved with a final vote of 24-0-2.

“International Mother Language Day will help create unity in diversity and international understanding through multilingualism and multiculturalism,” according to the bill.

International Mother Language Day goes back to the late 1940s to the early 1950s. In 1948, east and west Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were divided by India. The government ruled that the official language for both sections of Pakistan would be Urdu, pushing out the Bengali language.

On Feb. 21, 1952, University of Dhaka students protested for the protection of their language and were shot by police.

Now, the United Nations-recognized day is celebrated worldwide, honoring culture and language. Chowdhury believes UH will be the first campus in the area to add the day to an academic calendar.

Although Chowdhury wrote the bill on his own, much of the senate was behind him. Among the supporters is the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Guillermo Lopez, a political science senior.

“I am a big supporter of the International Mother Language Day bill because the University of Houston is in the top 25 universities in the country for international students, and we are the second most diverse research university in the country. By adding this new tradition to the university calendar, we further strengthen our University’s commitment to diversity,” Lopez said.

“I think students will react positively to this new tradition because many of them do have a mother language other than English and will appreciate having a day to reflect and celebrate their cultural heritage.”

In honor of the day, a free event will be held from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Sunday in the University Center Houston Room.

SGA is working to promote the event with fliers and social media and has already caught students’ attention.

“As a fellow student of UH, I would love to celebrate this day with great pride and remembrance,” said media production junior Darwin Morrow. “I believe that language is something of great importance to culture and that we should stand up for its protection.”

The event will have performances by singers and dancers, who will represent various cultures, as well as traditional Bengali food.

“This is not just an SGA thing, this is a University of Houston thing. Our main goal is to let everyone know that we do appreciate the fundamental part of culture, which is language,” Chowdhury said.

“The beauty of language should be acknowledged and celebrated everywhere. We really hope other universities can catch up to us.”

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University of Colorado professor Emma Perez stressed the importance of achieving higher education. | Shaimaa Eissa/The Daily Cougar

Change isn’t necessarily an indicator of progress.

According to University of Texas history professor Emilio Zamora who spoke at the Center for Mexican American Studies’ Spring Speaker Series at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion in the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library.

“Historians try to measure change and identify things that continue,” Zamora said.

“We tend to look at our immediate condition in terms of our immediate past to try to explain what we observe today.”

He said that it is important to look deeper into Mexican-American history because it not only explains the reality of Mexican-Americans, but it also sheds light on the causes of such realities and why they keep repeating.

“We see an increase in Mexican-American students in public schools,” Zamora said.

“Mexican-Americans represent the majority of the body population in public schools in Texas today. That is part of the change, but we also see outrageous dropout rates among the same group, and that is part of the things that remain the same.”

The commemorative series helps illustrate the 40-year-old center’s mission to “advance knowledge, promote critical thinking and foster the value of service to the community,” said CMAS director Tatcho Mindiola.

Zamora aimed to uphold this mission when he addressed his analysis of Mexican-American condition in Texas with his motto: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Even though more Mexican-Americans are going to school and graduating college, a large number of them are dropping out of schools and falling into the bottom of the social scale.

“This dropout problem means we are going to remain marginalized, segregated and assume bottom positions in the labor market. A large number of us are graduating and succeeding, but an even larger number are going to stay in the margins of society,” Zamora said.

The second speaker, Emma Perez, a professor and University of Colorado Department of Ethic Studies chair, addressed the difficulties regarding Mexican-American women.

“The stats tell us that in 1974, only three Chicanas had earned a Ph.D in history in the universe,” Perez said.

“The next generation from 1981 to 1990 — the one I’m a part of — five more Chicanas earned the title. From 1991 to 2000, 15 more. Out of those 23 Chicanas that have Ph.Ds, only five are full professors.”

She said that although the numbers are increasing with the years, they are still dismal and reflect the lack of opportunities given to women of Mexican heritage.

Perez said she became a historian because she came across an essay that reflected Mexican women as “docile and passive who followed their men.”

“My own history helped me understand that such statement didn’t reflect the truth,” Perez said.

“This is why oral history is so important. We need to know our history, talk to our ‘abuelitos’ and understand that sometimes we are taught things that don’t reflect history.”

Perez said what motivates her work is her interest in “excavating hidden voices from the past” of those marginalized and making them heard. She emphasizes that our society lives by ideologies inspired by Manifest Destiny that encouraged the invasion of Mexico and hatred against the land’s native habitants.

“We need to decolonize history and interpret documents. It’s important that we deconstruct this white, colonial mindset we’ve inherited that assumes that because we are all Americans; we share the same culture and ideologies so that we can reclaim our voices,” Perez said.

Mindiola said the commemorative Speaker Series helps illustrate the mission of the center “to advance knowledge, promote critical thinking and foster the value of service to the community.”

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The LabVIEW Campus Tour, which travels across the U.S. and Canada, presents technology for educators, researchers and students. The tour motivates students to do engineering as they explore different design projects programmed with LabVIEW system design software. | Shaimaa Eissa/The Daily Cougar

The National Instrument truck demoed its widely-used software and hardware Monday to kick off National Engineers Week.

The third week of February is celebrated as National Engineers to remind people of the importance of engineering and how engineers contribute to society, said Mark Walters, academic marketing manager.

“NI recognizes the importance of learning math, science and technical skills and is sharing that with campuses across the country through the LabVIEW Campus Tour,” Walters said.

Each person in the UH community benefitted from the experience, according to Walters.

“Through live demonstrations, researchers can learn how to accelerate innovation and discovery in advanced research projects. Educators see how they can deliver complete hands-on teaching solutions for students to ‘do engineering’ in the classroom through engaging, real-world learning experience,” Walters said.

The demonstrations were geared toward students.

“For students, this tour inspires them to do engineering by allowing them to see how the tools they are learning in the classroom today can be applied into research and in industry,” Walters said.

Passersby were able to learn about the visiting company and talk to current employees.

“NI is a hardware and software manufacturer that aims to make research and data analysis more user friendly,” said Sam Strickling, academic broad-based research marketing manager for NI.

“We’ve brought this tour bus of goodies for engineers to showcase our hardware and software platforms like LabVIEW, which most of the students here at UH know a little bit about,” Strickling said. “We are here to show people all the cool things you can do if you become an engineer.”

The country tour is aimed to encourage students to practice more hands-on engineering, Strickling said.

According to Walters, engineering is a cutting-edge field, which can help avoid potential disasters and promote advancement.

“Great engineering can avert disasters to humanity by earthquake-proofing buildings and homes, through early warning systems for tornadoes and tsunamis. Who else is going to make sure these things work? Engineers and scientists are truly the leaders in engineering change,” Walters said.

“From identifying new sources of energy to designing life-saving medical devices, the contribution of engineers has a significant impact on our quality of life. By finding a better, more efficient approach to meeting design challenges, engineers can accomplish more while saving time, money and effort.”

On the bus, students and faculty watched demonstrations on how to design projects and teach concepts such as circuits, measurements, controls and mechatronics and communications, Walters said. Additionally, there were research tools available for demonstration that involved structural testing, power electronics, wireless measurements and microwave design.

The technical aspects may be useful for students and faculty in their research and education, but Strickling said he hopes students will be excited by the potential innovations they can see themselves making.

“Engineering is awesome. I’m a mechanical engineer. It’s really fun. You can think of anything you want to do, and you kind of just do it,” Strickling said.

“If you know how to do engineering, if you know the premises of it, no matter what kind of task you’re trying to accomplish, the engineering paradigm fits a lot of things. If you don’t know how to do something, but you know all the steps to do something similar, it’s pretty easy.”

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For the first time, a UH faculty member received the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research.

At 11:30 a.m. Monday in the University Hilton, the Welch Foundation honored associate professor Olafs Daugulis for his work at UH. The annual award that recognizes leadership in research and teaching includes a $100,000 grant.

“Olafs’ research is well deserving of this great honor,” said Mark A. Smith, dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. “He is a true asset to UH’s chemistry research program and an excellent mentor and teacher to many of our graduate and undergraduate students.”

The Welch Foundation, based in Houston, is one of the oldest and largest private-funding sources for basic chemical research in the U.S.

“Having developed an outstanding record of creative work,” said Wilhelmina E. Robertson, chair of The Welch Foundation, “Daugulis illustrates the meaning of the award.”

Daugulis’ contributions in C-H bond activation have been praised for its originality and practicality. Many of his independent papers have been published in the field’s leading journals, which have been cited more than 400 times, making him an asset to UH’s chemistry research program and a highly regarded mentor to students who show promise in organic and organometallic science.

Daugulis dedicates his energy to exploring the functionalization of carbon-hydrogen bonds.

“His scientific contributions are groundbreaking,” said Marye Anne Fox, the foundation’s Scientific Advisory board chair. “I’m thrilled to see him being acknowledged.”

Daugulis develops new reaction methodology to diminish the amount of steps necessary to transform C-H bond-containing substances into new compounds. His methods can afford synthetic targets in higher yields with fewer steps and less reaction waste.

These methods may ultimately prove useful in effective preparation of drugs for new polymers in the industry. Along with researchers at the University of Chicago, he also has added to the expansion of a new and efficient methane oxidation system.

Several past Hackerman Award recipients were in attendance to see Daugulis being recognized, including the 2011 winner Jason H. Hafner and 2009 winner Cecilia Clementi, both from Rice University.

The Foundation has contributed to the advancement of chemistry through research grants, departmental programs, endowed chairs, Texas Interscholastic League Foundation scholarships and other programs.            

“Fundamental research is intellectually more interesting to me than applied work. I love to come to work every day and think about new things,” Daugulis said. “The Welch Foundation has played an important role in letting me freely explore new directions.”

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For a recent college graduate, it can be difficult trying to find a job with little or no experience. UH has an organization called Emerging Leaders Institute helps students acquire the necessary skills employers are looking for in entry-level positions.

ELI is student-based and focuses on building in-demand skills employers look for in employees as well as networking with major firms in the city to help students gain contacts with companies.

“We actively bring partners to our organization to tell us what they look for in prospective employees, and we begin to train members with the skills they need to launch their desired careers,” said Cameron McHugh, president of ELI and a finance and accounting senior.

ELI attends a number of events in the Houston area in search for opportunities that students in the organization can use to network.

“We develop training programs that students can take to give them the skills they need to have a competitive advantage,” said Derar Deek, the chief of operations and accounting and a management and information systems senior.

Preparing students for the job market is the main goal of ELI, and anyone is welcome to join the organization regardless of their major or classification.

“The ability to understand spreadsheets and functions is an ever increasing requirement for employers when it comes to selecting recent graduates, especially in the professional services industries,” said McHugh.

ELI offers a $50 online course that teaches students professional skills they will need in the job market such as excel proficiency and awards students with a certificate of qualification upon completion.

“Other organizations don’t focus on training students; other organizations focus on the soft skills. We focus on the soft and hard skills,” Deek said.

ELI doesn’t have any requirements to sign up and the organization is free to all UH students.

The organization hopes to make its members and students marketable.

“It’s not about the major that gets you the job, it’s the marketable skills you have,” Deek said.

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Emergency response is getting an update courtesy of the College of Technology as a part of UH’s effort to make the campus safer.

As students boarded the informative bus they were shown various projects and research tools of the National Instruments Lab View by its experienced engineers. | Shaimaa Eissa/The Daily Cougar

With the new emergency management portal system created by Engineering Technology professor Deniz Gurkan and graduate students Partha Gala and Kiran Vemuri, the new portal will allow the Emergency Management team to be prepared and ready to respond promptly and with great accuracy.

“I am so happy that after all of these years of doing emergency management; we now have a portal that allows us to get in on the incident even faster and get it out to our community just as fast,” said Joe S. Mendez, director of Emergency Management.

The portal will be available to the Emergency Management team this year as a production level support system that allows the staff to connect to the web to report an emergency. The emergency management portal will have balloon markers on each building.

By clicking on the balloon marker, it will display a box of information about that building and includes the building name, number, short name, IP address to the building camera and link to the building webpage.

The staff can click the “Emergency Warning” button in the box and then send a warning on the level of urgency and the emergency type to all of those allowed to view the portal such as the UH police and local firemen. This enables the local operators in the UH area to access the emergency data faster to send out dispatches and emergency notifications.

“With the UH police department permission, we are also now trying to implement all of the university security card access through the portal, so that way, we can lock down a location safely without being there,” Mendez said.

The system took two months to develop, and Gurkan and her team are trying to integrate more information and change the display, so it is more effective for the Emergency Management team. The ultimate goal is that this portal system will keep the campus safer.

“We started working with Joe Mendez and initially we decided to only integrate information about video cameras around the campus because it gives the most visual input,” Gurkan said. “And now we are trying to integrate card access systems and now are going to put this portal as a production system into the emergency operation center.”

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A team composed of UH Plant Operations, Tellepsen Construction and Capp Electric has worked all last week and this past weekend to get the UC power functioning again.

The bookstore reopened Monday at 10 a.m. and the offices in the UC will reopen on a rolling schedule.

First to open was the Dean of Students Office, followed by the UC Servers, the Creation Station, the UC Admin Office and finally the business office, according to assistant vice president for Student Affairs – Student Life Keith Kowalka.

Those groups were waiting for the green light from the Fire Marshall’s office before they could return to their offices just before 1 p.m.

The remaining offices are waiting for further communication from Kowalka and his team, but everyone should be transitioning back into the UC Monday.

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The moments after a sexual assault can be traumatizing and overwhelming. A new program at UH plans to educate students about how to handle a potential traumatic situation.

Coogs Get Consent is sponsored by Equal Opportunity Services, the Women’s Resource Center and Fort Bend County Women’s Center. Michael Domitrz, founder of the Date Safe Project, spoke about the meaning of consent, and its basis in relationships.

Students learned how to be a support system to friends and family who could be victims of a sexual assault by letting them know they are always in their corner. | Aisha Bouderdaben/The Daily Cougar

“I realized every survivor is strong and courageous. If someone you know has been sexually assaulted, they turn around and live their life. That takes strength, courage, determination and will,’’ Domitrz said.

Domitrz, whose sister is a rape survivor, travels to college campuses to promote safe dating. Thursday he ventured to and encouraged a crowd at the E. Cullen Performance Hall, using his sister’s story as inspiration to help people realize that anyone can be victims of sexual assault.

“Survivors are brave, strong individuals,” Domitriz said.

Students were surprised when what initially appeared to be a two-hour lecture turned into an interactive setting, calling on students and having some come up to perform scenarios.

“I thought the talk was really good. He wasn’t talking about consent being overly technical. He was inclusive of LGBT people too”, said Kiernan Cobb, a biology sophomore.

“I liked doing the skit. It wasn’t as awkward or embarrassing as I thought. I learned that it is really easy to intervene when someone is putting another person in a dangerous situation without their consent.”

Domitrz stressed the importance of stepping in to help friends and introduced the concept of “Opening Three Doors.” Domitrz asked everyone in the audience to promise to call three people they care about before 11 p.m. and say, “I want you to know I am always here for you and that you can always come to me if someone touches you or harms you sexually without your consent.”

“I’ve watched students go back after this program, and they’ve opened the door for three family members or friends,” Domitrz said. “It has really brought people closer together.”

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Mayor Annise Parker paid a visit to UH on Friday to speak with interns from the Hobby Center for Public Policy’s Civic Houston Internship Program. Since its inception, CHIP has placed more than 1000 interns in political offices.

As Mayor, Parker is responsible for the general management of the City and for seeing that all laws and ordinances are enforced. As the City’s Chief Executive Officer, she is the second woman to hold this position. | Aisha Bouderdaben/The Daily Cougar

The interns work an average of eight hours per week over the 15-week semester in offices with elected officials at the municipal, county, state or federal levels. Some interns are assigned to community service organizations and campaigns.

For the spring semester 26 students have been chosen for internships. A handful of them are returning interns to their same offices.

“Last semester, my main responsibility was ceremonial documents, which are certificates, letters and proclamations for the mayor,” said Shelby Hansen, a returning intern at the Mayor’s Communications Office. “This semester I do clippings, which means scrapbooking every article that mentions the mayor. I will be working on archiving photos for Rice for when she is not mayor.”

Bria Riley is another returning intern at Controller Ron Green’s office. She has now worked at both the city and state levels.

“As far as state level, when I interned, we would be out in the field all the time and not so much in the office,” Riley said. “It’s fast paced at the city level, the phones are always ringing. But at the state, it can be more relaxed some days because we are getting out of the office.”

Program director Renee Cross advocates her interns to meet their congressmen and form a relationship.

“If you have not yet met your congressmen do it as soon as possible!” Cross urged students. “It’s important to be connected.”

As part of the internships, students are required to work as volunteers at events for their offices. Mayor Parker urged students to take advantage of this and participate in as many volunteering opportunities as possible.

“I volunteered in college, and after graduating, spent most of my free time volunteering around the city,” Parker said. “The best training for being a council member I learned by volunteering and being involved with the city.”

As an advocate for the city, Parker said she is not fond of the question “What are you going to do after your term ends?” because she insists her job is a dream job.

“I love being Mayor. I love my job because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” Parker said. “Running the city of Houston is like running a state — there is so much more to it than most other smaller cities.”

Parker encouraged the student interns to find out what makes them happy and make an occupation of it, just like she did.

“Figure out what you’re most passionate about and act on it.”

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