Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability

Description - As a successful consortium of educational institutions, ACS is able to marshal valuable assets in the quest to resolve many challenging and complicated environmental issues. In addition to the land our institutions own and the physical plants they manage, they contain outstanding human resources - faculty, students, administration and staff - with diverse expertise, perspectives, intelligence and imagination. The objective of the Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability Alliance (CLS) was to bring together these human resources to increase environmental citizenship, using the campus and its various assets as a model for best management practices in sustainability.

Foundation - The Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability Alliance was built upon years of programming in campus operations. Much progress in this area arose from three conferences that had a lasting impact on ACS institutions because they were attended by teams of faculty, students and staff from each institution (for a description of all workshops and conferences, please go to http://www.colleges.org/enviro/workshops/index.html).

• Greening the Campus was held at Birmingham-Southern College in October of 1998. This conference focused on 5 areas: the physical plant, transportation, food service, developing the campus into an outdoor classroom and eco-community service programs. It was attended by 7 faculty, 20 students and 14 staff members from all 15 ACS institutions and 1 non-ACS institution.
  
  
• Sustainable Campus Development Clinic I was held at Davidson College in February of 1999. This clinic provided a forum for 17 faculty, 38 students and 35 staff members from 8 ACS institutions and 8 non-ACS institutions to learn about sustainable building design, landscaping and transportation issues.
  
  
• Sustainable Campus Development Clinic II was held at Emory University in November of 2000. This conference promoted both intra-institutional collaboration by engaging participants in project planning and development, and inter-institutional collaboration by sharing the successes and challenges associated with launching new initiatives. The conference was attended by 20 faculty, 27 students and 35 staff representing 13 ACS institutions and 2 non-ACS institutions.

Enthusiasm generated by the teams who attended these conferences resulted in a number of early sustainable initiatives, including:

• Recycling, water and energy conservation initiatives at almost every institution
• Installation of water-saving shower heads in dormitories
• Guidelines from Washington and Lee University's Environmental Planning and Management Committee being used to design a University Commons with minimal impact on the natural environment
• A shared bike program at Furman University
• Student-led environmental audits at Hendrix College, Rhodes College, University of the South and Southwestern University
• The incorporation of Green Building design principles into the master plan at the University of Richmond
• Furman University's Eco-Cottage - Started with funding from ACS and Furman and leveraged by donations of time and equipment from local businesses, the Eco-Cottage is a renovated, 25 year-old structure housing 8 sophomores and retrofitted with environment-enhancing features like solar-tube skylights and photovoltaic panels. The Eco-Cottage received attention by national news media and was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 27, 2000)

Program Areas - Many of the initiatives described above were made possible by Energy Challenge Grants, an ACS mini-grant program supported by VKRF to implement small-scale projects that reduced energy usage on campus. CLS expanded upon the Energy Challenge Grant Program to help member institutions reduce their ecological footprints.

In later years, with ACSEI support for green building charettes, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) presentations at conferences, LEED student internships, Green Building Council speakers, and the like, ACS colleges and universities progressed from none to nine campuses with LEED or LEED-like structures in 2008. Additionally, between 2001-2008, ACSEI funding and encouragement supported at least 27 other physical operations projects, including alternative fuels and energy, native/organic landscaping, green dorms, and much, much more.  Program features included:

• Action/Research Projects - Following environmental audits, collaborative groups within the CLS Alliance conducted specific action/research projects in key areas such as energy conservation, recycling, campus design and redesign, transportation, heritage conservation, green purchasing and building standards. These projects employed the scientific method, complete with a testable hypothesis, experimental design, data analysis and publication of results and conclusions. All projects focused on some facet of environmental sustainability, such as the remediation of environmental hazards. ACS funded a number of such experimental projects over the life of the grant, as a means to educate students, faculty and staff on the importance of resource conservation through hands-on participation. At the same time, CLS emphasized the need to create models to be shared with and adopted by other institutions.
  
  
• Circuit Rider Program - The CLS created its own environmental circuit riders, composed of ACS faculty and staff members, who visited campuses, sharing best management practices regarding environmental sustainability. The circuit rider program also incorporated outside advisors on sustainability (e.g., architects, energy specialists and financial specialists).
  
  
• Campus Development Clinics - The Alliance organize and conducted sustainable campus development clinics, the function of which was to support continuing work on the campuses. Institutions attended as teams, reviewed their work, set priorities, formulated plans for the coming years and reported the results of Action/Research Projects to the clinic as a whole.
  
  
• Physical Plant Resources - CLS created an online clearinghouse of information to educate physical plant staff on sustainable practices (please see http://www.colleges.org/enviro/operations/index.html).  This network served as a sustainable operations assistance program by linking facilities staff from different institutions with one another and with outside experts. The clearinghouse also featured models for sustainability derived from the environmental audits, action projects and research projects that were part of the Alliance.
  
  
• Sustainability Surveys - Finally, CLS devised and administered instruments to collect data on all aspects of sustainability at its member institutions. These surveys provided a means to establish a baseline ecological footprint for each institution from which progress in sustainability could be gauged in subsequent years.