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Academic Centers for Athletes Draw Donors
More than a dozen university athletics programs have added lavish new facilities in recent years, and academic-services budgets are soaring, a Chronicle survey finds. (Photograph courtesy of Texas A&M U.)
College Employees Value Campus Environment, Survey Finds
When a Chronicle survey asked college employees what they value about their jobs, they put the physical environment in which they work at the top of the list.
Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)
Other News
Corn on the Quad at Lafayette College
Colleges Get Greener, but Not in Teaching
U. of Toledo Decides United Way Building Is Unsuitable for Its Use
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Guest Blogger: Education Is the Ultimate Carbon-Neutral Solution
Anne Stephenson, the Buildings & Grounds guest blogger for June, is campus-outreach coordinator at Clean Air—Cool Planet, a science-based, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming.
Over the past year, there has been much debate on college campuses about climate neutrality. Colleges whose chief executives have signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment have taken on the admirable goal of climate neutrality. Over 500 colleges have signed the commitment, but many presidents have yet to sign. While I support the presidents’ commitment, I have the unique opportunity of working with both institutions that have signed and institutions that have not. The one lesson I’ve learned from my campus partners is that the colleges that have signed have a lot to learn from those that haven’t.
 Anne Stephenson |
Some of the colleges that have not signed have argued that campus carbon neutrality is impossible, because it cannot be achieved through operational changes or on-site renewable-energy installations. A campus could be plastered in photovoltaic panels and still need more power, they argue, so the college would still have to buy offsets to meet neutrality requirements of the commitment.
Other institutions that have not signed argue that their institutions can reduce greenhouse gases more meaningfully by following their own carbon-reduction plans. They haven’t signed, they say, because the commitment would force them to buy carbon offsets before they could complete their own campus greenhouse-gas reductions.
Both arguments may be correct. (There are many other reasons for not signing, of course, but these are the most common.) But what the institutions are really demonstrating—to themselves as well as to institutions that have signed—is that the significance of the commitment is frequently lost when the aspirational goal of neutrality is translated into reduction efforts.
As a practical matter, too many colleges panic about meeting the commitment’s neutrality goal. In this panic, they work toward whatever carbon reductions they can find, pressuring campus planners, facilities professionals, and sustainability coordinators to meet goals based solely on the institution’s physical plant. This focus on operations comes even though the commitment outlines intermediate steps that institutions can take if they can’t meet operational goals right away—a college can offer courses in sustainability, for instance, or adopt an environmental-literacy graduation requirement.
Meanwhile, institutions overlook the educational significance of the commitment, which may be far more important. College campuses account, after all, for a mere three percent of our country’s greenhouse-gas emissions—carbon-neutral campus operations are only a small part of the solution to the greenhouse-gas problem. Colleges can make a much bigger reduction in greenhouse gases by educating every student to act as a leader in a new, low-carbon economy. Raising a thoughtful, environmentally-educated generation of leaders, community members, and parents is the ultimate carbon-neutral solution. —Anne Stephenson
Buildings & Grounds | Friday June 6, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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An increasing number of students are arriving with expectations that the State U, or other campus of choice, should be setting an example for society as a whole. They are coming from high schools where renewable energy, sustainability, and related issues are discussed and demonstrated. Some become frustrated when they find that their higher ed campus lags their high school campus in apparent concern for global warming, petroleum depletion, and renewable energy.
— Jim Anderson Jun 6, 04:56 PM #
Good post, but it’s hard to imagine that instituting an environmental-literacy graduation requirement would do the trick. Just think of the (negligible) impact that other such “literacy” requirements typically have. (Fine arts requirements and such). Students, faculty, and staff all need to change their habits, not be told that the earth is getting warmer. If they need to be told that, in fact, they’re beyond help. I’m just not sure a class can do the work that a thoughtful, environmentally-sensitive upbringing was supposed to do.
— Dale L Jun 7, 05:50 PM #
The educational component of ACUPCC is as important as improvements in the physical plant. Greenfield Community College (MA) signed on a year ago, and we have developed a new curriculum on energy conservation and renewable energy while also working to make our facilities greener. Our goal is to integrate educational goals with the physical plant as much as possible so students benefit from working examples and hands-on experience on campus. It may be a new way of looking at things for faculty and staff, but it makes a lot of sense.
— Montserrat Jun 9, 04:03 PM #