"Nurturing a Green University" Workshop March 22-23, 2001 Report and recommendations for action Submitted to President Chace, April 28, 2001 CONTENTS Minding Our Environment Overview of the workshop Action Recommendations Greening the Curriculum Greener Career Planning Research: Green Studies Center Reduce/Reuse/Recycle and Greener Purchasing Expanding Alternative Transportation Greener Buildings and Campus Planning Forests An environmental ethic Coordinated Actions Workshop Steering Committee Summary of Recommendations and Units Responsible for Implementation

I. Minding Our Environment

Why did ninety people gather for an evening and a day to discuss the relationship between Emory and the natural environment?

The participants of the workshop "Nurturing a Green University," share a deep concern for the interrelationships between the natural environment and human actions. As members of the complex community that describes Emory University, we ask whether our institution has a collective responsibility with regard to the natural environment.

Initially, the workshop highlighted how human endeavors are increasingly jeopardizing the integrity of the natural environment, both globally and locally. The detrimental effects of human actions on the environment—including the extinction of species, global climate change, and the depletion of non-renewable resources—challenge economic viability, human health, and quality of life, potentially threatening human existence itself. From the awareness of our environmental predicament, however, follows the question of both individual and collective responsibility. As a university, what special obligations, if any, do we have towards the environment?

In the entire forum, as well as in the individual action groups, we inevitably encountered the fundamental problem of the university as a morally and socially responsible institution. Does a university have an obligation to act as a moral entity, or are moral burdens placed only upon the individuals that make up such a community? Does any substantive collective choice – including curriculum, hiring, scholarships and investment decisions – reflect some moral view? Does any obligation to think about what is good create an obligation to act in pursuit of the good, or are ideas and critical thinking the only true measure of an intellectual community?

This is not the first time that questions regarding the relationship between social and scientific challenges and university responsibility have arisen. In the 1960s, Emory sued the State of Georgia to allow racial integration of the university. More recently, universities have wrestled with the social impact of investment policies, the question of apartheid in South Africa, and the responsibilities of handgun and tobacco industries. Our ethical vision has been expanding from a concern for our community to other people and now to the natural world.

The special obligations of a university, and in particular a research university, grow out of its role as a place of learning, a place of exploration, and a repository of knowledge. This role defines the basic obligations of the university towards the environment (and other core social and scientific issues): to constantly question, study, and assess our mutual connectedness. These fundamental obligations extend to what we teach (curriculum and hiring), what we investigate (our research), how we support our daily lives (our operations), and what we discuss (our collective discourse). It extends to our choices about the land and the construction of our learning spaces.

The university’s role as a thinking community imposes other obligations that reach beyond the classroom, office, and lab. Almost any policy choice by the university is likely to have an impact on the geographic and social communities of which Emory is a part. Our choices in purchasing, contracting, and our administrative, review, and reward structures extend to the local Atlanta economy, to Georgia, and to suppliers around the United States and the world. The choices universities make are also watched by other social institutions and by individuals. A morally detached university (like an intellectually detached university) will find it harder to attract and satisfy the most engaged individuals.

Universities offer the opportunity for social experimentation built on the foundation of open discourse and inquiry. University communities include many young, educated, inquiring minds, people who are not only willing to experiment and evaluate their individual and collective lives, but people who demand such a perspective. We expect and hope that the recommendations in this report will generate new, original, insightful ideas from our community and from without.

Universities, in addition to being places of learning and exploration, should be places of introspection. Many in the Emory community see attention to the environment as creating or preserving contemplative spaces that nurture us and support our work. Through closer relationships to the places we inhabit, stronger personal relationships and a keener sense of collective identity emerge. This enhanced sense of community seems to redress some of what has been lost through the recent growth of Emory and Atlanta.

We hope these thoughts illuminate why ninety busy people saw a discussion of Emory’s relationship to the natural environment to be of transcendent importance, and why we believe Emory has a special responsibility to engage the issues raised at the "Nurturing a Green University" workshop.

II. Overview of the Workshop

The idea to hold a campus-wide workshop emerged out of the positive experiences of a team of ten Emory faculty, students, and staff who attended the Southeast Regional Workshop in March, 2000, led by Second Nature, a non-profit organization from Boston. Galvanized by the positive actions emerging from that workshop, seven of the participants formed the core of an expanded Steering Committee of 15 to plan the March 2001 workshop. Funding was obtained from the Office of the Provost, the Joint Activities Fund of Emory College, the Reconciliation Year Workshop Fund, and the Chaplain’s Office. The Steering Committee contracted with Second Nature to lead the workshop and adopted the following vision statement and goals:

Vision

To facilitate an event that supports the emergence of a sustainable university balancing academic excellence, the campus environment, and a new definition of quality of life, and brings together relevant stakeholders to help us integrate sustainability and environmental thinking into our decision processes.

Goals

• To deepen our understanding of sustainability and its importance to Emory’s mission
• To share and celebrate what’s already happening at Emory
• To learn about the current best practices of other colleges and universities
• To expand Emory’s leadership capacity in the areas of environment and sustainability.

Attendees were recruited by the Steering Committee members from among several ranks of the administration, faculty and students interested in environmental issues, staff from a wide range of offices and programs.

The 91 attendees came from:

• Law
• Business
• Public Health
• Theology
• Emory College
• Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
• Oxford College
• Facilities Management
• Purchasing
• Office of Environmental Health and Safety
• Office of Alternative Transportation
• Information Technology Division
• Libraries
• Campus Life
• Carter Center
• Aquinas Center

"Nurturing a Green University" was eloquently addressed by the Provost, Rebecca Chopp, and the President, William Chace, and began with a Poster Session that highlighted Emory’s accomplishments to date. After hearing presentations from five speakers and discussion with both speakers and other participants over meals, the workshop organized itself into nine action teams. These teams developed suggestions for action in a range of domains and brought these reports back to the entire group. This Report, edited by the newly expanded Steering Committee (now 16 members) distills these ideas into nine sections and 18 action recommendations.

III. Action Recommendations

We put forward these action recommendations recognizing, first, that many other fine efforts are already underway around the university. Second, we recognize that this list is diverse, and some proposals are easier and more feasible than others. Third, not all the participants embrace all ideas to the same degree. However, these recommendations fairly represent the major environmental issues as perceived by diverse sectors of the university community at this time. They reflect a thoughtful engagement and a creative dynamism that speaks well for the health and future of the university.

1.) Greening the Curriculum

As an institution of higher education, Emory’s environmental efforts must begin by incorporating environmental ethics and literacy more broadly into the curriculum. We recommend the following steps:

• Expand hands-on, project-oriented courses on campus environmental issues (graduate and undergraduate). These courses will involve students, faculty, and staff in research, dissemination of information, and outreach. A central office and meeting space will be needed to support these Theory Practice Learning courses through library facilities, teaching resources, and staff support.
• Foster environmental literacy in the first year experience (freshman seminars and FAME groups) and integrate environmental issues into pre-professional and professional curricula. The implementation of such a program will build on and extend the up-coming summer faculty workshop on "Environmental Issues Across the Curriculum." New incentives for faculty in the form of environmental teaching awards or grants, and encouragement of co-teaching of environmental classes across disciplines will be necessary. The program will publicize and strengthen opportunities for student internships and extracurricular activities (e.g. Outdoor Emory or Emory Recycles).
• Create a "Greening the Curriculum" committee to conduct a university-wide survey of existing models for environmental education in various academic disciplines. Along with studies of similar activities at other universities, the committee will assemble these results into a database and publicize them in order to create benchmarks and measure future change. New curricular practices should build on, enhance, link, and develop existing activities across the university.

2.) Greener Career Planning

In conjunction with a greener curriculum, we suggest a series of actions by the Career Planning and Placement Office to support and encourage careers related to environmental issues:

• Give support to career counselors to strengthen their knowledge of environmentally oriented jobs, so they can better help students find placement in these areas.
• Highlight environmentally oriented careers in placement service announcements and in one-on-one counseling.
• Recruit environmentally conscious companies to attend career fairs.
• Encourage career advisors to discuss the environmental aspects of traditional professions, to increase awareness of the role of environmental awareness in professional success.

In FAME, Freshman Seminars, and other student activities, incorporate an awareness of environmental concerns and the importance of environmental knowledge for all future careers (in both ethical and financial terms).

3.) Research: "Green Studies Center"

We envision an expanded and dynamic addition to current Emory research on environmental issues through a "Green Studies Center." Funded by external grants and designed to last only for a limited time period, a Green Studies Center selects a broad research theme (such as "scale and the environment" or "science and policy") and supports four Emory faculty (part-time), four visiting faculty (full-time), and four post-docs (full-time) to carry out research projects related to the theme. Co-authored work and interdisciplinary research are the highlights of the Center, which also offers a seminar series and two workshops a year for the rest of the campus. In addition, the Green Studies Center highlights research accomplishments outside the Center by offering an award to students, faculty, and staff who have made significant breakthroughs in environmental research on campus. The concentrated intellectual resources of the Green Studies Center allow rapid growth of knowledge, and its short life for any one topic prevents stagnation. Topics that prove exceptionally fruitful could spin off into other structures, as appropriate.

4.) Reduce/Reuse/Recycle and Greener Purchasing

We recommend a campus-wide "War on Waste" to include a Rewards and Incentives Program for faculty, staff, and students which identifies and rewards the overall reduction of waste. This program focuses on purchase and use of paper, computers, glass, plastics, aluminum cans and carpets. Crucially, we also need to involve the food services in new waste reduction programs.

We recommend the implementation of Greener Purchasing across the campus. In particular, we would like to encourage, if not mandate, a policy to eliminate the use of virgin paper and move toward a campus that solely uses recycled paper. Green purchasing entails a reduction of packaging and the adoption of the life cycle approach, which investigates the environmental impact of a product from its source to its consumption to its disposal (or recycling). For the Food Service, greener purchasing implies using local suppliers, supporting regional agriculture, and purchasing fewer chemically processed and packaged foods.

We support the development of a "Master Plan for Energy Savings." Under this plan, the university studies power consumption in every building, formulates appropriate goals, and adjusts heating and air conditioning accordingly. It will focus on electric lights and computer energy waste and engage in a campaign to help employees and students turn off these appliances when not in use. The Master Plan might also involve a revolving fund to purchase more efficient technology and to seek alternative sources of energy (solar panels, passive design).

Coordinating and publicizing these programs is essential to ensure their success. We recommend expanding Oxford College’s program of assigning Building Liaisons to work on reduce/reuse/recycle issues. Campus education takes place at first year student orientations, faculty and staff orientation meetings or special conferences, and meetings across the campus.

5.) Expanding Alternative Transportation

Emory must continue to cultivate greater sustainability in the area of transportation. Currently we provide discounted MARTA cards to employees and use some natural gas shuttle buses and electric carts. We propose extending the alternative-vehicle services and making them more accessible and visible. For instance, we encourage posting laminated schedules and route maps at all shuttle stops. It may also be possible to provide shuttle service to the broader area around campus that has a high density of students.

Possible new initiatives include raising the student activity fee to support MARTA discounts and biking advantages. At Oxford, expanding alternative transportation includes a natural gas shuttle for campus use and efforts to encourage carpooling.

We also suggest financial incentives to faculty and staff to live closer to campus, improvements to Emory Village to allow walking access, efforts to make bicycling safer on nearby roads, and continued attention to Atlanta’s alternative transportation efforts (MARTA, light rail, etc.).

6.) Greener Buildings and Campus Planning

Emory is already poised to become a regional leader in environmentally sensitive building practices and should strive to become a national leader. Toward this end, we encourage the University to provide broad resource support to all building programs to achieve highest feasible LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the national "green building code"). Aside from minimizing site impacts on the environment, campus planners should identify the LEED certification points that are a priority to incorporate into the design and construction of the buildings themselves.

Efforts to reduce water runoff from impervious surfaces are also important, and we encourage the use of pervious pavement, native planting materials, and other means of protecting local streams.

7.) Forests

Research carried out at Emory has shown that spending time with the natural environment benefits our health. Our natural areas, especially the forests and streams, need protection from invasive non-native species, excessive stormwater runoff, and construction. Where these sacred spaces have already suffered damage, they need restoration. We recommend the following:

• Reconcile the two existing forest use policies [University Senate Policy 1993 and Administration Policy 1999] in a single clear policy that balances competing recreational, educational, and research values and that embodies at minimum the principle of No Net Loss (NNL) of forest canopy.
• Design a management plan that serves to protect and expand the forested areas of Emory’s campuses under the forest use policy.
• Create and maintain a Forest Inventory, as represented by the vegetation map in process, to help guide the management plan.

8.) An Environmental Ethic

A growing ecological crisis threatens the resilience and survival of the Earth’s biological diversity. The inheritance of future generations has fallen into our collective hands. To change course, we must change minds, habits, and decision-making. Our goal is to foster an environmental ethic that permeates the university, affecting choices in personal and institutional life. We seek to catalyze future innovations and to empower individuals all over the university toward new creativity, thereby making environmentally conscious choices mainstream, rather than "alternative."

We recommend that our environmental ethic be fostered through focused projects, such as those outlined in the "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle" section. These projects should assess current best practices around the university and explore related activities at other universities. We advocate strengthening these projects through:

• Celebrations at the beginning and end of the school year, to honor accomplishments, plan, have fun, invite in new people, and say goodbye to graduating students.
• Publications of environmental audits and measurements that show results.
• Communications in Emory Report, Emory Wheel, Emory Magazine, and other campus newsletters, and through the Ad Hoc Committee on Environmental Stewardship website and learnlink conferences.
• Presentations to campus groups and at departmental meetings.
• Orientations for new faculty, staff, and students increasing environmental literacy.
• Creation of community traditions that highlight environmental awareness.

Finally, the campus should be densely planted and wild spaces protected and restored to increase the time we spend in the natural world. We seek quiet spaces, within and without.

9.) Coordinated Action

Implementation Plan

Implanting this rich set of ideas in a complex institution such as Emory will require an organizing body for environmental issues and action—an Office, Officer, or Steering Committee. We recommend that this workshop report be used by the Implementation Taskforce for the Emory University Environmental Mission Statement to develop a comprehensive approach to campus sustainability. A number of groups are already engaged in parts of these action recommendations, and efforts to publicize and coordinate their work will be essential.

Consultations

These action recommendations should be discussed with units around the university that are already engaged in environmentally-oriented action and with those responsible for implementing new projects in their domains. These consultations will explore feasibility and next steps.

Open Forums

We recommend a series of Open Forums in the Fall, to discuss specific action projects, once the Mission Statement Implementation plan is in place. These forums will enhance visibility of the emerging environmental ethic and will serve to build a broad community of interested individuals from across the campus.

V. Workshop Steering Committee

• Peggy Barlett
• Raney Branch
• Tim Bryson
• Michael Coren
• Alan Cattier
• Patrick Erben
• Stephanie French
• Jacob Halcomb
• Matt Hale
• Al Herzog
• Charles Jandreau
• Heather Lee
• Suzanne Mason
• Marc Miller
• Theodosia Wade
• John Wegner

IV. Summary of Recommendations and Units Responsible for Implementation

 

ITD: Information Technology Division

FMD: Facilities Management Division

COE: Committee on the Environment of the University Senate

CDC: Campus Development Committee of the University Senate

ENVS: Environmental Studies Department

SGA: Student Government Association