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Western Michigan Sets Up Charging Stations for Electric Cars

March 22, 2011, 2:51 pm

By Scott Carlson

It’s a pretty good news week for Western Michigan University: Just as the university announced that it had gotten a $100-million gift for its proposed medical school, news outlets were also buzzing about new electric-vehicle charging stations that had been set up on the campus. The announcement ceremony included a visit by a U.S. senator who would be one of the first people to use the stations.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who had sponsored legislation that offers rebates to people who buy electric vehicles, drove up to the ceremony in a Chevrolet Volt. (She had borrowed it from an alumnus who had just bought the car. Electric vehicles owned by professors were on display, and the university owns a couple of electric vehicles, too.)

Use of the charging stations will be free to owners of a special card distributed by ChargePoint America, a division of Coulomb Technologies that is devoted to establishing an electric-vehicle infrastructure. A university spokeswoman did not know whether people would have to pay for that card, however.

“Much of the expected electricity use will be offset by WMU’s existing renewable-energy resources—a wind turbine on the Parkview Campus and a solar array atop Wood Hall on the main campus,” a university news release says. “If usage is more than expected, university officials will re-evaluate keeping the service free.”

It’s not clear how many drivers will actually plug in at the charging station. Such stations have been cited as symbolic gestures that convey a green image, but are actually rarely used.

Finding ways to maintain an automotive America has of course been an interest in Michigan, so a charging station like this might seem natural for this public university, no matter how much it’s used. But other colleges have also been interested in pushing electric vehicles for more sustainability-oriented reasons. For example, Portland State University and Lane Community College, both in Oregon, have been involved in electric-vehicle efforts.

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  • 11245928

    Jeepers. Up north you could always plug cars in. You might have to dig them out of the snowbank, however.

  • kozirice

    Illinois Institute of Technology is also planning several charging stations on our main campus in Chicago; this is a part of the University’s overall sustainability plan.

  • gnals

    Hart Crane is “hardly a household name”? Maybe it’s because of the time I’ve spent in Ohio, but his relative obscurity is news to me.

  • 5768

    Excellent post. Those promoted from within can become the pillars upon which the university rests and upper administration relies, although not without serious drawbacks from a faculty perspective. As repositories of the inner knowledge and secrets of how the local university works and how to get things done (from anything as simple as classroom scheduling to governance issues, policy knowledge, research budget and overhead matters, grants management), unless the accumulated knowledge of those so promoted moves beyond their own persons and circle and is shared with university faculty, it does the latter no good and can in fact cripple the latter. In cases where insider promotion dominates and cards are held too close to the chest, one cannot help but wonder whether a deliberate mechanism of faculty control has not been found.

  • raza_khan

    I agree.   This can go either way purely dependent on the internal candidate.  There are some who I would love to move on but then others who will / do horrendous job at the higher level.

    Raza
    __________________________
    Raza Khan, Ph.D.
    Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com

  • schwerdt

    And then there’s the model where the President chooses Deans on an interim basis (to see to what extent they will go along with his orders), and then boots them out (or they quit). I have had 5 Deans in 10 years. It’s absurd.

  • dpn33

    Quite interesting that everyone appeared to jump to the conclusion that the author was saying that middle schoolers and high schoolers should have decided on a major. All he says is that they need to start thinking about it. And any college-bound student *should* be thinking about their future careers (and, by association, possible college majors) before they go to college. That’s part of the college decision-making process. If you think that you want to pursue science, you probably won’t choose colleges that are stronger in the humanities and arts. If you truly have absolutely no idea, then you probably will choose a university with a wide range of good programs across a broad spectrum. But to make the best college choices, you should start with an idea of your future goals.

  • http://twitter.com/NedJohnson Ned Johnson

    Ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.
    -Seneca
    For one who knows not the port he seeks, no wind is favorable.

    No one should have to decide his major/career/life at some specific(arbitrary?) age or date and then be held to it. College is about learning about oneself as much as it is about learning about others and about the world.  But, surely, there is value in having goals or plans of some sort, of having a heading, no matter how many times one might change one’s major or life course.

    Much like the school children who so benefitted by being given books for the summer, who came to think to themselves as “book kids” and succeeded academically relative to their peers, people work to bring into reality the dominant conception they have of themselves. There is value in examining our conceptions of ourselves.

    To enter college with a sense of “I’ve always liked math and been good at it” or “I’m interested in how people think” could suggest engineering/economics/math or psychology/political science/sociology as places to start. Both paths may wend their way to behavioral economics, or perhaps Russian, but it helps to start somewhere.  If part of college is exploring (and developing) one’s interests and talents, thinking about those a bit in advance has value.

    If colleges have an interest in helping students learn and grow, and have an interest and obligation to provide the appropriate resources, they too would like to know where a student plans to start her “Choose Your Own Adventure,” no matter where she may end up four years later.

    Ned Johnson
    president & tutor-geek
    PrepMatters

  • db_palmer

    So, does he default on his student loans? That’s the real question.

  • chemistry_guy

    Crap.  Now the price of pot will go up.

  • huntbull

    Yes, but what was his major?

  • akprof

    Some people would praise his entrepreneurial spirit and his responsibility in paying his off loan. Come to think of it, I kind of admire him.

  • guangtou

    Mr. MV probably did not earn a business degree, because the yield and $80K shows poor finance skills. Let’s leave illegal activities where they belong…with Congress.

  • blesstayo

    If growing and selling pot is such a lucrative business that requires no college degree, may be legalizing it would help reduce unemployment and US deficits (they must pay taxes!).

  • Brian Abel Ragen

    The headline, “Arrested Pot Grower Gives Lame Excuse” might be more accurate and less tendencious. It would also show what a flimsy peg this incident is on which to hang an education story.

  • awegweiser

    Apparently crime in Portland is rather low so the law must keep busy by going after pot growers. This entire part of the bogus “war on drugs” is a waste of time, effort, money and ever more overcrowding of prison space for law violations that should, at the very least, be only restricted to probation, house arrest or (best of all) community service.  The operators that make bags of money off badly run private prisons (of course, “corrections” facilities) love it, I’m sure.

  • perryclark

    crime doesnt pay

  • lkvamme

    Hey, that was my idea! (only kiddin’…don’t get all excited now…)

  • hmcleaver

    A few years ago I had a student who was paying his way through college by flying pot across the border from Mexico to Texas. I discovered this the day he came to tell me he had been caught and sentenced to prison and to ask if he could complete his work in my course while there. I, of course, said sure thing. Then we discussed other possible independent study courses he might pursue while locked up.

    As it turned out he was incarcerated in a low-security prison near Dallas where he was put to work alongside other prisoners making uniforms for the Contras – the illegal terrorists organized and funded by the Reagan Administration as a part of what later became known as the Iran-Contra Scandal. Bored with sewing, this young fella snooped around the prison – which was located on an old Air Force base -  and discovered a still-functioning flight simulator. When he proposed to the warden that he could train other prisoners to fly in the spirit of rehabilitation via learning new skills, he lucked out and got an OK which allowed him to escape what he found to be the odious task of supporting terrorism.

    Now, guess who were his most enthusiastic students? You got it, guys who had been caught smuggling pot across the border by truck or boat and who wanted to diversify their transport options! Malcolm X was right, it seems, when he called prison the “university of the working class.”

    At any rate, “awegweiser” is quite right that while profitable for the prison industry (and the drug cartels, as it keeps supply down and prices up) the so-called “War on Drugs” is a waste a time and resources – both human and monetary. Better to legalize all drugs and then spend time and money figuring out why so many Americans feel the need to resort to them – from alcohol and caffeine through uppers, downers, painkillers, glue and pot to cocaine, meth and heroin to make it through their days and nights. Of course we don’t want to do that, because it would reveal the alienation and desperation that pervades American capitalist society.

  • achilton1987

    so instead of ‘war on drugs’ it will be called ‘war on people who will continue to grow pot but not pay taxes’

  • tenured_radical

    This law is not only intended to restrict student parking, it is intended to restrict the expansion of student-run living spaces full of rowdy men.  Gosh, I wonder why?

  • amydevid

    The post is very informative. It is a
    pleasure reading it. I have also bookmarked you for checking out new
    posts. 

     

    carbon
    handlebars
     

  • grward

    Reminds me of the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver. The Canadian government had promised Indonesia’s Suharto that he would not be embarrassed by human rights activists if he joined the meeting. Students at the University of British Columbia (the site of at least part of the meeting) soon found that that meant that even anti-Suharto posters would not be allowed on campus. That, and the usual gathering of various people who like to take part in this sort of thing, soon turned the whole affair into a circus. The most memorable moment, however, was when RCMP Staff Sergeant Hugh Stewart announced that protesters would have to clear the road and, less than 10 seconds later, began to spray the protesters with pepper spray, and then turned the spray onto the CBC film crew. As you may have guessed, he became famous as “Sergeant Pepper”. You can see the footage about 2 minutes into this video on the CBC archives:

    http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/federal_politics/clips/11710/

  • katisumas

    That is hilarious.  And what a statement!  Did you notice the spay is directed at a little girl holding flowers!

  • soonerdgs

    So did the government refuse to take the $80,000 in drug money that he used to pay down the student loans?  And if not, maybe they can take the $27,000 they seized from Vivenzio and finish paying off his student loan. That way they won’t have to come after him for defaulting on his payments while he’s in jail…  

  • mbelvadi

    To take issue with a quotation in the last paragraph, universities don’t have values. People have values. Anyone who has been through a round of “strategic planning” or drafting a new mission statement for their university quickly realizes that so-called institutional values are only what those currently in “power” in that institution at the moment hold. As the leadership (including senior faculty) changes, the values change.  That’s why it matters to a public good who is given leadership power within it, because it seems an increasing number of academic “leaders” embrace an anti-public good philosophy, favoring a supposedly “market-based” approach instead.

  • antiutopia

    Neh… it’s hard to define how the university is a “public good” because it works that way to numerous sectors — general public, economic, governmental.  I mentioned on another thread that OSU is hiring people in the area of Somalian studies.  That’s not a public good in any obvious sense to most people, but it can clearly help the US State Dept. and intelligence agencies, so serves as a public good in that way.  Military laser research carried out by state u’s isn’t an immediate public good for most of us (except for how it might help health care), but it supports national defense.  On the other hand, the training of K-12 teachers and future college and university professors is an immediate public good for everyone.  Having a generally educated populace is an immediate public good for everyone.  

  • 3rdtyrant

    The notion of serving “publics” is enormously problematic.  Once a university, whether in Seoul, Lichtenstein, Accra, or San Salvador begins to give itself over to serving the immediate needs of a group of contextual publics, It becomes something less that universal.  The assumption that may need defending is that human (i.e. public) goods transcend individual cultures, and that to begin to cater to cultural necessity rather than human necessity is to relegate the “university” to be the “locality.”  While I understand the immediate benefit of such comparative micro-adaptation, I remain unconvinced that such adaptation is, itself, a way to serve humanities at large rather than serving a narrow (relatively speaking, again) group.

    If we agree that human issues transcend culture, no such adaptation should be necessary, and universities ought to be addressing human issues that, whether in Oklahoma, York, Oslo, Budapest, Hong Kong, Sydney, Johannesburg, or Minsk, remain relatively static.

  • hanstedt

    kyushumntsphil:  sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience.  if so, feel free to contact me at Roanoke College, my home institution.  I’d be curious to hear more.  

  • drewsmith_hk

    As an expatriate Canadian who has worked in Hong Kong for over 7 years, I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head, Paul, when you talked about both the concepts of the need in Asia for real structure, (hence we have ‘policies related to policies with associated guidelines, etc’) as well as the acquiescence of Asian academic staff to go along with whatever the next ‘new thing’ (they grumble amongst trusted colleagues but would seldom voice a negative opinion publicly).  As a middle manager, as I once was here, these concepts made the job of managing staff very challenging, particularly if you tended to take things at face value (as one would tend to do especially early on in the job).  One might take silence for agreement and support only to find out later that staff were just going along, waiting for a change in leadership that they hoped would represent a return to the possibly outdated status quo.

  • http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

    I teach in Japan, where the problems are similar to those encountered in the U.S. The vast majority of students don’t know what they are doing in school and are not motivated to study. The colleges are constantly trying to adapt with cosmetic changes in curriculum, with glamorous sounding majors, by relaxing standards, by raising standards, to the point they seem not to know what they are doing any better than the students do… all it amounts to is marketing, and none of it works. It is futile, mostly I believe, because the students are too comfortable in their personal lives, too tired of studying to get into school, too tired of BEING in school, and too distracted by everything else they would rather be doing. 

    We seem to forget that people are biologically adult after puberty, yet we spend several more years in school practicing for roles we might play in our much delayed adulthood. Most of us, by that time, want to test ourselves by performing in adult roles. A few years of worldly experience, gaining an understanding of self and the skills that are really needed, before entering university, would solve a lot of students’ problems, and those of the universities, as well.

  • sstop

    Setting up electric charging stations is a great idea but we need more wireless ones.

    Servicing Stop

  • http://twitter.com/digisolutions Digi Solutions(Unni)

    Many charging out let in  Tennessee and Pennsylvania  units for Volkswagen is sitting unused. 
    What is the point in having mores
    Volkswagen
    Service

  • http://www.servicingstop.co.uk/jaguar_service.html Jaguar Service

    Its not only in North also in Down Town. Jeepers be prepared 

  • http://www.servicingstop.co.uk/porsche_service.html Porsche Service

    we all will be using electric cars in the future…. efforts of these universities are appreciable

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