The League of American Bicyclists ranked Minnesota as being the second-most bike-friendly U.S. state in 2017, but St. Thomas is still working to create a more bike-friendly campus.

A group of graduate students in the Applied Business Research MBA program were assigned a project to supply St. Thomas facilities management with research to help it become more bike friendly to reduce the campus’ carbon footprint.

By interviewing and surveying the St. Thomas community, the students found that bike racks around campus are not consistent in design and quality.

“The university is interested in further working on reducing its carbon footprint,” said Nick Bartelli, one of the project’s group members. “So, for the purposes of our class, the focus was specifically around biking and how the St. Paul campus can become a more bike-friendly community.”

Marketing professor Avinash Malshe, who teaches the applied business research course, heard about the university’s desire to be more bike-friendly through Maria Dahmus and Elise Amel, the assistant director and director of the Office of Sustainability Initiatives.

“I know Maria and Elise fairly well,” Malshe said. “They suggested that perhaps this was a good project for students to work on.”

Malshe then assigned Bartelli, Ashley Cathcart, Elnzeer Elsanousi, Nic Jantzen and Nouchie Xiong to work on the project at the beginning of spring semester.

The group performed multiple steps in conducting research this semester, primarily involving interviews with the St. Thomas community.

Bartelli said his group researched other universities that consider themselves bike friendly.

“We found a national organization that looks at communities, businesses, universities and cities as a whole. They can submit themselves to an application through this organization and (the organization), essentially, grades them in bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals based on the criteria they meet,” Bartelli explained.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is ranked gold.

The group then went out and conducted interviews with students and faculty to learn how they felt about St. Thomas’ bike friendliness.

They also met with Amy Gage, the St. Thomas neighborhood liaison, to get her perspective on how biking impacts the surrounding neighborhoods.

The group just completed a survey they created for students and faculty to take. Their goal was to collect 150 responses by Monday, April 9.

“We weren’t able to electronically distribute our survey, so we actually had to go to the Anderson Student Center a couple days and literally approach random students,” Bartelli said.

When the semester ends, the group will present its project to St. Thomas facilities management with recommendation on how they can achieve the goal of being a bike friendly campus.

The group does not yet have their recommendation formalized since they are still in the process of analyzing their data obtained throughout the semester.

However, when St. Thomas receives the research and recommendation, it will be left to the university to decide whether they will take the next step or not.

Bartelli said their findings will most likely be added to the university’s master plan in what they hope to improve on campus over the next five years.

“The university is not going to just run out tomorrow after the findings of our project and spend a lot of money replacing (bike racks),” Bartelli said.

Althea Larson can be reached at lars2360@stthomas.edu.