The University of Vermont will stop sales of bottled water on campus within a year, adding to a small but growing number of institutions that have done so. Vermont administrators said the drive to stop bottled-water sales was led by students. The university has set up bottle-filling stations (pictured at the left) around campus to prepare for the contract’s end.

An announcement about the move noted that the university would not renew its contract with Coca-Cola, which had exclusive “pouring rights” on the campus and sold about 1.1 million bottles of beverages there each year. Dining services, cafes, and retail stores on campus “will choose a mix of beverages through their own national contracts and local connections, allowing for greater flexibility in addressing environmental and social values in relation to the beverages supplied,” the announcement says.

There was real money tied…

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Isaac Hart, a graduate student in archaeology at the U. of Utah, made this spectacular panoramic view of the university’s campus with his remote-control helicopter and a video camera. The view—click on the image for a larger version—consists of 18 separate images stitched together by clever software, Mr. Hart reports. The miniature helicopter was hovering over Presidents Circle. The main administration building, Park Hall, is at the top of the drive, and the Great Salt Lake is a ribbon of blue at the bottom of the picture.

In a detail view, you can see a grounds-crew member in a red vehicle plowing a sidewalk.

Campus trees cast long shadows.

This is the view east toward the mountains.

And the view west to downtown Salt Lake City and, beyond that, the lake itself.

Sacramento City College has opened a $7.4-million complex on the U. of California at Davis’s new West Campus. The 20,000-square-foot facility, intended for 2,000 students, offers general-education courses at a much lower cost than students would pay to take courses through the university. For a small fee, students can also take advantage of the university’s library and recreation facilities, The Sacramento Bee reports. (Sacramento City College rendering)

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A former trustee is giving Middlebury College a 377-acre property adjoining the campus, the college announced Tuesday. The donated land, which is larger than Middlebury’s 350-acre main campus, includes fields, woods, and wetlands that the college said students and faculty members will be able to use for research.

Willard T. Jackson, the former trustee, is a 1951 graduate of the college who went on to become a partner in a Wall Street investment firm. A provision of the gift lets Mr. Jackson and his wife, Carolyn, who is a 1961 Middlebury graduate, continue to live in the property’s farmhouse for the rest of Mr. Jackson’s life.

Mr. Jackson has donated the land in four parcels, the largest and last of which he gave in December. He said he bought most of the property from another alumnus, a former chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees. The college did not give an estimate of the…

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