Four colleges and universities have received the 2007 Campus
Sustainability Leadership Award from the Association for the
Advancement
of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The winners, who were honored at the Greening of the
Campus
conference at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., were Michigan
State
University, East Lansing; Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt.; Green
Mountain College, Poultney, Vt.; and Chandler-Gilbert Community
College,
Chandler, Ariz.
The awards recognize schools that have made substantial
commitments to sustainability in governance and administration,
operations, curriculum and research, campus culture and community
outreach.
Michigan State received the award for four-year schools
with more than 7,500 students. Among the university's efforts:
Developing an expanded recycling center; incorporation of LEED design
practices into campus construction standards; using design strategies
for parking lots to reduce storm water run off and frequency of mowing;
switching all farm equipment and university-owned diesel trucks on
campus to bio-diesel fuel; adding 15 hybrid vehicles to the campus
fleet; opening a full-time bike center; updating its campus plan to
call
for a coordinated bicycle system that includes convenient and
appropriately sized storage facilities, bike lanes within roadways, and
pathways where appropriate.
Middlebury received the award for four-year schools with
enrollments between 1,000 and 7,500. The college has committed to
becoming carbon-neutral by 2016. It is working to create green building
guidelines based on LEED with Middlebury-specific adaptations. Other
environmentally friendly efforts: the college spends 25 percent of its
dining budget on locally grown and produced food, and it recycles 60
percent of its waste. It is installing a biomass gasification facility
that will use wood chips and reduce fuel oil consumption on campus by
half. Middlebury also has the oldest undergraduate environmental
studies
program in the nation.
Green Mountain received the award for four-year schools
with less than 1,000 students. It has installed solar panels and wind
turbines as alternative sources of energy. A student-approved fee of
$30
a year goes to the Campus Greening Fund for sustainability projects.
Green Mountain gets 13 percent of the food it serves from local
sources,
and its goal is to increase that to 30 percent by 2010. All new
residence hall and office furnishings in the last four years have come
from
local and regional manufacturers, using sustainably harvested
Vermont-grown and milled forest products; all new carpeting is made
from
recycled products. The college's 18-acre farm is a living
sustainability
laboratory, with organically grown vegetables and flowers, and sheep,
chickens, ducks, and two draft oxen. It regularly supplies the campus
dining hall with eggs and produce.
Chandler-Gilbert received the award for community colleges
and other two-year schools. It requires all new construction to be
designed and built to meet LEED silver certification standards. All
campus lighting has been retrofitted to become more energy-efficient.
The school uses a reclaimed water system to irrigate its athletic
fields
and most of the landscaped areas of campus. All areas have native
desert
plants and trees, which require low levels of irrigation.
Two schools--Evergreen State College and the University of
California, Berkeley--received honorable mention for their
environmental
efforts.
The association also presented a Student Sustainability
Leadership Award to Megan Naseman, who recently graduated from Berea
College in Berea, Ky. She organized a sustainability-focused training
session for Berea's residential assistants, and set up several campus
activities, such as Campus Sustainability Month and Earth Month.
--by Mike Kennedy
