On Wednesday, WSU announced that its Sustainability Practices and Research Center, or SPARC, was the recipient of a $2.4 million subaward through Utah’s Beehive Emission Reduction Plan – part of a $74 million federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Alice Mulder, director of SPARC, told the Standard-Examiner that the center was initiated in 2015 and is focused on education and outreach regarding sustainability issues and practices both on campus and off.

“I do a lot of work as a faculty member and director working with other faculty encouraging the inclusion of sustainability in teaching classes across the curriculum,” she said. “We’ve also had a fair bit of community engagement.”

Bonnie Christiansen, sustainability programs and engagement manager at SPARC, told the Standard-Examiner on Thursday that the awarded grant is part of a much larger EPA grant aimed at emission reduction.

“Our part of that is really working to work with our communities and those people who are interested in reducing their climate emissions or maybe even saving some money to look at doing energy efficiency in their homes,” she said. “We’re also looking at educating people about conserving water or reducing water usage, especially in the landscape.”

Mulder said the money will help ensure the SPARC has the resources to do outreach.

“The vast majority of it is really geared to staffing so that we have the capacity to do education programs, workshops, one-on-one consulting,” she said.

Christiansen said there will be a couple of focuses with the grant.

“We’re going to be bringing on an energy navigator, and that person will be able to help community members go through their energy journey — whether they want to do a little bit with efficiency or maybe somebody wants to put solar on their home,” she said. “We’re really hoping to be a one-stop shop where people can come in and get information about the technology, but also what kind of financing or incentives are available for folks.”

She added SPARC is also aiming to expand into helping areas that don’t have existing efficiency or conservation programs, such as rural areas of the state.

“We’re going to be looking at working with communities that are interested in reducing their emissions or cutting costs and helping them learn about the different things that are available.”

Christiansen added there’s also plans to build a place where people can see some of these efficiency and conservation practices in action.

“We’re going to be doing both a demonstration component of this as well as the assistance to help people through the process,” she said.

She said there will also be efforts to help boost the visibility of other community programs that promote sustainable practices.

Mulder said the grant is welcome news for SPARC and its mission.

“It’s very exciting to actually have obtained the funding resources, having a home that we’re going to be able to use and make it come to be a reality,” she said. “There’s lots to do, of course, and it’s a big scale up for us in terms of hiring — we’ll be adding four more full-time staff under this grant for the next four-plus years. There’s a lot to do, but it’s all very exciting.”