Have 
you 
ever 
wondered 
how the University of Michigan 
generates the power to keep 
the lights on after hours? The 
University obtains power through 
both on-campus generation and 
local utility providers such as DTE 
and Consumers Energy. However, 
this process is undergoing changes 
as the University moves towards 
carbon neutrality over the next 
couple of decades.
To achieve this, the University 
has 
set 
several 
goals. 
The 
University separates its emissions 
into three main categories — Scope 
1, which includes emissions from 
power generated on campus; Scope 
2, which includes emissions from 
purchased electricity; and Scope 3, 
which includes indirect emissions 
from 
University-sponsored 
activities like commuting. Based on 
the University’s carbon neutrality 
plan, the University will eliminate 
Scope 1 emissions by 2040 and 
will offset Scope 2 emissions by 
2025. They have also committed 
to releasing more specific goals for 
how they plan to eliminate or offset 
Scope 3 emissions by 2025.
Yet the question remains: How 
will the University achieve these 
goals? Here’s a look into how 
electricity is consumed on the Ann 
Arbor campus. Flint and Dearborn 
campuses follow the same climate 
goals but were not included in this 
article. 
How 
power 
is 
currently 
generated
The 
University 
currently 
obtains about 60% of its electricity 
from purchased sources, while the 
other 40% comes from on-campus 
generation, according to Drew 
Horning, special advisor to the 
president for carbon neutrality 
and managing director for the 
Graham Sustainability Institute, 
 
in an interview with The Michigan 
Daily. The bulk of the electricity 

generated 
on-campus 
comes 
from the Central Power Plant 
(CPP), located adjacent to the Hill 
Neighborhood.
While walking through the 
CPP 
location, 
plant 
manager 
Malcolm Bambling spoke with The 
Daily about the plant’s focus on 
reliability and said the University 
generating its own power ensures 
they are not entirely dependent 
on 
privately-owned 
utilities. 
Bambling 
also 
described 
the 
network of underground tunnels 
across campus used to transport 
electricity, steam and hot water. 
Burying the cables, Bambling 
explained, helps protect from the 
elements and are therefore more 
reliable. 
In 
January, 
the 
University 
completed an expansion of the CPP, 
which added a 15-megawatt turbine 
and replaced the transformers to 
include a new ring design, allowing 
the electricity to stay operational 
even if one transformer fails.
Horning 
said 
though 
the 
expansion was in the works prior 
to the University setting its carbon 
neutrality goals, the upgrade still 
helps reduce carbon emissions in 
line with their goals. 
“Relative to the grid mix, (the 
CPP) is much cleaner,” Horning 
said. “It’s a combined heat and 
power plant… the waste heat in a 
combined heat and power plant is 
captured and moved through steam 

tunnels to buildings all over central 
campus. That was the rationale 
both to improve the efficiency of 
our energy system, but also there’s 
a lot around resilience of the energy 
system supporting the medical 
enterprise as redundancy in case 
power goes out from the grid.” 
U-M alum Zackariah Farah, 
spokesperson for Ann Arbor for 
Public Power, said he views the 
expansion as a short-sighted project 
that did not listen to feedback from 
the community. 
“They should not have invested 
what I believe was over $80 
million into expanding a methane-
powered power plant,” Farah 
said. “They didn’t meet with the 
environmental 
students 
who 
were concerned about this, they 
just went ahead and said, ‘Well, 
technically, this will be reducing 
emissions because we will be 
reducing our reliance on DTE.’”
The 
CPP 
currently 
relies 
on natural gas, a fossil fuel, to 
generate electricity and uses a 
combined cycle process, which 
can 
dramatically 
increase 
efficiency compared to a simple 
steam generator. By increasing 
power efficiency, Horning said the 
University can continue running 
the plant for a longer period of 
time while keeping carbon dioxide 
emissions per kilowatt hour low.

On Nov. 2, the Institute for 
the Humanities at the University 
of Michigan unveiled La Pelea 
(The Fight), a new installation 
by Mexican artist Salvador Diaz. 
Tucked in the front corner of the 
building located on 202 South 
Thayer Street, the 46-foot long 
circular mural allows visitors to 
experience a variety of perspectives 
involved in a street fight by 
standing in the center of a canvas 
that extends all the way around the 
viewer.
Diaz came to Ann Arbor to 
unveil the installation and to attend 
the opening reception held on the 
night of Nov. 2. Select U-M students 
enrolled in Spanish courses had the 
opportunity to visit the installation 
during its opening week and engage 
with Diaz himself. The 360° piece 
features different participants in 
the scene at all angles, ranging 
from those involved in the fight, 
bystanders and those actively 
attempting to stop others from 
getting involved. With loose dirt 
lining the floor beneath the canvas, 
the viewer is drawn into the scene.
Amanda Krugliak, director of 
the Institute for the Humanities 
Gallery and assistant director for 
creative programming, spoke with 
The Michigan Daily about the 
immersive nature of the piece.
“When it’s installed, (the piece) 
takes up a 20 x 20 foot gallery, so 
it really envelops the whole space,” 
Krugliak said. “Conceptually, the 

piece is meant to consider versions 
of a narrative or all of the different 
ways we come to a story and what 
exactly happened … Depending 
on whether you’re in the crowd 
or whether you’re in the middle, 
that really changes the way that 
we might experience a story or 
something that happens.”
Jacob Napier, gallery coordinator 
at the Institute for the Humanities, 
described the installation as “a 
spectacle” that engages a multitude 
of sensory dimensions. Napier said 
the installation feels as though it 
has become part of the room.
“If you spin around and just 
take everything in … it does feel 
like there’s a lot more going on, like 
the smell of the dirt, the feeling 
of being surrounded by all those 
people (and) the very faint light 
makes it all come together,” Napier 
said. “There are even ruffles in 
the canvas to give a little more 

dimension to certain people being 
actually physically closer up to you 
than the background people.”
Diaz, who recently became 
a professor at the University of 
Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, 
said it has been a “really good 
experience” working with the 
Institute for the Humanities and 
appreciated 
the 
opportunities 
afforded 
by 
the 
Institute 
to 
engage with students on campus. 
The Institute allows community 
members to learn about art from 
cultures around the world.
Diaz said he wants the piece to 
make the spectator feel like the 
protagonist of the work. The act of 
visiting the installation does not 
solely involve viewing the images 
on the canvas, Diaz said but asks 
the viewer to consider their own 
role within the piece.

News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ADMINISTRATION

 An overview of the past, present and future of energy 
consumption at UMich

Design by Sara Fang

ALEXANDRA VENA
Daily Staff Reporter

CAMPUS LIFE

Anyone who has watched ABC’s 
Grey’s Anatomy knows the life of 
a first-year physician, colloquially 
known as “interns,” is arduous, to 
say the least. Mindless paperwork, 
long hours and ceaseless stress 
are hallmarks of the experience. 
While stress in health care is hardly 
uncommon, 
researchers 
have 
found first-year resident physicians 
experience increased rates.
Srijan 
Sen, 
director 
of 
the 
Eisenberg Family Depression Center, 
and senior lab researcher Yu Fang 
conducted research using surveys 
and data from 2009 to 2020. The 
total number of participants was 
about 17,000 interns.
The surveys followed a PHQ-9 
score — a score based on a set of 
questions monitoring the severity 
of patients’ depression and their 
response to treatments — which 
gave researchers an idea of who 
could be at risk of depression. On the 
scoring sheet, a number above nine is 

considered to be at moderate risk for 
depression. Interns that volunteered 
to be part of the surveys would fill 
these out in their last semester as an 
intern before becoming a first-year 
physician.
According to the study, 33.4% 
of the interns that met the criteria 
for depression were working more 
than 90 hours per week, showing a 
correlation between work hours and 
depression. The symptom scores 
were almost three times as high for 
those who worked more than 90 
hours per week when compared to 
those that worked 40 to 45 hours per 
week.
The study proposed having more 
employees in the workforce and 
making sure physicians do not work 
more than 80 hours per week to 
help mitigate the risk of depression. 
Sen said having more employees 
would help currently overworked 
physicians have a more balanced 
schedule. 
“There’s been some progress 
over the last few years of reducing 
workload, 
and 
we’ve 
seen 
a 
corresponding 
decrease 
in 

depression,” Sen said. “But there’s a 
lot more to do.”
Second-year resident physician at 
Michigan Medicine Stefanie Stallard 
was a participant in the survey and 
said first-year residents are not given 
enough time to ease into their jobs. 
She said most of the stress faced 
by first-year residents may come 
from feeling unprepared when 
transitioning from being an intern to 
a working physician.
“(Resident physicians) have a 
whirlwind orientation that is really 
focused on logistics more than 
anything, like making sure you have 
your badge,” Stallard said.
Stallard said just focusing on 
reducing the workload and work 
hours of physicians, especially first-
year resident physicians, isn’t enough 
to combat the stress they face. She 
said while it is important to take into 
account the correlation between 
work hours and risks of depression, it 
is not the full picture since it is hard 
to tell exactly what “work hours” 
mean for an individual resident.

Study finds long work hours place first-year resident 
physicians at risk for depression

RESEARCH

Data collected over a decade show correlation between work 
hours and mental health illness

 JI HOON CHOI
Daily Staff Reporter 

4 — Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Salvador Diaz’s ‘La Pelea’ unveiled at the U-M 
Institute for the Humanities

The 49-foot mural spotlights various perspectives of a street fight

GRACE LAHTII/Daily

A student looks at the La Pelea exhibit in the Institute for the Humanities Gallery November 14. 

MATTHEW SHANBOM
Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Japanese pottery takes center 
stage at the University of Michigan 
Museum of Art’s new exhibition, 
Clay as Soft Power, curated by 
Natsu Oyobe. On Saturday, the 
UMMA opened the exhibit featuring 
Japanese Shigaraki ware to examine 
how pottery contributed to post-
war Japanese-American relations. 
Shigaraki ware, named because 
of its production in Japan’s Shiga 
prefecture, involves the practice of 
using wood fire kilns and special clay, 
which create stone bursts, burns and 
fire marks. 
The exhibit features pieces from 
Takahashi Rakusai III, an artist 
who helped revive Shigaraki pottery, 
as well as his great-granddaughter 
Takahashi Yoshiki, the first woman 
to head the Takahashi studio. John 
Stephenson, late Art & Design 
professor, and his wife, Susanne 
Stephenson also contributed pieces 
in the exhibit. Yoshiki designed 
pieces specifically designed for 
the exhibit, including “Yoshiko’s 
Shigaraki Jar,” which was crafted so 

students would be able to touch and 
feel the style of Shigaraki.
Oyobe 
said 
the 
display’s 
inspiration came from the 50-year 
anniversary 
celebration 
of 
the 
Japanese state Shiga Prefecture 
and Michigan being sister states. 
Oyobe said she wanted to celebrate 
the anniversary, and decided on 
Shigaraki ware as a way to explore 
the connection between the two 
regions.
“I wanted to do something with 
the art of Shiga Prefecture, and 
Shigaraki is one of the traditions,” 
Oyobe said. “Also I participated in a 
workshop back in 2016 introducing 
Shigaraki ware to museum curators, 
so I spent lots of time there. That’s 
when I got really interested in 
Shigaraki ware.”
Oyobe 
said 
throughout 
the 
process of curating the exhibit, she 
became interested in the history of 
collecting Shigaraki ware, which 
she explained began to make its way 
to the U.S. in the period following 
WWII. 
“(The 
collecting) 
relates 
to 
international political and social 
circumstances,” Oyobe said. “It was 
during the cold war, and Japan was 

in the immediate postwar period still 
occupied by America and also allied 
powers. And for the United States, 
it was necessary to change the view 
of Japan so that they could get the 
public support to be friendly nations. 
And so Shigaraki is one of the art 
forms to be used as a soft power to 
influence the public opinion.” 
Oyobe said Shigaraki ware look 
different than American wares, 
as they were a symbol of Japanese 
culture.
“Up until then the ceramic wares 
more familiar to the (American) 
public were smooth shiny wares, 
very decorative types,” Oyobe said. 
“Shigaraki ware is a totally different 
look. It’s very rustic and some wares 
are very deformed intentionally, so 
that really shows Japanese simplicity, 
not in the image of Japan as a war 
enemy. Shigaraki ware was viewed as 
an embodiment of Japanese culture.”
LSA 
senior 
Nami 
Kaneko, 
president of the Japanese Student 
Association (JSA) and a research 
assistant for the exhibit, said the Ann 
Arbor and U-M communities have a 
strong connection with art.

NEWS

Display features Japanese Shigaraki ware, examines political relations

 JOSHUA NICHOLSON
Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

How does the University generate power?
UMMA opens new exhibit ‘Clay as Soft 
Power’ on Japanese Pottery

