UCAIR executive director plans to focus on the effects of vehicle idling due to a presentation by an associate professor of USU

By Ashley Springer 

The executive director of UCAIR — an organization that helps communities and individuals make small changes to improve air quality — expressed interest in working with an associate professor of Utah State University on his findings from a study on the effects of tailpipe emissions on the air quality. The presentation of the study took place at the second annual Cache Clean Air Consortium  on Monday at the Riverwoods Conference Center.

Randy Martin, an associate professor at USU, spoke at the consortium discussing his findings from his recently completed study on the tailpipe emissions released while idling as well as during hot and cold starts in vehicles. The study tested 68 vehicles.

In the study Martin found in most cases idling — leaving the vehicle on when not moving — could actually be worse for the air than hot starts as greater amounts of emissions are released into the air during an equal amount of time.

This presentation caught the attention of Ted Wilson, the executive director of UCAIR.

One of the three of the things UCAIR focuses on is educating the public. In their educational campaign, UCAIR focuses on inviting people to carpool, use transit, turn their thermostat down and be aware of the effects of cold and hot start in their vehicles. However, because of Martin’s findings, Wilson said he is hoping to focus more on the idling issue than UCAIR had done before.

Wilson said the information Martin presented was worth his drive to Logan.

This partnership goes along with the running theme of the consortium of members of the community working together.

“In order for us all to have better air quality we must work together,” said Melissa Gibbs, one of the speakers at the consortium and the airshed coordinator for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.

 

USU’s Grad and Major Fairs combine to help students further their education

By Ashley Springer

 

Utah State University’s Grad Fair and Major Fair will combine for the first time on Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center. 

Last year the fairs were planned separately but happened, coincidently, on the same day.

 

“Last year it happened by accident and we got a lot of favorable responses,” said Diana Maughan, who is in charge of Grad Fair and is the recruiting coordinator for Career Services. "We thought we would try it again.”

 

“We’re hopeful that it will be a good combination this year,” said Niki Weight, an academic adviser in the Exploratory Advising Center and one of the organizers of the Major Fair, “but that’s why we partnered — to see if it is a good partnership.”

 

Organizers are hopeful the combination of the two fairs will prove useful to students.

 

Maughan said the combination will allow students the opportunity to attend the Major Fair and then the Grad Fair to see if there is a graduate program to fit with what they want to do educationally.

 

“A lot of students may know what they want to go to graduate school for but not know what major to go for, or they might know what their major is but not know about graduate school options,” Weight said. “We’re hopeful it’s a better fit to allow students to explore the whole facet of higher education.”

 

The main goal of the Grad Fair is to assist students in furthering their education and “giving them opportunities to explore and meet with graduate programs that they may be interested in going into,” Maughan said.

 

According to Major Fair organizers, the goal of the fair is to provide students the opportunity to speak with representatives from departments for majors, minors and other programs to learn about the options at the university.

The Major Fair will also be featuring a new system — card readers — to count the number of students who attend.

 

The card readers allow students to swipe their cards as they enter the fair, giving organizers a count of students in attendance. According to Weight, organizers used to have paper evaluations for students to fill out but not everyone would.
 

The card readers will also allow fair organizers to use the information to send follow-up surveys to students who attended in order to collect suggestions concerning the fair and to see if those students would like any further information.

 

The Major Fair will be taking place in the international lounge in the TSC with the Grad Fair down the hall in the TSC ballroom.

Cache Valley residents offered opportunity to become involved with the local air quality issue

By Ashley Springer

 

The second annual Cache Clean Air Consortium will dive deeper into what the community can do to clean up the air. The consortium will be held at the Riverwoods Conference Center on Sept. 21 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“This year we decided because we got a lot of the preliminary information out of the way to focus on kind of bigger scale things that organizations and institutions could do,” said Jennifer Pemberton, a member of the consortium's planning committee. "This is Air Quality 2.0, last year was very 1.0.”

Randy Martin, one of the local speakers at the consortium and an associate professor at Utah State University, got involved with the consortium because he has studied the air in Cache Valley for the past 15 years and because he lives and is raising a family here.

“The local air pollution is an important thing to understand and be involved with,” Martin said. "Awareness is the first step."

“It’s not just for experts, it’s not just for activists, it’s for anybody who lives and breathes in this community,” Pemberton said.

Cache Valley is an enclosed environment. “With the cold air in the winter putting an inversion cap on our valley, it’s basically like the cold air puts a lid on... and doesn’t allow any exchange for days, sometimes weeks on end,” said Jeff Gilbert, a transportation planner for the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization. This causes the emissions released into the air from various sources to circulate from day-to-day without the exchange with the clean air outside of the cap until there is a storm to clear it out.

According to Gilbert, residents should be aware of what is going on with the air quality because it is a serious health issue when concentrations get high.

“When the conditions are right, we can have some of the worst air in the nation, there is absolutely no doubt about that,” Martin said.

Organizers of the consortium are hoping to have residents come ready to get involved and make contacts.

“One of the most unique things about our group and what the consortium offers and what the workshops offers is the opportunity to just meet people who have the same concerns but maybe have different skill sets,” Pemberton said. “We definitely want people to come prepared to form a team and to find people who have the resources they need to help them accomplish what they want to accomplish in the next year."

The consortium will have two keynote speakers: Ted Wilson, the executive director of UCAIR — a partnership in Utah focused on helping communities and individuals make small changes to improve the air quality — and Shane Marshall, the deputy director of UDOT — the Utah Department of Transportation. The consortium will also feature four local Cache Valley speakers: Martin; Logan Mayor Craig Petersen; Melissa Gibbs, the airshed coordinator for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality; and Cindy Roberts, of the Cache Business Resource Center. Following the provided lunch, there are four workshops participants can choose to attend.

More information about consortium registration is available at: http://www.cachecleanairconsortium.org/#!ccac-registration/c1diz

 

 

 

Day on the Quad: Things just got a whole lot bigger

By Ashley Springer



There were 288 different vendors compared to last year's count of 240 on Wednesday during Utah State University's annual Day on the Quad — an event taking place during Week of Welcome which gives clubs and businesses the opportunity to showcase themselves to students in order to get new members and customers.

Jessica Bishop, a USU adviser in charge of Day on the Quad, reached out to local businesses in Logan to rent tables for vendors to use.

According to Bishop, in the past organizers only used 240 tables from facilities at the university. With the 48 additional tables the event organizers rented this year, they were able to bring in 48 new vendors giving students even more opportunities to become involved.

The increase in vendors was also due to the partnering of Day on the Quad organizers with the university’s student newspaper The Utah Statesmen. Bishop said The Statesmen printed a map of the vendors' locations as well as offered ad space to the off-campus vendors to use.

Students also recognized the increase in vendors.

Senior Misty Fitzgerald, a representative of the USU Dancers Club, said there are a lot more vendors and different options for students to join. 

“They brought a bunch of different people up… from all over versus just on campus,” said Talysa Brimley of the Student Alumni Association.

Even with the elimination of common hour — a time in the middle of the day in which no classes would be scheduled — the quad stayed consistently busy. Vendors told Bishop they never had down time and some even had to return to their business to pick up more of the free things they were giving out to the students.

Freshmen USU students Bailee Facemyer and Mallory Bangerter came to the quad because a class required them to and they wanted to try getting involved on campus through clubs and organizations. By the end of their tour, Facemyer and Bangerter both walked away with specific clubs or organizations they wanted to be a part of and plenty of free goods.