East Hill Notes: Campus-community events past, upcoming

Hello again, friends. Some key campus-community events from earlier this week, and in the future:

Earth Source Heat town hall

On Tuesday, Jan. 19, Cornell University staff and faculty hosted a virtual community town hall to provide an update on an enhanced geothermal heating project. Earth Source Heat (ESH) has been part of Cornell’s campus sustainability plan since 2009 and could be central to heating the Ithaca campus without the use of fossil fuels.

The next phase of the project involves drilling an approximately 2-mile-deep exploratory borehole on Cornell property to assess ESH’s feasibility.

In August 2020, the university secured a $7.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to drill the borehole and create a state-of-the-art observation station that will allow researchers at Cornell and other institutions to study the physical, geological and seismic characteristics of the subsurface beneath the campus.

Last year, a Cornell workshop brought together dozens of international scientists and engineers to design experiments that could be incorporated into the borehole and to discuss the significant research opportunity it presents.

In addition to helping Cornell reduce its carbon footprint, the project could also demonstrate the effectiveness of geothermal heating for much of the northeastern United States and beyond.

Cornell is staying in regular contact with the town of Ithaca (the proposed test site) regarding the work at hand, and Community Relations staff is collecting and forwarding off-campus questions that have run the gamut from community benefits to potential impacts.

A recording of Tuesday’s town hall will be accessible this week at http://communityrelations.cornell.edu. For more information on Earth Source Heat, visit https://earthsourceheat.cornell.edu.

Community outreach

University Relations will continue its series of monthly town halls on COVID-related events and topics, including vaccines, Monday, Jan. 25, from 5 to 5:30 p.m. This session will provide key updates and answer time-sensitive questions.

In 2020, there were more than 30 outreach sessions for various Tompkins County stakeholders and organizations. For a review of previous meetings, and a link on how to watch and ask questions Monday, visit https://communityrelations.cornell.edu/local-covid19-updates-and-resources.

College town economies

On an annual basis, Cornell’s Office of Community Relations manages a regional session on shared town-gown interests. On Tuesday, Jan. 26, it will host a virtual meeting on community-campus partnerships tied to economic recovery and development.

A series of 15-minute conversations will focus on Upstate college town economies in flux; the city of Rochester and higher education; the role of student entrepreneurs; business opportunities tied to sustainability and renewables; bus and air service, adjusting to current realities; and updates from Cornell/Albany staff.

Please join us at https://t.ly/3voo.

East Hill Notes are published the first and third Wednesdays of each month in Tompkins Weekly. Gary Stewart is an associate vice president at Cornell University.