Clark undergraduate Eli Goldman ’16 received a $400 grant from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Green Apple Day of Service Program. Learn about Eli’s innovative project from his blog entry for the program.

It’s pretty rewarding when you’re asked to turn an idea you’ve had into a physical product. It’s even more rewarding when that product turns around and receives funding from an outside grant. That’s been exactly the case with the ‘Energy Saver Calendar’ that was developed as a result of my LEEP Project at Clark University this summer. While I learned a lot from a personal perspective, the project’s real success came from my realization that I could make some sort of change and alter the everyday norm at Clark. My LEEP project changed its course after I began to notice that filing a work order with Physical Plant could cause all the change I wanted to see. While a work order might work for installing window shades where there are none, it does nothing to make someone turn off their lights, turn off their electronics, or turn down their space heaters of AC units depending on the season.

So I set off to come up with an idea that would allow for the behavior change I wanted to see, and I landed on checklists. Checklists, when written properly, hold an immense amount of power. They allow for their readers to focus on other things throughout the day. Then, when the time comes, they are reminded that certain things have to get done. Airplane pilots use checklists during their flights. Construction workers use them to build massive skyscrapers all across the globe. And now Clark University will use them to save energy.

Faculty and staff who use the entire calendar will be eligible for a community prize package focused on sustainability.

To read more from Eli and his project, visit his LEEP blog, the USGBC’s Green Apple Day of Service, and the Sustainable Clark webpage.