By Kevin Tano, Triton’s Call Staff

The Center for Island Sustainability (CIS) specializes in the adaptation and modeling of sustainable technologies.These technologies focus on various energy alternatives and replicable research to meet the needs of the island communities in the broader areas of environment, economy, society, and education.

CIS was established in early 2009.  Since then, CIS has come a long way in providing alternative energy sources that benefit the university. “Our energy consumption on campus, it’s actually decreased a lot since CIS began,” said Phillip Cruz, Extension Associate at CIS.

CIS has gone to the different buildings to make energy assessments in the past.

“We made retrofits and improvements in the buildings,” said Cruz.

Tint has been installed on the windows, timers on the air conditioning, and made recommendations on other energy saving options.

These minor improvements play a major role in energy consumption.

Some of their recent developments included a $2.37 million in grant assistance offered under the Empowering Insular Communities Program for various clean energy and energy-efficiency projects in American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

As result, solar panels have been installed onto the universities library, student center, Agriculture and Life Science building, Humanities and Social Sciences building, and the English and Communications building.

CIS is not only a research program but participates in outreach as well.

Some of their outreach programs include the TASI Beach Guides program funded by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a coral reef outreach program where students go out to the beaches and talk to locals and tourists about the various threats the coral reefs face, which also sponsors beach cleanups.

CIS encourages students to attend their annual Regional Island Sustainability Conference. There is a different topic of discussion every year, 2016 will mark their seventh conference since 2010.