GLOBAL STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION AWARDING $30K FOR INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

Posted on Categories Education, Environment

Now in its fourth year, Wege Prize is a global transdisciplinary design competition that gives teams of five college/university students the chance to work collaboratively, use design thinking principles,and contend for $30,000 in total cash prizes, all while helping to show the world what the future of problem solving looks like.

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? 

Any college/university student, in any program, anywhere in the world! New for 2017, both undergraduate and graduate level students are eligible to compete. Students must be enrolled in a full-time (or equivalent) program.

LEARN MORE: INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS

WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?

Teams must leverage their transdisciplinary makeup to collaboratively design and propose a product, service, business/non-profit organization, or other solution that addresses the following wicked problem: How can we create a circular economy?

A circular economy is one that is restorative by design, aiming to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times – where resources can be re-adapted for use without limiting the desirability of products or the flow of revenue.

LEARN MORE: WEGE PRIZE 2017 DESIGN BRIEF

HOW DOES THE COMPETITION WORK? 

Wege Prize is designed to provide a robust learning experience, broken down into four phases. After each phase, teams will receive direct feedback from the judges in order to continue developing their solutions.

LEARN MORE: WEGE PRIZE 2017 TIMELINE

NEXT STEPS: SPREAD THE WORD AND GET INVOLVED!

Whether you’re a new or returning student looking to participate, a faculty member looking to inspire your students towards new experiences, or a professional interested in spreading the word or getting involved as a mentor, it’s easy to get started.

Explore the competition further at wegeprize.org and join the Wege Prize Facebook group, where you can share ideas, connect with other wicked problem solvers from around the world, and begin building a team!

Team registration is now open, and teams must be registered by November 30, 2016 to be able to compete. 

Please feel free to reach out to wicked@wegeprize.org with any questions you may have, and stay tuned to all the latest Wege Prize updates via the social media links below:

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What’s In A Name?

Posted on Categories Community Service

Disability Advocates of Kent County identifies an organization that gives people with disabilities access to our county’s opportunities. As its mission states, this non-profit helps “people with disabilities live full and exciting lives.” They prepare their consumers for employment, and make sure their homes meet each one’s particular accessibility needs. In short, they help their people with disabilities achieve their own personal goals.

But there is more. It’s great to have a plan to improve life, but what if you can’t get to the places necessary to meeting your goals? Because a critical piece in living “full and exciting lives” is mobility, Disability Advocates also focuses on expanding public transportation. Disability Advocates’ simple and practical mission is to make sure persons with a disability who either can’t drive or can’t afford lift-equipped vans have a way to get where they need to go. Bus service is not a convenience for people with disabilities. It is a necessity. They need rides to their jobs, school, religious services, social events, and family visits.

The low-key philanthropist Peter Wege always had a heart for people dealing with tough challenges. And because Kate Pew Wolters, his good friend and fellow descendent of the Steelcase founders, was a passionate advocate for persons with disabilities, Peter took a special interest in this cause. And it didn’t hurt that public transit is also a major benefit to the environment. In 2000, Peter joined Kate’s active support for better public transportation.

After years of planning and advocacy, in 2000 the Rapid put its first millage request before voters. Faith In Motion, a collaboration of leaders in the religious community, business leaders, Disability Advocates, and supportive citizens campaigned for the millage as Friends of Transit.

According to Dave Bulkowski, executive director of Disability Advocates, “Peter Wege’s $40,000 contribution that year to the Friends of Transit campaign was absolutely indispensable. His leadership and generosity enabled us to get the public’s attention with billboards and flyers and mailings.”

The Rapid millage passed by a wide margin. But more needed to be done and Peter Wege didn’t hesitate to lead once again. In 2001 he pledged $40,000 a year for three years to support the further development of Faith In Motion. In 2003, he once again generously supported the next Friends of Transit campaign which led to another successful millage vote and more bus service.

Peter and The Wege Foundation next provided funding for a transit summit in 2005 that mapped out local action for the coming decade. Finally, Peter provided continued support for Friends of Transit in its campaigns of 2007, 2009, and 2011.

In addition to funding the millage campaigns, Peter continued his substantial support for Disability Advocates’ community organizing work on the transit issue every year until his death in 2014. The Wege Foundation has continued that support and through 2016 the total donations were $695,000; approximately $230,000 of this granted directly to Disability Advocates.

And this long-term support triggered another bonus. Because of The Wege Foundation’s high credibility, The Mott Foundation came on board in 2013 pledging $120,000 over three years to support public transportation in Kent County.

Today, one can see the very tangible results of Peter’s leadership and generous support. The Silver Line is Michigan’s first high-capacity transit line. The Rapid has extended bus routes and added more frequent service throughout greater Grand Rapids. Buses now run weekends and later than 6 p.m. Sixteen years ago that was the last bus of the day.

While Disability Advocates and its community partners still need to extend transit service into Kent County townships and beyond to Jenison and Greenville, they know the community owes an unpayable debt to Peter for his perseverance and commitment to a better future for all. “When you see a bus out at night,” Dave Bulkowski says with a grateful grin, “you can thank Peter Wege.”

linda
Linda Stewart getting off the GoBus!

 

Disability Advocates at work building a ramp to help one their consumers get in and out the house.
Disability Advocates at work building a ramp to help one their consumers get in and out the house.

 

Simple Sustainability Stats

Posted on Categories Environment, Health Care

Courtesy of the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems

[skillbar title=”U.S. adults are overweight or obese ” percentage=”68″ color=”#f7a53b” show_percent=”true”] [skillbar title=”Children 2-19 are already obese ” percentage=”17″ color=”#6adcfa” show_percent=”true”] [skillbar title=”Good food wasted today ” percentage=”26″ color=”#fa6e6e” show_percent=”true”] [skillbar title=”Good food hauled away to landfills ” percentage=”15″ color=”#336699″ show_percent=”true”]

If you happen across a photo of people from the 1970s, you’ll notice one thing. Pretty much everyone is a normal size. Look around today and you’ll see what research proves. More of us are fatter than normal sized. In fact, 68% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Even more worrisome is that 17% of children 2-19 are already obese.

Bad as those numbers are, there’s a contradictory and darker side. For most of the last century, leftovers were a mainstay of the American diet. Think Great Depression and ration cards of WW II. Yet today while seven out of ten adults eat too much, we throw away more edible food than ever before! For the record 26% of good food is wasted today, fifty percent more than in 1970. i.e. We wasted less food back then, and we weighed less.

No need to mention how damaging obesity is to health because everyone knows it. So you’re thinking, ‘Isn’t it better to throw food away than to eat it?’ Not if we want a sustainable world for future generations. Good food pitched in the garbage makes up 15% of what the big trash trucks are hauling to our dumps.

So how about saving money and solving this food-wasting problem? First, buy fewer groceries and see how good yesterday’s meatloaf is warmed up. It gets better. Hauling and dumping that 15% of trash costs every single American $455 a year. Reduce your grocery bill, get acquainted with your grandparents’ fondness for leftovers, and now we’re talking some real money.

Not to mention our country is running out of room for dumps.

Wege Foundation Grant Propels West Michigan-Based Student Design Competition Toward Broader Global Impact

Posted on Categories Community Service, Education

$444,000 grant awarded to Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University’s Wege Center for Sustainable Design to extend Wege Prize competition for four years

2016 competition concludes May 14 – open to the public

Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University’s (KCAD’s) Wege Center for Sustainable Design has been awarded a $444,000 grant from the Wege Foundation to continue running the Wege Prize student design competition for the next four years. Open to any undergraduate student in the world, the international competition challenges transdisciplinary teams of five to design a product, service, or business model that can function within and facilitate a paradigm shift toward a circular economy, an economic model in which resources and capital are regenerative.

Through the lens of the circular economy, past Wege Prize participants have developed compelling solutions to formidable social and environmental issues such as the rising costs and environmental impact of mass food production, the harmful buildup of low-density polyurethane plastics in nature, and barriers to accessing renewable energy. Such challenges are known as “wicked” problems due to their systemic complexity and resistance to solution.

Wege Foundation CEO Mark Van Putten says Wege Prize offers a unique opportunity for students to integrate their own knowledge and perspective with that of students working in other fields and institutions to produce a meaningful impact on the world.

“Students are conscious of the environmental and economic crises facing their generation,” Van Putten says. “Wege Prize is an experience that empowers learners to collaborate in the pursuit of sustainable global development.”

Wege Prize began in 2014 as a regional competition but grew quickly, expanding to an international scale for the ongoing 2016 competition, which has drawn participation from students in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Costa Rica in addition to the United States. International students from China, Nigeria, and Kenya who are studying abroad in the U.S. are also participating.
KCAD’s Wege Center for Sustainable Design will continue to conduct Wege Prize annually through 2020 with the support of the Wege Foundation. Organizers aim to expand the scope of the competition’s growing impact over the course of the four-year grant, engaging an increasingly diverse group of international participants while continuing to nurture the cogency and viability of teams’ solutions.

“Wege Prize 2015 was our debut as a national competition, and this year it has become a worldwide endeavor,” says KCAD President Leslie Bellavance. “With this grant, we will continue to inspire innovation for transformative change in the years to come.”

The Wege Prize 2016 Awards will take place Saturday, May 14, 2016 from 9:30am – 2:30pm inside KCAD’s Woodbridge N. Ferris Building (17 Pearl St. NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49503), where the five finalist teams in this year’s competition will present their solutions in full to a judging panel of leading practitioners and advocates of design thinking and sustainability. The competition’s top award of $15,000 will be given to the winning team, with awards of $10,000 and $5,000 going to the second and third-place teams, respectively.

The Wege Prize 2016 Awards are free and open to the public. RSVP by visiting wegeprize2016.eventbrite.com.

The event will also be streamed live online at wegeprize.org starting at10 a.m. May 14.

For more information on the Wege Prize 2016 finalist teams, click here.

 

About Wege Prize:
Wege Prize, a West Michigan-born concept developed by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD) with the support of The Wege Foundation, is a collaborative design competition that gives teams of college students the chance to work across disciplines, use design thinking principles, and contend for $30,000 in total cash prizes, all while helping to show the world what the future of problem solving looks like. The challenge is to design a product, service, or business model that can function within and help create a paradigm shift towards a  circular economic model. To learn more, go to wegeprize.org.

About The Wege Foundation:

The Wege Foundation focuses on local good works in the Grand Rapids metropolitan region that enhance the lives of the people and preserve the health of the environment. The five pillars of the Foundation’s mission are, in rank order: Education, Environment, Arts and Culture, Health Care, and Human Services. For more information, please visit wegefoundation.org.

About KCAD:

Located in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD) is committed to creating lasting impact in West Michigan and beyond through collaborative partnerships, cultural innovation, and an educational model that prepares students for leadership in the visual arts, design, art history, and art education; provides innovative, collaborative education that fosters intellectual growth and individual creativity; and promotes the ethical and civic responsibilities of artists and designers, locally and globally. For more information, please visit kcad.edu.

Beyond Fossil Fuels: U of M Wege Speaker

Posted on Categories Environment, Wege Speaker Series

The Industrial Revolution changed the world of work from farms to factories is over. A new economy is needed. Jose Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica (1994-1998) and the first CEO of the World Economic Forum, has a plan to do just that. The Costa Rican West Point graduate—who broke up the audience when he noted his country has no army—is calling for a new global economy driven by reducing carbon emissions.

“The 200 years of the Industrial Revolution have ended,” Figueres told the University of Michigan audience as the speaker for the 14th annual Peter M. Wege Lecture in Sustainability. “It’s time to leave the carbon—the fossils and the coal and gas and oil in the ground.”

This former president led his native country into preserving more land per square mile—now 25% of Costa Rica—than any other nation proving his visionary thinking can become reality. The enthusiastic and entertaining Figueres sees his carbon-reduction economy as the ideal way to address climate change, poverty, and unemployment. Converting the world from systems that pollute the environment to an economy based on reducing carbon will create what he calls, “The greatest economic opportunities ever.”

Figueres sees a whole new realm of employment needed to develop technology that can pull carbon out of the atmosphere as the world converts to renewable energies. “We have the resources to do it,” he said, noting South Korea and Costa Rica are already doing it.

What needs to happen is a collaboration that includes governmental vision, private-sector participation, capital, a communications strategy, and centers of academic excellence. “Just like all of you in this auditorium,” he said about the academic centers pointing at the audience filled with University of Michigan students and faculty.

Jose Figueres doesn’t see climate change as the doomsday scenario often depicted, but rather as the gateway to an entirely new working world in carbon reduction that can make life better for everybody on Earth.

Jose Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica who delivered the 14th annual Peter M. Wege Lecture at the University of Michigan March 28, 2016, is pictured with Dr. Jonathan Bulkley, retired professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and former co-chairman of the Center for Sustainable Systems. In 2011 Peter M. Wege and The Wege Foundation created the Jonathan W. Bulkley Collegiate Professorship in Sustainable Systems to honor Dr. Bulkley’s distinguished career of 43 years at SNRE as well as the close friendship between Peter and the professor that began in 1991 and lasted until Wege died in 2014. At the dinner following the lecture, SNRE faculty member Shelie Miller was announced as the first recipient of the five-year Bulkley Professorship. Dr. Miller’s most recent honor is a Jefferson Fellowship given by the National Academy of Science for a year’s assignment with U.S. Agency for International Development to end global poverty.

Jose Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica who delivered the 14th annual Peter M. Wege Lecture at the University of Michigan March 28, 2016, is pictured with Dr. Jonathan Bulkley, retired professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and former co-chairman of the Center for Sustainable Systems.

In 2011 Peter M. Wege and The Wege Foundation created the Jonathan W. Bulkley Collegiate Professorship in Sustainable Systems to honor Dr. Bulkley’s distinguished career of 43 years at SNRE as well as the close friendship between Peter and the professor that began in 1991 and lasted until Wege died in 2014.

At the dinner following the lecture, SNRE faculty member Shelie Miller was announced as the first recipient of the five-year Bulkley Professorship. Dr. Miller’s most recent honor is a Jefferson Fellowship given by the National Academy of Science for a year’s assignment with U.S. Agency for International Development to end global poverty.

Pictured at top:

Jose Maria Figueres on the right is pictured after delivering the 14th Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan. On his right is Dan Brown, new dean of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment; next to Brown is Dr. Shelie Miller who had just been announced as the first recipient of the Jonathan W. Bulkley Collegiate Professorship in Sustainable Systems given by the late Peter M. Wege and The Wege Foundation; on the left is Mark VanPutten, CEO of The Wege Foundation.
One of Dr. Miller’s many accomplishments is winning the highest award the U.S. government gives to young scientists called the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

 

THE REAL COSTS OF OIL

Posted on Categories Education, Environment, Wege Speaker Series

The Case for Justice at the Ends of the Pipeline

Crystal Lameman
Intergovernmental Affairs Spokeswoman for the
indigenous Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Alberta, Canada

Thursday, April 21, 2016 / 4 – 5 pm
Aquinas College Performing Arts Center
Followed by a reception

Throughout the Great Lakes region, oil flows via pipelines and railroads from Canada to destinations throughout the American Midwest. This April, Crystal Lameman is coming to Grand Rapids to shed light on the devastating environmental and human impacts of tar sands mining at one source in Alberta, Canada. Lameman, a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, will speak about her Nation’s legal fight to defend their homelands against the over-development of thousands of fossil fuel extraction sites. Join us and learn about how our demand for these resources is destroying the ecosystems that have sustained indigenous families for thousands of years and threatening our collective future.

Lameman is the Intergovernmental Affairs and Industry Relations Treaty Coordinator and Communications Manager for the Nation.

RSVP by April 11, 2016 to aquinas.edu/wegespeaker

Click here to view the full press release

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 10.15.47 AM

See below for a video of the Aquinas College lecture. This video of the entire lecture is also close captioned.

Click below for a video of the interview for West Michigan Week (WGVU public television) with Crystal Lameman and Rachel Hood, Executive Director of West Michigan Environmental Action Council.

CALLING ALL CHILDREN ARTISTS

Posted on Categories Arts & Culture, Education

The Grand Rapids Art Museum is holding its 6th annual children’s art contest sponsored by The Wege Foundation and inspired by the late environmental artist Mark Heckman. Partnering with his writer friend Mark Newman, Heckman created colorful drawings to illustrate their book for children titled Sooper Yooper. Peter M. Wege, who died in 2014, and Heckman collaborated on several projects, including the art work Heckman did for Wege’s book ECONOMICOLOGY.

The picture here is from Sooper Yooper and the man reading the newspaper is none other than Peter Wege himself.

GRAM encourages teachers and parents to submit their students’ and children’s art work any time the museum is open through April 30.

Winners in each age class will be honored in an awards ceremony Saturday, May 14, 2016, from noon to 1 p.m. in GRAM’s Cook auditorium. For more details, please click on the link below.

http://www.artmuseumgr.org/learn/sooper-art/

Grand Rapids Joins Architecture 2030 In Record Time

Posted on Categories Arts & Culture, Environment

April 27, 2015, architect Ed Mazria gave the 19th annual Wege Lecture urging Grand Rapids to join Architecture 2030, the program he founded in 2006 to cut carbon emissions from buildings in half by 2030. Noting that 50% of the energy in the U.S. is consumed by buildings and 75% of all greenhouse gases come from urban centers, Mazria’s environmental mission targets cities.

The day after Mazria’s Wege Lecture, the city of Grand Rapids began the process that would qualify it to be named a 2030 city by the end of the year. Mayor George Heartwell and his fellow city leaders were not daunted by the fact that the first 11 cities took a lot longer than eight months to sign up the necessary private and public building owners. He credited The Wege Foundation for its generous grant to the West Michigan chapter of the United States Green Building Council that helped grease the skids to make the city’s December goal happen.

In a press conference announcing that Grand Rapids had qualified as the 12th 2030 city in the country, Mayor Heartwell made it clear the “spirit of Peter Wege” was happily present. The collaborative action by local private and public building owners committing 10 million square feet of buildings to 2030 exemplified the way Peter liked to see things get done.

The significance of holding the press conference at the Grand Rapids Art Museum reinforced Mayor Heartwell’s comments. Peter Wege was the moving force behind this first U.S.G.B.A. museum in the world. And while the GRAM board offered to rename it for Wege, the response was vintage Peter. “This museum belongs to the people of Grand Rapids and that is how the name will stay.”

Now GRAM sits in the heart of the 12th city in the United States to fight global climate change by signing on to 2030.

Click for Mlive article

Click here for 2030Districts.com

In the Grand Rapids Art Museum in mid-December, 2015, Mayor George Heartwell announced Grand Rapids has just been named the 12th 2030 city in the nation qualifying in record time.