Taking action to address the lack of connection between university lab finances & resources consumed for big picture impact on a national level

Kathy Ramirez-Aguilar, University of Colorado, Boulder

On university campuses, research laboratories and lab departments are not directly connected with their own energy, water and trash costs. The university as a whole pays the costs. The federal government provides Facilities and Administrative (F&A, a.k.a. indirect cost recovery) funding to the university to pay for those services and other costs needed to support awarded grant research, but there is no incentive built into the F&A process to encourage universities to decrease their energy and water use. In fact, some may say that the process actually disincentives universities to conserve resources. Furthermore, federal granting agencies (such as NIH and NSF) do not require or even encourage scientists to include resource use considerations in the research they propose for grants or the spending of federal grant money (exceptions include some funding for construction and renovation of lab facilities), but there may be at least encouragement from one or more granting agencies coming in the near future.

Change will be needed on both the university level and federal government level to address this lack of connection between university lab finances and resources consumed. Certainly this missing connection is leading to significantly more resource use than necessary on university research campuses, which in turn elevates F&A rates and reduces the available federal tax dollars available to support actual research. This presentation will describe funding of research on university campuses, places in the process where there is a need for resource use connections, and beginning efforts underway to address those voids.

Learning Objectives

  • Learn about the funding structure of laboratory research on university campuses and places in the process where there is a need for sustainability considerations.
  • Learn about issues resulting from a lack of connection between university lab finances and resources consumed.
  • Learn about beginning efforts underway to bring the change needed at the university and federal government levels to incorporate resource use considerations into the funding structure of laboratory research at universities.

Biography:

Kathy Ramirez-Aguilar, Ph.D., manages the CU Green Labs Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, a program she has been building & creating since 2009. She has a doctorate in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Colorado-Boulder, a BS in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary, and 15 years of laboratory research experience within the fields of Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry, & Organic Chemistry. Working as a research scientist, she saw a real need for a program to engage scientists in conservation. With the birth of her twin daughters & her hope for their future, grew her passion to promote change & create a program focused on resource conservation in labs which could serve as a model for other campuses to adopt. 

 

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