Ithaca College 2006 Campus Sustainability Achievement Award Application
Category
Four-year and graduate institutions 1,001 – 10,000 student FTE
Contact
Peggy R. Williams
President
Ithaca College
Ithaca, NY
607-274-3111
president@ithaca.edu
Governance & Administration
Ithaca College’s deep commitment to sustainability is rooted in its mission to prepare students “to share the responsibilities of citizenship and service in the global community.” In April 2001, President Peggy Williams endorsed Ithaca’s Comprehensive Environmental Plan, developed jointly by the Resource and Environmental Management Program (REMP) and the IC Environmental Society (ICES). REMP oversees resource management programs, including our nationally recognized recycling and composting efforts. ICES was the first student organization devoted to campus “greening” activities, and has recently been joined by Students for Sustainability in actively promoting campus sustainability.
The College’s Institutional Plan, approved by the Board of Trustees in 2002, was the culmination of an inclusive strategic planning process. Sustainability practice and thinking are woven throughout the Institutional Plan’s priorities, which include academic program development, diversity, enrollment, experiential and performance-based learning, facilities, quality of student life, quality of work life, resource development, and technology. The strong emphasis placed on responsible fiscal stewardship, community and civic engagement, and “awareness of, appreciation of, and respect for our physical environment” marks this document as a key turning point in Ithaca’s path towards sustainability.
As part of a strategic effort to build institutional capacity, the College hosted a sustainability summit in April 2004 that attracted over 200 participants and widespread media attention, including the Associated Press and Fox News. Among the presenters were business leaders, environmental consultants, community activists, and academics. In her opening remarks President Williams declared, “It is our goal to become one of the nation’s leading proponents of sustainability, to practice what we preach, and to produce leaders in many field who will find solutions for meeting the needs of their generation without shortchanging future generations.” Exploring the three key elements of the Ithaca sustainability initiative—the integration of teaching, learning, and research on sustainability across the disciplines; a shift in campus facilities and operations towards energy efficiency and environmental sensitivity; and outreach to the larger community—the summit was a crucial catalyst in building support among stakeholders on campus and in the city.
The President asked the Planning and Priorities Committee (PPC) in 2005 to review the Institutional Plan through the lens of sustainability to ascertain where elements of the plan aligned with principles of sustainability. The PPC, as a result of this analysis, recommended that the College become a signatory to the Talloires Declaration. In February 2006, President Williams signed the Talloires Declaration and in May 2006, the College issued its first progress report on meeting the Talloires goals.
Ithaca College is a member of AASHE, the New York Alliance for Sustainable Campuses (NYASC), the U.S. Partnership of the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, the National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology program, the Green Schools program, the College and University Recycling Council (CURC), and the U.S. Green Building Council, as well as a number of higher education professional organizations committed to campus sustainability, including SCUP, NACUBO, and APPA. The College is also a founding member of Sustainable Tompkins, a regional grassroots alliance promoting sustainability.
Operations
We have made great strides in campus operations toward achieving sustainability. REMP reports that 680 tons of material, including office paper, cardboard, containers, metals, and food waste, were recycled or composted in 2005-06, avoiding over $40,000 in landfill fees, and deriving about $7,500 in recycling income. Use of food waste processed in the College’s compost facility for campus landscaping saves roughly $2,500 per year in avoided costs for soil amendments, fertilizer and irrigation water. Together these efforts account for about 45% of the College’s waste stream.
Dining Services incorporates “zero waste” options in catering operations, utilizes compostable plastic packaging in its retail outlets, and offers “fair trade” coffee. The bookstore is a member of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA), organizations that monitor the manufacture of clothing made offshore for possible “sweatshop” conditions. The College has adopted the use of 100% post-consumer recycled paper for its letterhead stationery. Facilities Services has changed out all the toilet tissue and paper towel dispensers in campus restrooms to incorporate 100% post-consumer recycled paper. All of the new dispensers are ADA-compliant and the paper towel dispensers do not require the use of electricity or batteries.
IC has also instituted building “set points,” a new “comfort standard” temperature range for building heating and air conditioning settings. These changes, making buildings cooler in winter months and warmer in summer, will save the institution an estimated $125,000 to $200,000 in the current fiscal year. In addition, with the approval of the Board of Trustees, the College is exploring the possibility of wind power generation on campus.
Elsewhere, the Office Supplies Collection and Reuse (OSCAR) program makes usable office supply items readily available. Inkjet cartridge recycling is estimated to return an additional $1,800 annually. Information Technology Services’ Technology Renewal Program diverts tons of electronic equipment from the waste stream. The “Take it Or Leave It” program collects reusable household items and small appliances residents leave behind at the end of the year, diverting 2.5 tons from the waste stream; re-sale of those items to incoming residents provides the IC Environmental Society with funding for educational and social programs.
Reuse of furniture and building material from office upgrade projects by the Planning, Design and Construction group saves landfill fees and reduces new furniture purchases. Craftspeople in the furniture and carpentry shops refinish, reupholster, and refurbish furniture to keep items in service. An on-site residence hall furniture restoration program keeps residence hall furniture in service, saving on new purchases. Mattresses are purchased from a supplier that takes back old mattresses to refurbish and resell or recycle them.
Perhaps most dramatically, Ithaca College has begun the construction of what will be the first LEED Platinum facility for a School of Business in the world. In addition, the College recently announced plans for a new “gateway” administrative building, which will seek to achieve the LEED Gold standard, and for a new Athletics and Events Center, which will also incorporate high performance, sustainable design principles.
Curriculum & Research
Ithaca College has undertaken one of the most extensive efforts in the U.S. to integrate sustainability across the curriculum. A National Science Foundation grant received in 2002 generated the first attempts to infuse sustainability into the curriculum. The grant supported a unique collaboration with EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI), a planned community and non-profit organization just outside the City of Ithaca. Dedicated to pursuing innovative approaches to ecological, economic, and social sustainability, EVI has provided an invaluable living laboratory for our undergraduates.
Working in conjunction with EcoVillage educators, five sustainability courses have been added to the College’s Environmental Studies program. Each course is project-based and involves extensive field work. In addition, a number of mini-courses have been implemented, often pairing Ithaca faculty and EcoVillage resident experts as team teachers and involving projects in such areas as solar energy, wind power, and green building design.
Ithaca’s Finger Lakes Project includes a summer program that encourages faculty from across the disciplines to produce new courses or revise existing ones. In the course of four rounds, over 40 faculty from sixteen different disciplines have each received $1,000 grants to devise course content dealing with sustainability. This grant program has inspired extensive activity on campus, even among non-recipients. Using the UNESCO guidelines for education for sustainable development, a survey of faculty in Spring 2005 disclosed that over 100 courses in the College examined sustainability themes in depth. The NSF grant ended last year, but the college has incorporated the IC/EcoVillage collaboration into its permanent operating budget, including funding for an annual round of curricular mini-grants. In May 2006, we offered the first formal sustainability curriculum development workshop as part of our annual week-long Faculty Development Institute.
The new sustainability courses at Ithaca encourage student engagement and discovery. Project teams study campus operations and local community activities, evaluate their sustainability, research best practices, and make recommendations for future improvements. For example, student teams worked with the Office of Physical Plant to collect data on the campus’s electrical and natural gas usage as part of an effort to establish benchmarks against which future conservation measures can be compared. Other teams conducted campus surveys of attitudes towards recycling, building energy use, and sustainable foods. This hands-on, place-based approach contributes to deeper learning as students contribute to the shaping of their own “living and learning” environment, applying the sustainability ideas introduced in the classroom.
In other areas, the School of Business has established a standing sustainability curriculum subcommittee to devise ways to infuse sustainability theory and practice into its courses. Faculty in the Center for Natural Sciences (CNS) are tackling the challenges posed by their modern laboratory facility, one of the largest consumers of energy on campus. The CNS Sustainability Group (CNSSG) has appointed a “footprint” committee that proposes student research projects involving strategies to reduce the building’s resource consumption. CNSSG has also formed a curriculum subcommittee which reviews courses across the natural science disciplines and encourages the infusion of sustainability where appropriate.
Community Service and Outreach
Ithaca College is deeply involved in supporting sustainability efforts in the community at large. In October 2003, the College helped to convene a group of academic, community, government, and business leaders to learn about regional sustainability models. The enthusiastic community response sparked the creation of Sustainable Tompkins, led by a coordinating committee comprised of community leaders and IC faculty and staff. In Spring 2004, Sustainable Tompkins organized a series of study circles around topics such as regional economic development, renewable energy, responsible construction, infrastructure design, community well-being, and sustainable culture. At the conclusion of the series, study circle participants formed teams to implement project proposals. Among the sustainability projects selected were the creation of a green building resource hub, promotion of sustainable land use and planning, development of alternative-fuel programs, regional sustainable transportation models, and implementation of an arts initiative to promote sustainability.
That same spring the College held a Sustainability Summit, which attracted over 200 participants and included sessions on private sector sustainability, local and regional sustainability, ecological footprinting, academic sustainability, and health policy. IC environmental studies students hosted Earth Café 2050, an interactive demonstration of “ecological footprinting” they developed, and demonstrated their mobile photovoltaic array.
In February 2005, the IC Environmental Society partnered with student organizers from Cornell to bring together seventy faculty and students from thirteen different colleges in Central New York for a student summit, sharing ideas on how to advance the sustainability work on each campus. Out of this event emerged the New York Alliance of Sustainable Campuses.
Ithaca College has recently become the permanent home of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, one of the most influential film festivals in North America dedicated to environmental issues. The Festival held in Spring 2006 greatly expanded in scope and vision, encompassing the broad spectrum of sustainability issues. The weeklong festival featured more than 100 public events, 65 films representing over 30 nations, three radio specials, two live archival film remixes, 27 featured guest artists, scholars, writers and activists, a specially commissioned landscape installation, an international online digital art exhibition, and over 20 special presentations and master classes.
Ithaca College hosted a full slate of presentations and exhibits for Campus Sustainability Day in 2005, and plans the same for 2006. Anthony Cortese will be the featured speaker at this year’s event. Throughout the year, a “sustainability café” series provides a forum for faculty, students, and staff to hear presentations and discuss sustainability research and issues.
On campus, REMP facilitates peer-to-peer education and supports recycling and energy reduction efforts in residence halls. The IC Environmental Society oversees the College’s organic garden and the “Green Team” that collects recyclables following home football games. The sustainability committee of the Student Government Association (SGA) drafted legislation this past spring calling for double-sided copying to become the default setting on campus machines, a measure quickly adopted by the administration. In addition, SGA has initiated so-called “green grants” to student organizations to incorporate sustainability into their event planning.