Grant Competition Winners 2024-25

Colby Martinez (Student, mechanical engineering)
Project title: Solar Panel Charging Station
This project seeks to install solar-powered charging stations throughout the UA Little Rock campus, providing students, faculty, and staff with access to renewable energy for their electronic devices. The initiative demonstrates a practical approach to sustainability, aiming to reduce the university’s carbon footprint while making renewable energy technology visible and accessible in daily campus life.

Morgan Leyenberger, LCSW, MSW (Faculty: Instructor, School of Social Work)
Project title: Putting the SOI (social and organizational impact) in Soil
The project addresses food waste management within the School of Social Work, which occupies Ross Hall’s fourth floor. With 18 faculty members and approximately 85 face-to-face students, the school plans to implement a biowaste composting unit using microbiota technology for quick decomposition of uneaten food. The project includes a marketing campaign by Phi Alpha Honors Society to encourage composting behavior, and the resulting organic compost will be made available to the campus community. This initiative aligns with both the Grand Challenges for Social Work and the Council on Social Work Education’s requirements for environmental justice promotion.

Dr. Heather Black (Faculty, Assistant Professor, Geology)
Project title: Campus-Wide Drinking Water Quality Assessment at UA Little Rock
This project aims to analyze drinking water quality across all buildings at UA Little Rock. The project will establish a baseline for future monitoring efforts by collecting and analyzing water samples throughout the campus. The findings will contribute to understanding campus infrastructure and potentially guide future maintenance and improvement decisions.

Lane Epperson (Student, biology)
Project title: Enhancing Campus Biodiversity Through Bat and Owl Boxes
This project focuses on supporting local wildlife populations by installing bat boxes along Coleman Creek and owl boxes across the UA Little Rock campus. The project promotes natural pest control through ecosystem services, as both bats and owls effectively manage insect and rodent populations without chemical interventions. This approach demonstrates a commitment to enhancing campus biodiversity while providing practical environmental benefits.

2023 Winners:
UA Little Rock Professor Builds Trash Boom to Keep Coleman Creek Clean with Sustainability Grant
Rain water pushes debris from streets, lots, and backyards into Coleman Creek, a tributary of Fourche Creek. This trash and debris can end up in parks, wetlands, forests, and eventually the Arkansas River. A trash boom can help stop the spread of trash and debris by catching and holding debris, branches, leaves, and other trash materials. Volunteers clear out what’s collected once a month and after heavy rains.

Garden Sensor Network
A team proposed to design and install a wireless Internet of Things (IoT) based environmental monitoring system at the UA Little Rock Campus Garden for sustainable water and soil management. Their proposed system aimed to demonstrate how low-cost, eco-friendly technologies could advance climate-smart agriculture. They explained that once implemented, the system would enable the creation of learning modules and laboratory activities for courses in Biology, Earth Sciences, and Information Sciences, as well as for community education workshops through UALR Extended Education.

Art in the Garden
Art in the Garden was a series of workshops proposed for a future spring semester that would bring UA Little Rock students into the Campus Garden to learn art and craft activities utilizing the garden as a learning resource. The workshops were to be taught by instructors from UA Little Rock and a neighboring college. The proposal outlined workshops on Botanical Inclusion Papermaking, Shibori Dyeing, and Mindful Sketching with Botanical Inks. This proposal built on an earlier Sustainability Grant Project, utilizing the Pigment Garden (built with a previous Sustainability Grant) as an artistic resource. The team sought funds for workshop materials, while noting that the UALR School of Art and Design would provide matching funds for visiting artist honoraria.

Bowen Law School Pollinator Garden
A group of UA Little Rock Bowen School of Law students (members of the Law School Environmental Law Society), faculty, and staff partnered with Arkansas master naturalists for a proposed project. The collaborative group sought funds to replace Bermuda grass lawn and plant both a pollinator garden and a “soft landing space” on the east side of the Law School, adjacent to MacArthur Park in downtown Little Rock. They requested funds for plants, hardscaping (benches, an arbor, and paths), and educational signage to create this environmental and educational space.