Sustainability efforts on campus shift into high gear

By Franklin Crawford

In his State of the University address last fall, President Jeffrey Lehman identified sustainability as one of three "areas of opportunity" that pose significant challenges to society -- challenges Cornell is well positioned to take a leadership role in both defining and addressing.

Lehman returns to the subject of sustainability today, March 31, as keynote speaker for the third annual Sustainable Enterprise Symposium at 5 p.m. in the Dyson Atrium, Sage Hall, at the Johnson Graduate School of Management. The two-day symposium, titled "Sustainable Enterprise: An Agenda for Innovation," kicks off Campus Sustainability Month at Cornell, a series of events that will showcase the university's commitment to sustainability leadership.

On Thursday, April 14, Cornell will host the first annual Campus Sustainability Summit, tentatively scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Anabel Taylor Hall One World Room. The summit will be followed by "Earth Week" events in the campus community centers, culminating on Earth Day, April 22. Earth Day events include a Sustainability Fair on Ho Plaza and in Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room, with table presentations by student, staff, faculty as well as community members, and a Student Sustainability Summit at 1:15 p.m. in the Memorial Room.

Brundtland

Campus Sustainability Month events conclude with an Iscol Lecture by Gro Brundtland, the director general emeritus of the World Health Organization and former prime minister of Norway. Brundtland's talk, "Sustainable Development and Its Global Significance," will be held April 28 at 4:30 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. It is free and open to the public. For more information about the lecture, visit http://environment.cornell.edu/iscol/.

April's events are more than a public relations splash and feel-good exercise for the university; they mark the latest development in an ongoing effort to put Cornell at the forefront of a sustainability movement on college campuses nationwide. Cornell's efforts have trebled since Lehman's State of the University address.

Garrett Meigs '04, has helped coordinate a profusion of sustainability activities this spring in his role as campus sustainability intern. He works closely with Hal Craft, Cornell vice president for administration and chief financial officer, and Robert Bland, director of the environmental compliance office in the Office of Planning, Design and Construction, as well as a broad spectrum of students, faculty and staff.

"There are many stakeholders in the sustainability movement on campus," said Meigs. "But it's been pretty much an ad hoc, grassroots effort so far. With so much expertise and enthusiasm right here, the university needs to find a way to draw together and institutionalize its commitment to campus sustainability."

Two proposals aimed at accomplishing this goal are the Campus Sustainability Council (CSC) and a full-time sustainability coordinator. The CSC would report directly to Lehman and other upper-level administrators, helping guide Cornell's campus environmental policy and establishing results-oriented task forces. The sustainability coordinator, a position that many leading institutions have established, would facilitate and support the CSC as well as other campus efforts.

A tour through the sustainable campus Web site http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/ provides a glimpse into the plethora of environmental programs, organizations and policies regarding sustainability efforts already in place campuswide.

Most of these efforts focus on the operations side of the university but are closely linked to its academic mission. In February Provost Biddy Martin announced the formation of a task force "to help develop academic plans in the general area of 'Sustainability in the Age of Development.'" The interdisciplinary task force is charged with developing a "comprehensive inventory of relevant research and teaching in the area of sustainability; helping to define how work in the humanities and social sciences might interact with research and teaching in the sciences and engineering, what resources and institutional structures would encourage basic and applied work, as well as collaboration across the disciplines in research and teaching; and to make recommendations about what a curriculum on sustainability should look like in 2015." For more about the provost's task force, see http://provost.cornell.edu/int_fac.htm.

April's events highlight a series of activities in what has been a dynamic semester on the sustainability front. In February Cornell participated in an Ithaca College summit titled "Sustainability and the State of New York Campuses." More recently, Kevin Lyons of Rutgers University, as well as representatives from two of Cornell's preferred suppliers -- Interface Carpets and Herman Miller -- delivered talks on "green purchasing." This green purchasing initiative is just one example of many efforts increasing the profile of sustainability on campus.

Meigs said that channeling all this energy into a cogent sustainability initiative will take concentrated effort.

"In some ways we're doing really well regarding campus sustainability, but there's plenty of room for improvement," said Meigs. "We are fortunate to have someone like President Lehman, who has made sustainability a priority for the university, and we'll be working to ensure that Cornell is a leader in this area."