2025 Award Recipients

Sustainability Student Champion Award: Collin Durfee

Winner: Collin Durfee

As a first year student at Cal Poly, Collin Durfee has shown commitment to making an impact on campus. Collin is a lead scholar and has been involved with several projects: waste reduction in dining at Cal Poly, tree planting initiative at Cheda Ranch, and composting at Vista Grande. We look forward to seeing the growth as he continues his education at Cal Poly!

Faculty Sustainability Champion Award

Winner: Tryg Lundquist

Dr. Lundquist is a campus go-to resource for all things waste water. Cal Poly is building its’ own Water Reclamation Facility (WRF). On numerous occasions, when providing updates to senior leadership about the WRF, President Armstrong will ask: “What does Tryg think of this?” or “Have you been in touch with Tryg?”. The answer is yes and regularly. Dr. Lundquist has been involved regularly to provide design input to the WRF to make sure this critical infrastructure asset is a learn by doing opportunity.

Staff Sustainability Champion

Winner: Colleen Lampman

Colleen Lampman (Planner Estimator Scheduler in University Housing) goes above and beyond for sustainability. Colleen has helped facilitate CP Thrift, ensuring gently used items during moved out can be provided to students moving in the next year. She’s helped advocate for recycling old housing furniture and to reduce waste during move-in. Most recently, she worked to help turn off the heat for the PCV swimming pool during the winter months, saving thousands of $$ of heating costs.

Dennis K Elliot Sustainable Facilities Award

Winner: Kevin Porowski

Kevin Porowski is one of the most important behind the scenes staff on campus to ensure the water flows, the showers are hot, and the air conditioning works on a hot day. However, how he does or doesn’t do this role makes a big difference in how much energy is used on campus. Kevin has helped write custom code to allow Cal Poly to reduce load on peak energy days. He’s helped optimize Cal Poly’s thermal energy storage system to cooling load off peak. And he’s helped find ways to save energy in countless systems across campus.

Sustainable Organization Champion Award

Winner: Plant Conservatory

The Plant Conservatory has been an exceptional partner to campus sustainability efforts, especially this last year when they collaborated with Facilities and the Sheep Unit to plant 260 trees on Cheda Ranch as part of an animal welfare and carbon farming sequestration project. This work would not have been possible without the Plant Conservatory, who in addition to germinating all of the tree starts, hosted numerous gopher cage making workshops, and led day-of planting activities across 3 Saturdays in early 2025. A tree planting on this scale would not have been possible without them.