University Times

Civil and environmental engineering PhD student and IGERT fellow Bhavna Sharma, at left, collects outdated stationery from EXCEL program staff member Dominique Herring in Benedum Hall.

The renaming of Pitt’s School of Engineering last December for University benefactor John A.

Swanson made it necessary for the new name to be reflected in print school-wide. Overnight, reams of letterhead, envelopes and other stationery lacking the Swanson School of Engineering name became obsolete.

To mitigate the environmental impact, students from the engineering school’s Mascaro Sustainability Initiative IGERT program began an effort to collect the outdated paper products.

Meanwhile, the Engineering 1610 Product Realization Global Opportunity class is developing a process to convert the unusable stationery into building tiles.

The old paper will be turned into pulp and combined with a resin to make tiles that are to be used in the new MSI addition that is part of the Benedum Hall upgrade.

—Kimberly K. Barlow