Nov 2006 Conference

Roundtable

November 2006 Roundtable

Greening the Campus: Exploring Practices,
Curriculum, and Management in Higher Education

Purchase College (SUNY)
Performing Arts Center

735 Anderson Hill Road

Purchase, New York

Inspirations and Aspirations for Greening our Campuses: Sharing Challenges, Solutions, and Ideas for Collaborative Success

John Cronin:	Good afternoon everybody. We’re going to be here for about an hour and then we’ll go up to the reception. Although it will take a little bit of time, I think we can do it quickly and efficiently, because it’s information you all have at your fingertips. We’re going to go around the room and say who we are. We’ll start with Michelle, and we’ll go around the back row and then we’ll bounce to the second row, and then we’ll go to the first row. Just tell us your name and tell us where you’re from. Nothing about what you care about, just your name and where you’re from.

[participants stated their names and affiliations.]

John Cronin:	Great. Thank you very much. My name is John Cronin, I am the Executive Director of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, and the Director of the Pace Academy for the Environment at Pace University. And, along with a number of other people here, one of the founders of the Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities. And we’ll do this again over the next day, but our big thanks to Purchase for hosting this. They’ve done a wonderful job and have been very welcoming to all of us, and we really appreciate it. And an especially big thank you to Michelle Land. And is Donna here? Donna Kowal, who’s still at the registration table. Michelle and Donna did virtually all the organizing for this conference. Do we know how many people we have coming from how many institutions?

Michelle Land:	We have 250 registrants from approximately 40 institutions.

John Cronin:	John Cronin: 250 registrants from 40 institutions. The very first conference we had of the Environmental Consortium was in February of 2004. And we had 130 people from 20 institutions who all greeted each other like long lost friends, even though they didn’t know each other, because they all have lonely environmental programs on their campuses. And the Environmental Consortium has continued to grow and build momentum since then. And I’m delighted that you’re all here, and they’ll be a lot more joining us. We’d like to accomplish a few things in the remainder of the hour that we have left. And mostly, though, an open discussion to talk about the experiences and the challenges. What I’d like to do now is I’d like to open this up to anybody who would like to kick off this discussion by talking about the experience they’ve had back on their home campus with trying to initiate campus a greening program. And it can be anything. It could be a failed recycling program, which they’re all over the place. Or it can be a larger initiative under architecture, and design, and engineering. But let’s talk a little bit about some of our experience at our home campuses.

Paul Popieniek (Sullivan County Community College):	We’ve implemented a sustainability committee, which is now meeting. And we’re starting work on recycling, that’s our first thing. So we hope that we’re not going to have a failure there. And we’re looking for any other ideas that our sustainability committee could pursue.

John Cronin:	And what got that initiated on your campus? Did it grow from the students? Did it grow from the faculty? Did it come from the administration down?

Paul Popieniek:	It came from the administration. Our administration is committed to greening the campus.

John Cronin:	What about other schools? Does anybody else have a similar experience where the initiative or the ideas come from the administration down?

Marya Howell-Carter (College of New Rochelle):	I’m at the College of New Rochelle and we are actually building a new wellness center. And so we wanted that building to be a green building. And so that’s where the administration really came in. They want this wellness center, it’s a very important piece of our campus progress. And so I think there’s a lot of motivation behind that building to make the campus green. Faith Kostel-Hughes and I are on a committee of the senate, which is on environmental integrity and sustainability. And so I think one of our questions is whether the administration’s motivation will continue onto other kinds of greening projects. So we have a lot of motivation behind the building, but how can we make sure to take that energy and move it into a lot of other projects.

John Cronin:	And what do you think the motivation was, was it altruistic, was it economic…

Marya Howell-Carter:	Economic, I think.

John Cronin:	Explain.

Marya Howell-Carter:	I think that the building itself is intended and hoped to be a real boom to the campus, we don’t have one right now. We don’t have any sort of athletic facilities right now. And so this is hopefully something that will lead to increased recruitment and better retention of students. And so in that sense it’s an economic motivator. The motivation behind it being green I think is partially economic, because of course they’ll be energy savings and things like that associated with making it a green building. But also the college really has, as part of its mission and goals, we’re from a Catholic tradition, so there really is a lot of motivation in the Catholic tradition to say we want to be stewards of the environment. We want to make sure that we can take care of what we have, and justice issues, social justice issues, and things like that. So I think it’s economic and mission driven.

John Cronin:	Okay. Who else?

Madeline Mignone (Dominican College):	At Dominican College we also have been setting up programs for recycling. This year we started a recycling program. We also built the Prusmack Center with geothermal heating and air conditioning. This is all administrative driven as part of our master plan of the college, and also a tremendous amount of greening of the campus, planting trees, shrubbery, wildlife friendly shrubbery. So there’s been a big thrust on our side also to promote environmental issues in a very positive sense.

Al Konigsberg (SUNY New Paltz):	Al Konigsberg from Suny New Paltz. At Suny New Paltz we go way back to the 70s. After the long gasoline lines in the 70s the initiatives at our place came from the students who were convinced at that point, and were aware that our fossil fuel resources were finite and were going to run out at some point. So on the student initiative we set aside a four acre site on campus and built some solar buildings. We had an organic garden, which in the 70s who knew about organic food even. And in the 90s we sort of lost our momentum, but now we’re kind of getting it back. We’ve got an environmental task force. And, again, a lot of the initiative seems to be coming from students who are working on a campus recycling program. And we’re getting the administration involved also. And we want to just get back to what we did 30 years ago.

John Cronin:	Who else has had a program or initiatives that grew out of the student body?

Pete Napolitano (SUNY Cobleskill):	Pete Napolitano from SUNY Cobleskill. Our initiative is kind of dual or dovetailed with student initiatives, as well as administrative, and faculty and staff initiative as well. We started out a couple of years back where students had to do projects in the classroom and present it to the campus community. Some initiatives that they thought of how this would help and come about. And it was kind of interesting, because as administrators and faculty members we went to those presentations done by students. And we realized at that point that we, all of us collectively, had to do something together. And so as a result our mission statement was generated, and strategic initiatives and a strategic plan was developed. And now we’re working together with a combination of students, faculty, and administrators on a sustainability committee that will look at the far reaching aspects, not only what’s taking place in the classroom, what’s taking place on campus, but also what’s taking place in community. And I think that as we start to generate momentum we’re finding all kinds of pitfalls, and that’s why my colleagues and I are here today is to listen and learn, and find out some of the pitfalls. One of the examples of a most recent pitfall is that as we develop these things, they have costs, and someone has to bear those costs. And usually that gets passed onto the consumer. And if we’re going to do things and walk the talk, then we have to also sometimes spend the money and present ourselves so that this becomes more clear to everyone that we’re all in this together. And if it’s going to take a little bit more money out of our pockets, so be it, it’s got to be done.

John Cronin:	Now, with your philosophy of everybody being in it together, there’s got to be resistance somewhere or slack somewhere. Where is that most evident?

Pete Napolitano:	Well, the resistance comes right off the bat when you find out that you’re using a biodegradable or recyclable cup or something, and it’s going to cost students a little extra for a drink on campus. And why are we paying extra money for this or that? Or the energy it takes to collect all the bottles in the dorms, and the cans in the dorms and take them to redemption centers to do that. Or the energy it takes to stop throwing trash on campus and throw it in the right receptacle. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes thought. And that’s something that we’re trying to raise the awareness of students by always promoting keeping our campus green, keeping our campus clean, keeping the environment friendly, and keeping it clean by using recyclables and not use waste products, and that kind of thing.

Lindsay Randall (SUNY Purchase College):	My name is Lindsay Randall I’m from Purchase College. And our experience here has actually been quite an interesting one. Purchase’s student body is known for being very politically charged. And so I’ve come to realize, this is my third year here, that the push for environmental activism on campus has gone through waves since the day the college opened. Most recently there was kind of a dual effort. Some of us started a student club, the Purchase Environmental Activist Club, that just focuses on student involvement and student awareness of some of the issues. At the same time there was also an environmental sustainability task force committee formed that got recognition by the college senate. Since those two things have been working, they worked independently, now they’re working together, the word has spread. All levels of the administration are considering doing things that are environmentally friendly, building green buildings, saving energy here, doing everything. The problem that we run into is the fact that we are a state university. So we are technically not allowed to spend the extra money for the biodegradable cups, because we have to go to the lowest bidder. So it’s been, just in the past year and a half, it’s been amazing to see the consciousness spread. To be in the cafeteria and overhear administrators, overhear faculty members talking about how they’re going to make these things happen, if something’s going on in this department, something’s going on this department. It’s been really incredible.

John Cronin:	Who else here is from a SUNY school? Raise your hands. Similar experiences at your school?

Female Speaker:	There’s ways to work around some rules. It may be most cost effective to buy in huge volumes. And if you buy in huge volumes you need to go through the State purchasing and contracting process and things like that. But there are some ways to get around some of that by buying lower quantities, which is justifiable as, you know, keeping your stock moving in and out. And buying in those lower quantities can allow you a little bit more flexibility on how you purchase.

John Cronin:	Has anybody, and I already know the answer to this question, from the schools represented here participated with other schools in things like a joint purchasing program, or anything like that? I mean I know it’s a natural for SUNY, but…

Male Speaker:	It’s a little difficult because there’s… well we’ve tried. And the end result is, every school is unique, every school is different and there’s certain things that take place, offices that need to go across, purchasing lines that need to be crossed. It’s a little bit different and it makes it a little difficult. If you take one particular item, such as ketchup. We’re all familiar with ketchup, and everybody wants to decide. We can’t even decide if it’s Heinz or Hunts.

John Cronin:	Hunts? No, no, Heinz. That’s a no brainer. Right, Heinz everybody? [laughter] Well, who else?

Adam Steinman (Woodard & Curran):	Adam Steinman, Woodard & Curran. We’re a consulting firm that represents most of this room actually on at least compliance issues, including all 58 SUNYs, as well as a number of the privates. So we’ve seen a lot of the sustainability initiatives. We’ve seen a lot of the success stories, we’ve seen a lot of the pitfalls. I wanted to talk first about what you were saying about student initiatives. We’ve probably done about 40 sustainability projects. I’d say about half of those were student initiated. In other words, a student body on campus said we want this, we demand this, we’re the ones who pay the money, and unless you address us then we’re either going to go somewhere else, or we’re going to make a stink, or whatever. And it’s great energy, and it’s really, really good activation energy, because when the students do collect together and make a statement, the administration, the faculty, everyone listens, because they have to. Plus students could be very, very key in the process. Not only as being members of the sustainability committee, but also in the baseline data gathering, in understanding trends, perspectives, behaviors. Why some recycle bins fill up while others don’t, things like that. The downside and the pitfalls with student led initiatives is no matter how energized and committed the student body is, at best, the members are there four years, or five years. And keeping someone activated so that they hook in on day one and then stay active for the four years, it doesn’t happen on day one, you have to get to the campus and realize what your issues are, what your causes are, and where you’re going to place your energy. And typically the activation energy also ebbs and flows with what else is going on in the student’s life. You know, sport’s season, finals. So it’s a coalition that is very good at forming a group. It’s not as effective a presence when it’s sustaining the group over a period of a decade or more. You need the student energy, you need the student input. You can’t get a lot of the information without the students. But you also have to have some other dedicated people who are going to be there at least longer than four years. The success of a program in large part from my experience, and this is only in about 100 percent of the cases, is really dependent upon the support from the senior administration. If from the top up says, “hey, we’re behind this, it’s going to get done, it gets done.” If from the top up is giving lip service, or worse than that, not giving lip service to it, no matter how active and involved, and passionate the students are or the faculty is, or the staff is, it really is a non-starter. There are costs both ways. I mean, yeah, who’s going to pay for buying the stuff that we need to run an effective sustainability program, or a recycling program, or a pollution prevention program? On the other hand, there are other costs, whether it’s coming back in energy savings, water savings, attracting more students, being able to charge a premium on tuition because you are a green school, because your buildings are LEED certified, attracting the best faculty. So it all does come down to economics, but the economics are very, very difficult to weigh in any sort of full cost accounting.

John Cronin:	Isn’t it also difficult though, because given the economics of colleges and universities, given issues of cash flow, perhaps unpredictable enrollment from year to year, it must be difficult for schools generally to have that long term view of the economics.

Adam Steinman:	Well, it is difficult to have the long term view of the economics, but it’s not difficult to have a long term view of who your competition is. Whether it’s your sports conference, whether it’s who you see as your peers. Basically no matter which group you sit in from, two-year community college up to heavy research, high, nothing but post doc kind of stuff, you know who your competition is. And particularly at the undergraduate level if you’re sister and brother schools who you see as your peers have a really vibrant, green environmentally sound sustainable campus message, you can’t ignore that, because you know the economics are going to catch up to it. And it really depends on the vision of the senior administration and their economic view in life. And there are very, very divergent pressures. You have some schools that are really trying every month trying to make payroll. And they’re not worried about the new $50 million science building, they’re wondering whether or not they can pave the pavement because of the potholes. Then you have other schools that say, I’m not even going to do environmental due diligence as I buy a 25 square block chunk of a major urban city because, you know what, we’re the institution, we’re going to be here for 100 years. You can’t tell me that that piece of property, no matter how bad the condition is, is going to be worth less in 100 years when we may go to divest, and it is when I buy it.

John Cronin:	Well, let me ask a question then to the rest of you. Who has had the experience of the difficulties of these multiple conflicts of administration, of faculty, of students, and the competing interests and the competing desires inside the campus? I mean I know we’ve had this at Pace University. Who else has had that experience and how have you addressed it?

Al Konigsberg:	Al Konigsberg, SUNY New Paltz again, I just want to say briefly that when our program got started it was really student initiated, but it was done with the cooperation of the higher administration. And the students teamed up with the administration. And the people who didn’t get very excited about what was going on was the faculty. And part of the reason was, was that we were developing curricula outside of the regular curriculum and hiring faculty members who had non-conventional backgrounds and training.

John Cronin:	Has anybody come from a school or a campus where the initiative was faculty generated?

Jerry Levkov (Iona College):	Jerry Levkov from Iona College. I was concerned about compliance with EPA regulations and I kept sending clippings to the administration about colleges that were fined. And eventually they hired a consultant and we shaped up our situation to comply. But it took a while.

Frederica Rudell (Iona College):	Frederica Rudell also from Iona. I’ve been thinking about our campus. We have a lot going on it terms of curriculum in the science area. Our facilities seems to be working more on cost savings and energy efficiency. The Environmental Concerns Committee is actually an offshoot subcommittee of the Peace and Justice Education Program. And our mission is more educational awareness, trying to promote sustainable practices on campus. But as people have been talking, I was thinking that certainly we want to go back to our campuses and try to engage our administration and have them think more in terms of the mission implications for sustainability, and to try to make it part of their strategic planning. But I’m assuming that administrators also go to conferences where sustainability is no doubt talked about more with respect to higher education. And maybe they too will be returning from conferences and the time will be right to do that. You know, they go to conferences and then suddenly everyone’s writing across the curriculum, or everyone’s assessing learning. So perhaps the tipping point will be reached. I’m optimistic.

Lucy Johnson (Vassar College):	At Vassar about a decade ago a group of faculty got together to discuss creating an environmental studies program. And we talked together for about four years before we got the program going. And one of our first projects was to turn the environmental studies office suite into a green interior space within a building. And this has been serving as an example for the rest of the campus, and of course our environmental studies majors are getting very inspired both by the space and by the program. It snowballed out so that it moved really from the faculty to both the administration and the students.

Rob Gogan (Harvard University):	Rob Gogan, Harvard University. The faculty, administration, students, there are so many good stories to tell that everyone can get excited about in these areas. It’s just that we never talk to each other. The facilities guys are down in the basement and they go home at three o’clock. The students are just waking up then and so they never even talk to them. Most students on our campus don’t even know that, yeah, there are a lot of facilities guys around this campus that really want to get the most efficiency out of the furnaces and ventilation systems in these buildings, and would love to talk to you about some ideas you might have. And facilities might say to students, “and by the way, you want solar power, well, we can get ten times more energy more efficiently out of modernizing the ventilation fans and doing all these other things.” “Oh, wow, I never thought about that.” Well, they never thought about it because they never had the chance to talk to each other. The same thing with faculty, very seldom does a member of the faculty sit down and talk with the guy that runs the boilers. But there’s an immense area of common interest that they have together. One of the professors from Harvard School of Public Health had a whole crop of PhD students working on indoor air quality around green cleaning. And it was a win, win for everyone. We discovered that the health of our employees was better, social justice, students learned a lot and we saved money on it. And you have to pick the low hanging fruit. You can’t say, okay, we’re going to recycle. The students really want to get these compostable cups. Oh, it’s going to cost five times as much as the polystyrene cups. Well, maybe next year. Now what? But right now let’s take a look at getting some water efficiency. We can use one-tenth the amount of water to take care of our food waste if we compose it, as opposed to flushing it down the sewage. We found in our green campus loan program that the average rate of return is 38 percent per year. Now, last year the Harvard endowment rate of return was 18 percent. When the President put those two numbers side by side he said, “I like those green campus numbers. I’m going to double your funding.” So you go for the low hanging fruit and you get everybody sitting at the same table to tell the good stories that we have to share.

John Cronin:	What about other people’s experiences? This really rings true and Pace University in a couple ways. One is that the big invisible constituency being the support services inside the physical facilities services inside the university. And they’re a group that have really not been part of the conversation at Pace. And then there’s the fact that over here we’ll have small group of faculty who will say what’s the point in us putting a lot of time in this unless we’re guaranteed ahead of time the administration is going to take it seriously? And then an administration that says, where’s the faculty? Why isn’t anybody saying to us what should happen here? And then the students live in another universe. And we have not been able to conquer that problem of being able to have a conversation across all of those constituencies. Who else has had similar issue or has found a way of solving it?

Faith Kostel-Hughes (College of New Rochelle):	Faith Kostel, The College of New Rochelle. I was not at the last meeting of our committee, our Environmental Sustainability Committee, but what I had understood that happened was a dynamic that I had been privy to indirectly. Which is the issue coming up between faculty, who really do generate a lot of the interest on our campus, wanting to push this forward and finding what are the roadblocks, what’s stopping us from doing this? And then finding out, well, issues with facilities that they don’t feel like that if they go to all this effort, for instance, of having separate bins and training their people to do this, well, somebody’s just going to throw a cup a coffee in it and destroy the whole thing. So what’s the point? And we had always thought that everybody else who wasn’t talking to facilities had been of the opinion that, well, there’s these union issues and they’re just unwilling to do it, when really a lot of it was, well, we’re not convinced that you guys are really that committed and that educated between the students and the faculty that you’re going to do your part. So it’s sort of a mutual suspicion that was going on that we’re still in the process of trying to sort out. And we’re hoping this conference will help, because we have somebody from facilities who will be here for it. And we’re thrilled about that, the prospect of trying to engage that conversation better. But that really is part of the problem that’s going on, that nobody’s convinced that anybody’s committed enough to do their part, that there seems to be these roadblocks. And then students that are interested, but you’ve got to make it reasonably user friendly. And if there are students who are not that committed to it in the first place, you still have to make it especially user friendly for them to go along with it. And so a lot of it is logistics, and a lot of it is just garnering support and enthusiasm for it. But it is sort of making those connections. And this committee does consist of people on faculty. Not really administration, but we get to speak to administration with our suggestions, and we’re incorporating students. So we’re trying to make those connections a bit better. But I think that’s been the real roadblock until now.

Gautam Sethi (Bard College):	I think I’d like to echo one of the comments that was made earlier about the administration being behind any such effort for the effort to be successful. That seems to ring true, at least from my experience. Recently one of the Vice presidents of Bard College, where I’m from, called some of my colleagues and me for a meeting and they told us that they would like to get Bard as energy independent as possible over the next 5 to 10, to 20 years time horizon. So we’re looking at a long run. And they’ve asked us to develop some kind of energy plan for the college that would take us off the grid to the extent possible. And when we asked them how much money they were willing to throw at this project, they said that they didn’t necessarily want or need the economics to work out. But they were willing to bear some losses, as long as this was a good project. So that seems to be very positive and encouraging. But five years ago when I joined Bard as a naïve environmental economist I saw that many students were using Bard’s free printing services. And many students were printing reams and reams of stuff. And all the printers were one-side, doing one-sided printing. So I encouraged one of my students to do a project, a very simple project that would look at the cost benefit of Bard having double sided printers. And she did this project. Our numbers were very favorable in terms of paper savings and whatnot. We took this to the administration and they completely shut it down. They said that this is not feasible. The library staff and the computer lab staff will not go with this for the simple reason that double sided printers keep jamming, and they don’t want to be fixing those jams every half an hour. The other reason we said that to mitigate, or to reduce the number of papers that students were printing, you should institute some kind of a charge. You should maybe give 500 pages a semester for free and then beyond that you should institute a small charge to reduce that. And they shut that down as well. They said that would be completely impossible, politically. The students would not accept that. So those are two sort of contrasting experiences: one initiative that came from us that didn’t seem to fly, even though it was small. And again, the rate of return must be pretty high for that project. But the other one where the rates of return are even possibly negative, what comes from the administration seems to be, what might actually fly.

Emily Blatt:	Emily Blatt from NYU. And I just wanted to piggyback off of (NYU) what somebody was saying about the people who manage the heating and cooling systems, and that nobody, the faculty or students don’t know who they are. And I just wanted to agree with this, because at NYU we have a major problem of the offices and the classrooms being extremely cold, and nobody knows where to go to ask the people to turn the temperature up. And even if we ask the security guards the guards don’t know either. So I just wanted to agree and support that idea, that those people need to come into light and be known to the faculty and students.

Emily Egginton (NYU):	Also to add to that point, in my experience at NYU I was just so surprised that there seemed to be an initiative among the students and the faculty, but the President wasn’t backing these initiatives. And then as a student at Middlebury College it was the complete opposite, and Jack Byrne will speak tomorrow to that, but the environmental club, or any initiative that we thought of, we were just completely supported by the administration, obviously funding wise. But then they also really profited from that and were very well recognized as a green campus. And I would like to say that that’s from the students, which is kind of the exception.

Nancy Todd (Manhattanville College):	Nancy Todd from Manhattanville College just down the road. We, my colleague Wendy and I, are doing a poster out in the lobby and hope to be able to talk to a lot of you about the project. But one of the things that I found, being the sole environmental studies person on campus, now joined by Wendy here, is that persistence pays off. We are a small college, and I pretty much have the head of facilities on my speed dial and do a lot with him. But in conjunction with this project that we’re going to show you later, the College made the decision to cut down a fairly large number of trees. And it’s a very long story, and I won’t go into it, but what ultimately came out of it is that the faculty, at least the committee on curricular development, decided that this was definitely a faculty issue, since I had been having students working out there and doing research for eight years, and now all the research is gone. And so we formed a subcommittee called the Grounds and Facilities Committee, which is under the guise of faculty governance. It has the head of facilities, it has several members of the administration, several faculty members, and also the president of student government. And so far, has been really, really successful. We meet once a month and we talk to them about issues. We say, well, we want an unloading parking space in front of some of the buildings. And they’re say, “oh, we didn’t realize that was an issue.” And now we have two 15 minute unloading spaces. And so, like you said, they don’t understand some of our needs, and a lot of people don’t talk to them. And yet if you can come together, and I’m not going to say it’s wonderful and all good and everybody loves each other, but it’s definitely a way to open up communication. And it was done through faculty governance, which I think is really kind of neat.

Natalie Bronstein (Mercy College):	Natalie Bronstein, Mercy College. In response to your school where you tried to get double sided printers, Mercy College does have them in the library, we do have double sided printers. We just received an email last week where student printing has been limited to a certain number. And that certain courses will have overrides if they need to have more pages because of what the course is requiring. But the students will not be able to just randomly print. They can’t print more than 25 pages at a time. So they can’t just randomly press a button and print everything off the internet. And their account will get shut down. And a couple of years ago we did have a tree planting ceremony also. So Mercy College is, and this is from the administration, and it is actively involved in controlling paper waste and student waste, and also greening up the campus.

John Cronin:	We have a lot of students here, and I’d like to hear from some of the students on the issue of student behaviors and behavior modification and practices. Only because students are the largest part of a school population. And it has been an issue at Pace. You know, we have waves of student interest followed by waves of student disinterest in environmental issues and the issue of campus greening. A lot of what ends up being discussed is about the simple, the low hanging fruit, maybe not in terms of behavior, but in terms of what kind of a big impact of turning off lights, of not lighting entire floors, of the issue of waste and of printing, and consumption of the school’s resources, and use of cars to go 500 feet from one side of the campus to the other. There’s a lot of the student based behaviors are as much a part of campus greening as anything else. So I would like to hear from some of the students here about what the challenges are of that, and what they see in their fellow students. And I’m going to call on you if you don’t volunteer. So who’d like to say something about it? Are you a student? Okay, go ahead.

Jason Eisenhuth (Woodard & Curran):	Jason Eisenhuth, now with Woodard & Curran, and I was a recent graduate of St. Lawrence University. We had a serious issue on that campus with everyone leaving their lights on all the time. Basically students say, I pay to go here, I’m not going to turn my lights off when I leave my room. I have no idea why, but they really show the administration with that. So an easy fix that we decided was let’s replace the lights that we have in the room with lights that run on fluorescent light bulbs. [break in audio] I was a member of a student committee that investigated this. So after that we went back and sat down in the committee and figured out what other solutions do we have? And most people don’t like the lights that are in their room, so they use their own lamps. So we came up with an idea of getting fluorescent light bulbs for everybody on campus and just giving them out. And again, this was originally shot down because everybody thought that it would be very expensive, completely unfeasible. The school wouldn’t want to front the money to do that right away. One of the students on the committee undertook a study and found out how much money we would save over the year. Even assuming that the bulbs were not used anymore at the end of the year, with people graduating, bringing them home or whatever. And another student did research and found money available through New York State. So in the end we wound up getting, 2,000 plus bulbs for all the students. And we also wound up getting 600 bulbs for faculty, staff and anyone else on campus to use. And ended up saving a lot of money and making everybody happy while doing it.

John Cronin:	Interesting. Who else, who would like to speak to the issue of their fellow students? Oh, excellent. You’re between opportunities.

Sean Ritchey:	The one thing I wanted to say was that I really feel that utilizing people’s competitive instincts along these lines is something that’s really shown up as a big tool on campuses around the country. Things like challenges of which dorms can use the least energy in a month and stuff like that. And there’s been some phenomenal success stories around the country with this kind of stuff. Also, I feel like a topic that’s I think going to come up tomorrow, which is just integrating sustainability into the curriculum is really going to be a core part of how to push this through to the student body. Because obviously the big question is always education, education, education. How do we get these guys to listen? How we do get them to turn their lights off, even though they feel like they’ve paid however much they have and they can leave their lights on as long as they want. What’s going to be the most effective way to reach the student body, and of course that’s going to be through the classes that they have to attend, and hopefully want to attend. And so I really feel like that is going to be a tool, if when looking at how to coerce the student body into doing what we want them to, that we really should be looking at.

Ross Keogh (Vassar College):	Ross Keogh, Vassar College. I’m on our school’s sustainability committee, which has faculty, staff and administrators, and we meet once every two weeks with all those people. And that’s been really good to help get different opinions sorted out and get a lot of things to happen. We’ve just started a CFL program and exchange. And what we’ve been doing for that, and also our composting activities, is we get volunteers on campus and just go door to door and talk to students. We went door to door to all the senior housing, which is about a fourth of our population. Talked to every single house and told them why they should compost, how they should compost, where they can drop their compost off. And it’s really helped a lot to increase the amount of composting that’s done. And at the same time we just went door to door and exchange people’s light bulbs for them. I had volunteers, probably 25 people. And within about five or six times of two hours of volunteering we swapped over 79 percent of the campus, and we’re still working on it. So, when you have a very dedicated population, like we have our Vassar Greens, this local group of people who are willing to volunteer and they can become a way to help other students and educate other students. So to sort of take that little bit of that wave and use it as an educational tool.

John Cronin:	And what’s the reaction generally when you go door to door?

Ross Keogh:	You just knock on someone’s door and say, “hey, can we swap your light bulbs?” And normally we send out an email beforehand that describes the program, why it’s important and they say, “okay.” I’ve only been turned down by, I don’t know, one or two people in the whole entire time that it’s happened. And people are just really happy to get new light bulbs. And you go into the rooms and change them for them and drop some literature off so they know what’s going on.

John Cronin:	What’s your sense of the level of awareness or concern about environmental issues generally and campus greening specifically amongst the student body?

Ross Keogh:	I think it’s sort of this background issue, for most of the campus believe themselves to be good little liberals, and good little liberals should be concerned about campus greening or the environment. But when it comes down to, did you recycle or did you compost, that’s a harder issue for them to digest.

John Cronin:	Do most of the students feel like environment is more of a background issue now, rather than an issue upfront? Is that a yes? Put your hands up. Well, for the students that you know. Is that… I see heads nodding.

Emily Blatt:	For NYU I do feel that it’s a background issue. And I want to say my past experience with students and their behaviors, the garbage is a problem, leaving it around, not throwing it out. And leaving the lights on is also a problem, the energy use. For my undergraduate I went to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. One main thing that the entire community within ESF has is, don’t walk on the quad, the grass that’s in between the buildings. And it’s really implemented a lot, because if someone is seen walking across the quad then students will yell at them, like “get off the grass” or “get off the quad.” And I don’t know exactly how that started, maybe it was through faculty, maybe it was through students, but the whole community agrees and follows by it. And so I think for campuses that are trying to implement environmentally friendly uses, maybe signs would be helpful, like friendly colorful signs with pictures saying please shut the light off in the bathrooms, or in the classrooms, or whatnot. And another thing too, is maybe faculty should be role models as well, and be examples to students and continuously tell students, “throw out your garbage before you leave the classroom.” “Can somebody please shut the lights off when we’re leaving the classroom,” And things like that. And so that way if the students are continuously being told by the faculty then maybe they’ll start implementing it themselves when they’re not around faculty.

Katerina Korolov (SUNY Purchase College):	I’m Katerina, from here at Purchase. I think there’s definitely a problem with apathy. But we make a huge effort to get the information out there. And I feel like it’s getting in there as often as we put it out that it can be unconscious, but I do see people who will just turn off their lights, or do things on the small level that make a difference, and I think whether they know it or not. And I think he mentioned earlier something about making things user friendly, and I think that is a very good idea, considering that people can do things that will better the situation, that they don’t always think that they’re doing consciously. And it’s hard, I mean for everybody, it’s hard to concentrate on all these issues when you have such a busy life.

John Cronin:	Do you think it’s the nature of campus life that it’s difficult for students to think outside the campus, in the sense of relating, I mean for instance, relating on most campuses the massive energy consumption that goes on in a campus to the larger issues of global warming, for example? Are they able to think beyond the campus, or are their lives so contained that making those connections are just not part of their daily routine.

Katerina Korolov:	I feel like because I took time before I went to school, I feel like that’s the situation outside of campus too. If you’re going to work every day and coming back, it’s hard to consider things sometimes too. And I feel that being on campus somehow makes me more in touch with the world because, I’m constantly being informed that we are the generation that is going to be moving forward and making the next step.

Lindsay Randall:	I just wanted to add something to that really quickly. I believe hands down student involvement is the hardest part of all of this. Maybe that’s just based on my experience at Purchase, but we’re asking people to change the way they live their lives. And at the same time that that is the hardest part of this entire effort, it’s also the most important. Because the reason that I got involved in environmental issues to begin with is that college is the point in your life where you come into your own and you deviate from the way your parents raised you. Which means you’re deviating from the way your parents were raised. And so if we can really drive home to these students that this is something we need to consider, this is something that we need to integrate into our lives, then they’re going to take that with them when they leave college. And there are so many examples of success stories and not so successful stories. But hands down I just think it’s the most important part, and it’s also the most difficult.

Mike Tannenbaum (Marist College):	Mike Tannenbaum, Marist College. I appreciate the fact that perhaps every campus the largest single population are students and that we have to work on changing student behavior, which varies from campus to campus, depending upon the campus ethic. You know, someone over here mentioned having been at Middlebury, which seems to be at one end of the spectrum, and NYU at the other end in terms of how students, and faculty, and administration do things. I just want to point out that in addition to blaming students, we need to blame faculty, and staff, and administrators also, because we don’t always serve as good role models. There are plenty of faculty, and staff, and administrators, and at times I’m one of them, who leave the light on every time I go out of my office, or give out too many handouts that are one-sided instead of two-sided. So I want to ask students that if you’re really committed, when your faculty members are giving you handouts in class and they’re one-sided, why don’t you ask them why aren’t they double-sided. Tell them we would prefer to have double-sided handouts. And that’s going to take a lot of bravery depending on who the instructor is. But it’s just a suggestion.

John Cronin:	I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was blaming students, by the way. Don’t get me in trouble, Mike. In our time left I’d like to flip the discussion to the other side of the campus and the issue that the Consortium has wrestled with many times, which is how do you bring the administration to the table? Because this is a big part of the problem and the issue for a lot of schools. Not just for campus greening, but even for simple things, like introducing new curricula, engaging in the kind of analysis of core curriculum and programs, and life outside the campus where we start integrating the region as a laboratory and classroom into the school. And just getting the administration interested in those larger issues. And we’ve wrestled at the Consortium with how do we bring the administration into a conference? How do we bring them into a workshop? Could we ever call together a meeting of all the presidents? And, of course, the answer to all those questions is yes, yes and yes, if you do it the right way. But what we really need to hear from everybody is, what’s the right way? I mean how do we do that? How do we bring the administration of the schools into these discussions? And you can answer that generally, or just from your own individual experience.

Ron Kamen:	My name is Ron Kamen, I’m with Earth Kind Energy. I’ve been (Earth Kind Energy) doing energy efficiency and renewable energy for a bunch of years all throughout New York State. One of the successful and vibrant programs I’ve ever seen is at the University of Buffalo. And I would urge the Consortium actually to bring those folks down here. Because what they did was about 15 years ago, their facilities people looked at these issues and decided to set up UB Green, an ongoing yearly consortium of students, faculty, facilities people. And what they do is systematically, every year, is have a series of programs that they run with students doing education in the dorms, and doing challenges with faculty recognizing things with curriculum. And they first started out doing energy efficiency and that got the administration’s interest, because they started saving money. And now they’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars. And by saving those hundreds of millions of dollars the administration is now part of this process, and they’re constantly looking at efficiency measures, and how to finance those with even non-SUNY resources, which the folks at SUNY you know how difficult that is. So they’ve been doing performance contracts, or they do leases where the leasing company will take tax credits and then finance a project that’ll generate energy savings. It’s one of the most outstanding student, faculty, facilities, and it’s staffed really by the facilities every year, they keep the consistency. So that’s the most interesting program I’ve ever seen.

Patrick Drohan Hartwick College):	Patrick Drohan, Hartwick College. The program at Hartwick started long before I got there, it started when I was two. And I think it had different examples of success with administration over time. In ’71 they bought 900 acres to start essentially an environmental program, but not one with a curriculum. So it’s in the background, and it’s always been running that way. And that went on and off over time. Students lived out there, they lived sustainably. They have their own heat, burn their own wood, get their own water, their waste is kept there. So it’s always been a living, learning community of students that have taken classes together. And the administration’s always recognized that as something that separates Hartwick from other schools around the country. And then in the 90s a focus started with this academic theme program. A one month long semester program in January and June called J-Term. A creation of two new centers that focused on curriculum. And so then you had two other things that really nailed sustainability, before it was even called sustainability, as ways for guiding student development. And then in the late 90s they signed a power agreement. Actually it was 2001. The effort started in ’98, it took them four years to convince the administration to do it. And it was a new president that actually signed it. And that gives you the backbone to then turn to each other and put that pressure on each other to say is this a sustainable thing we’re doing. Then pressure on the administration, votes of no confidence, threats of that, bring in a president who cares about it. But the new president at Hartwick is a big believer in sustainability and saw the 30-year pattern at Hartwick, saw what it could do for bringing students to Hartwick and has embraced it wholeheartedly. And the provost is on board, it’s a major part of the campus. We don’t tout it much, because our philosophy, my philosophy in particular that I’ve brought to the college, is I want it to be transparent. I don’t want it to be something that markets Hartwick. It should be as transparent as getting up in the morning and taking a drink of water. You’re there to maybe learn about environmental studies, but you’re there also to learn about Chaucer, and Beethoven. And everyone loves that because now I’m not stealing students from other people’s major. We don’t have a curriculum. We’re actually talking about doing away with our environmental studies program and actually going with a meta discipline. We’re having meetings on that now, the David Orr model. So buy in is good, but it’s got to come from not only the top down, the bottom up from facilities. I’ve been at more public institutions than private. And I’ll tell you from my experience with publics, good luck. It’s really, really hard. I’ve worked at universities with 48,000 students, and I’ve worked with public schools with 4800. West Virginia, to Pennsylvania, to Nevada. The public institutions you’ve got to be so savvy with your administration, because you cannot put that pressure to bring in a president or an administration who’s just going to do that one thing. With smaller schools it’s far easier. And my philosophy is because of that they should be doing even more in the public schools, because they have that freedom.

Michelle Land (Environmental Consortium):	I think there may be one person in this audience who can speak to John’s question more than anyone. And it’s quite remarkable that she is here. Mary Eileen O’Brien is the president of Dominican College. I just want to say my hat is off to you for joining us today. But I wonder if you might have any reaction to the question of how to engage administrators for those of us who also struggle with that sector in our institutions.

Mary Eileen O’Brien (Dominican College):	Well, I think when you ask that question, so much is what the individual believes in: yourself, and your notion of an evolving cosmology, and the earth and its place, and our individual responsibility. So nothing’s more important than the person’s background and core beliefs, and things of that nature. How do we influence one another? I think themes like getting this on some national conferences is probably not a bad idea. I was going to speak earlier in terms of sitting at a place where there’s great competition for limited funds, and how do you go about that? Because we all know probably in this group that ultimately things that are good because they’re good will also save money. But sometimes in the immediate it’s more difficult. And Madeline Mignone mentioned that we recently put up a geothermal science building. But what I learned just recently, and now we’re in the process of can we do something similar with a residence hall that’s being built. And with limited funds, and a great deal of competition, all of sudden it’s a million dollars more or a twelfth of the project is going to be tomorrow. I was sorry to learn, and I thought it’s a political issue too, now when we did the science building two or three years ago as we were gathering the funds, there was much more money available through NYSERDA. And so among the places we were going to look to try to go the geothermal route or something like that again, I learned that there’s half, at best, what was available two years ago. So I guess once you can bring it through whatever vehicles to people’s attention, I mean the double-sided printing. We’ve started to do things because of our plant manager in bulbs and lights, and things of that nature. But it has its own momentum. With a new person in research and planning we were running one of our documents off. I never thought we should do double-sided. But once people start to talk about it, why are we using two pages when we can use one? Well, we shouldn’t. So I think getting it on conferences like this are great. I think looking for people who have this orientation and bringing groups together. I mean it’s great if you have a plant manager who will be willing to look at it, and faculty, and students. And then maybe bringing those groups on campus together and putting a focus on them and what they’re doing. The students this year gave all the new students green shirts, ‘Dominican Recycles’. And it helps. All these little things help.

John Cronin:	Now, let me ask you a question, and I’d like to ask it to everybody else as well. What is the motivation that would bring the president of a school, or the administration to a workshop, the table, a gathering to talk about this? Is it doing the right thing? Is it the economics of it? Is it the reputation and identify that it gives to the school? Is it just the feel good nature of what the school’s personality is about? I mean there’s so many things, and schools will have their own motivations, but is there a common thread? Is there something that would bring administrations from various schools together to talk about this, from your point of view? And then I’ll let others speak.

Mary Eileen O’Brien:	Yes, I’ll speak personally. I’m delighted that there are a few people interested in coming. I think it comes from my own conviction about this. But all of the things that you mentioned can flow from that. I’m most interested because I think it’s the right thing to do. But it certainly, when you’re in the process of education you want to share your best thoughts with your students and learn from them, and things of that nature. And for an institution to have the reputation that it’s committed to things like this can only help. But I somehow believe that it starts with what you believe in.

Patrick Drohan:	For the first time assessments got sustainability within it. So we’re putting assessments at the forefront of sustainability. Hartwick’s or middle states is going to get a whole assessment packet. I think if you really want to make a big impact nationally get this in the middle states, north, central, all the accreditation bodies and make it a required thing for assessment for these task forces.

Robert Gogan:	Reputation. Not being in the papers for violating the law. Throwing your mercury lamps in the garbage. Having your students injured in accidents because of improper handling of chemicals. They really, really don’t want that to happen. The other thing is keeping up with their rival schools. I've been associated in the last six years with a national contest called Recycle Mania, where campuses compete with each other on how much recycling per capita they recover over a ten week period, and how little trash they generate in that period. All it takes is for the name of a school to be on a website maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency that they’re behind some of their rival schools, and have it all arranged by leagues and states. And Colorado State does not want to get beaten by University of Colorado Boulder. Harvard does not want to get beaten by Yale. And this kind of rivalry makes it fun too for everybody involved in it. I was at a conference at Yale two weeks ago, and Saffron was there too, and Judy. And President Levin of Yale stood up and he said, "Well, we’ve made the commitment that we are going to reduce our greenhouse gas generation at Yale University by 10 percent, below 1990 levels." So somebody from Harvard stood up and said, "Well, we’re going to make it 11 percent." So he said, "Then we’ll make it 12 percent." So it's fun.

Judy Walton:	I just wanted to add to that. I’ll be talking a little bit about strategies tomorrow. But that’s in line with one thing that I wanted to say. If you’re talking about trying to get administrators together on a single campus, create the parade. Create the parade first and they’ll want to step out in front of it in general. That’s just one technique that’s worked pretty consistently.

Kevin Farley (Manhattan College):	Kevin Farley, Manhattan College. I just wanted to go back to one of your previous questions, and that is just how to get the administration to pay attention. And one of the things that we’ve been able to do is take advantage of a resource that no one mentioned so far and that’s alumni. And in particular when we have alumni giving money to the school, a lot of times they do it with the understanding that they are going to use green design in any renovation or any new buildings on campus. That’s been effective. And then in other cases on a smaller scale, we had two students last semester that wanted to do, as a senior project, a bio diesel, or a veggie car. The first thing they had to do was we gave them a list of alumni. They had to write letters to alumni. Within a short period of time they were able to bring in $6,000 to support their project. And with that the administration, because they also see it gets alumni support, is even more interested in what they’re doing. And it’s helping to just raise awareness overall on the campus. So in the discussion I don’t think we should forget about alumni.

John Cronin:	Excellent point. It is a forgotten constituency. We are going to move onto the reception. Thank you very much for this discussion. This is really helpful. There is going to be full time follow up to this conference for at least the next two years while we seek funding for the third year and beyond. So we’ll be talking about that more over the next day and looking for more ideas. We’re going to proceed to the reception now. Now I’ve noticed, as you’ve gone around the room and identified yourselves, that you all tend to sit together from your individual schools. If this was a dance the girls would be over here and the boys would be over here. So try and meet folks from other institutions and trade information and experiences during the reception, it’s a great opportunity to do so. Thank you all very much for coming.

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