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Oberlin College 2007 Campus Sustainability Leadership Award

Application Category

Four-year and graduate institutions 1,000 - 7,500 student FTE

Oberlin's innovative Campus Resource Monitoring System monitors and displays electricity consumption in dormitories.  The system provides real-time feedback that allows students to better conserve environmental resources.

Contact

Nathan Engstrom
Sustainability Coordinator
132 Elm St, Room 204
Oberlin, OH
440-775-6354
nathan.engstrom@oberlin.edu

Governance & Administration

Three main precedents frame Oberlin’s commitment to sustainability.  These are the Environmental Policy approved the Board of Trustees in March of 2004, the Strategic Plan approved in March of 2005 and the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment signed in December of 2006.  These declarations formalize the College’s commitment to sustainability.

The Environmental Policy states that one aspect of Oberlin’s core mission is the demonstration by its actions of the College’s concern for, and protection of, the environment. As such, the College will seek 1) to reduce the rate at which it contributes to the depletion and degradation of natural resources; 2) to increase the use of renewable resources; and 3) to consider other measures that can enhance the physical environment in which we live.

One of the key components of the Strategic Plan is a commitment to move towards environmental sustainability. Specifically, this plan commits the College to seek to reduce the rate at which the College contributes to the depletion and degradation of natural resources, to increase the use of renewable resources, and to consider other measures that can enhance the physical environment in which we live. Similarly, the Plan directs Oberlin to develop and implement state-of-the-art standards for building design, and to enhance and develop further opportunities for students and faculty to participate in the continuing “greening” of the campus and the wider community through promoting course work in various curricular areas, independent research projects, and community service.

Oberlin was a charter signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and the first in its peer group to sign. Beginning next fall the Environmental Studies Program will begin offering a campus sustainability course in conjunction with the Office of Environmental Sustainability. Following the completion of the College’s greenhouse gas inventory and the fall 2007 sustainability course, the College will release a comprehensive Campus Climate Action Plan.  This plan will assess the impacts of the Oberlin’s current level of emissions, develop indicators and targets for continual improvement and outline a specific implementation plan and priorities for improvement.  

To accomplish all this, in 2006 the College created the Office of Environmental Sustainability. The OES provides leadership to the Oberlin community in implementing the College’s comprehensive Environmental Policy in support of the College’s strategic goal of sustainability.  The OES interacts with the administration, faculty, staff and students to focus attention on ways to maximize the environmental performance of Oberlin College and develop the tools and awareness required to respond dynamically to issues affecting them.

In November 2006 the General Faculty approved the creation of the Committee on Environmental Sustainability (CES). The OES works closely with the CES to develop a work plan for the office and sustainability priorities for the College. Together, the OES and CES review, propose and oversee implementation of the Oberlin College Environmental Policy.  Additionally, they support and facilitate efforts by the College to publicize its role as a leader in campus sustainability and environmental citizenship in general.

Operations

In June of 1999 the college adopted a comprehensive Anti-Sweatshop Purchasing Policy that bans purchasing from vendors or manufacturers who engage in human rights abuses or poor labor practices.  The Purchasing Department hires a student intern to research the human rights and labor histories of companies with which Oberlin does business.  This intern makes recommendations to the Anti-Sweatshop Committee for vendors to add to an approved-vendors list.

In 2000 the campus dining program began a “Buy Local” program.  When that program began, local food was essentially non-existent in campus dining halls.  As of 2006, about 35% of food in campus dining halls is now locally grown and purchased from local suppliers.

In 2003 the College won the State of Ohio Department of Administrative Services STS Recycler of the Year Award for the amount of carpet it recycled.  Over the past four years, Oberlin has recycled 177,057 square feet of used carpet (equal to 111,507 lbs).  According to the Antron Reclamation Program Calculator, this is equivalent to a savings of 208.8 cubic yards of landfill space, 112,136.1 gallons of water, 184,434.4 pounds of CO2, and 1,227,418,143 BTUs of energy.

In June of 2004 the College signed an agreement to purchase an estimated 13,000 MWh per year in green attributes from the local utility. Based on a carbon inventory completed by the Rocky Mountain Institute in 2001, the purchase of these green attributes off-set approximately one quarter of Oberlin’s carbon emissions—amounting to about a 12,600 ton reduction annually.

In 2005 faculty and students collaborated to design and build a campus resource monitoring system with real-time web-based feedback on electricity consumption.  This system educates dorm residents about their electrical usage and empowers them to make a difference in campus resource use through becoming more aware of the effects of their own habits.  In combination with dormitory competitions this system has resulted in up to 56% reductions in electricity use in winning dorms.

In June of 2006 the College adopted a policy that all new construction and major renovations on campus have to be designed and built in accordance with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Silver standard. Two new facilities are currently being designed and both are on track to exceed this commitment by earning Gold certification.

The installation of a new solar parking pavilion adjacent to the existing photovoltaic array on the roof of the innovative Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies makes Oberlin College the home of the largest PV array in Ohio, with a total rated production of 159 kW.

In April 2007 the Eco-Purchasing Committee finalized a comprehensive policy on environmentally preferable purchasing. The Oberlin College Green Purchasing Policy was approved by the Committee on Environmental Sustainability on April 19, 2007 and by President Dye on May 16th.

Oberlin is currently in the process of switching to the use of an environmentally-friendly multi-purpose cleaner called H2Orange2 made by Envirox.  The new cleaning solutions are hydrogen peroxide based and are biodegradable. 

Curriculum & Research

Oberlin created its Environmental Studies Program in the Fall of 1978.  David Orr, a national figure in the environmental movement, was hired as a professor for the program in the fall of 1990. The program offers a wide variety of classes and provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human interactions with the environment.

Oberlin was one of the first colleges to carefully study its resource flows and food system.  Beginning in 1988 with a course entitled “Campus in the Biosphere,” Oberlin students, faculty, and staff joined together to look at these issues and begin to assess ways that the college could reduce its ecological footprint, and consequently reduce the need to extract natural resources. 

Oberlin recently received a $1,126,382 grant as part of a five-year project to develop entrepreneurship initiatives in Ohio. The Creativity and Leadership Program will feature concept development grants awarded on a competitive basis to students who will spend the year after graduation moving their ideas from theory to implementation.  The program will also offer courses, mentored experiential opportunities, workshops, and lectures to prepare students for the challenges of implementing their projects. 

Oberlin is home to a Living Machine, a system designed to process wastewater into reusable grey water via the natural cleansing methods that occur in a wetland.  It is located in the Environmental Studies Center and is operated by a group of 10 students.  The Living Machine provides excellent opportunities for Oberlin students and local school children to explore issues of wastewater, wetland ecology, microbiology and plant dynamics.

The College has provided land and support for the creation of experimental wetland restoration cells on the George Jones Memorial Farm, a college-owned organic farm.  These wetland cells have been created through a partnership between various professors at the college and the New Agrarian Center—an Oberlin alum’s non-profit that manages the farm.  This project was undertaken to assess the ability to successfully restore previously-existing Ohio wetlands.  Additional educational and research opportunities are available on the farm as well.

The Oberlin Wind Power Initiative has begun research into the feasibility of constructing a wind turbine in the Oberlin area. After compiling a year of data, the group will assemble a business plan that will use a cost-benefit analysis to determine the most suitable level of production. If the data show the potential for effective wind production in Oberlin, the team will seek funding from the College, private investors and the city of Oberlin.

This fall a campus sustainability course will be offered to complement the larger efforts to implement the Environmental Policy and carbon neutrality commitment. Themes will change from year to year as the process of implementation moves forward but will include issues pertaining to energy consumption, water use, materials, food, transportation, and waste handling as well as technical matters of measurement standards and metrics to analyze data, analysis of technical options to improve efficiency, and strategies to promote organizational learning relative to climate and environment.

Campus Culture

From its founding in 1833, Oberlin was one of the first colleges to accept African-American students and was also the first liberal arts college to grant bachelor’s degrees to women. Oberlin’s current student body represents 50 countries and nearly every state. 

Oberlin is also home to one of the largest student-run co-ops in the country and is a crucial part of the college experience for many Oberlin students.  The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) is a housing and dining cooperative system that has been in existence since 1950.  It has about 640 members and currently operates 9 dining halls and 4 housing programs. These co-ops are located on campus in college-owned buildings and membership is open to all students. OSCA uses a consensus-based decision-making process in which each member has one vote, creating a unique and thoughtful community in which political, social, and environmental concerns are carefully addressed.

The Experimental College (ExCo) was begun in 1968 as an experiment in alternative education, and still provides the Oberlin community with some of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences in college learning today.  The ExCo is run as a student organization and headed by a volunteer committee that is solely responsible for choosing the curriculum and maintaining the integrity of the program. In a given semester there may be between 60 to 90 courses. Anyone may take classes--students, faculty members, staff members, and townspeople alike. Those who demonstrate expertise and enthusiasm may teach a course as long as that course is judged to have educational merit and a reasonably serious purpose.  Due to its flexible nature ExCo reflects the current academic, intellectual, social, ideological, philosophical, political, emotional, sexual, and fashion trends of the Oberlin community.

The College employs students engaged in a variety of efforts related to reducing the use of resources on campus.  Since the mid-1980s a group of about 10 student employees called The College Recycling Assistants have been employed by the Facilities Department.  The College Recyclers work on a wide range of resource-use reduction initiatives and manage Oberlin College’s comprehensive recycling program. Since the late 1990’s, another group called the Campus Dining Service Recyclers have worked to educate students and staff in the dining halls about reducing resource use through reducing food and packaging waste, conducting waste audits, and administering a food waste recycling program.

In addition to an ombudsperson and a counseling center, Oberlin maintains an innovative system of conflict resolution: the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center. Coordinated and overseen by the ombudsperson, the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center promotes social change through conflict transformation, mediation, community building, and dialogue. The center’s mediation team includes students, faculty, and staff who represent various constituencies on the Oberlin campus. These individuals are trained to mediate using the social justice model.  Through the Office of the Ombudsperson, the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center also assists individuals and the College community in confronting and resolving sources of community tension, particularly those stemming from racism and other socially derived sources of prejudice and misunderstanding.

Community Service & Outreach

The Oberlin College Center for Service and Learning (CSL) works in partnership with the surrounding community to link students with educational service opportunities. Community service, advocacy, grassroots organizing and applied research are the norm at Oberlin, where each year over 55% of Oberlin undergraduate students do some form of curricular or co-curricular community service. The CSL encourages all students to become involved in community efforts in the Oberlinian belief that intellectual inquiry and community involvement reinforce and enrich one another. To support Oberlin's mission of "preparing students for intelligent and useful response to the present and future demands of society," the Center for Service and Learning: 1) Develops programs that combine community involvement with intellectual and artistic pursuits; 2) Links students with community organizations in need of volunteers; 3) Sponsors events and conferences designed to enhance College and community interaction. In the 2005-2006 academic year, an estimated 1159 total participants completed 64,438 hours of community service.

The Oberlin Partnership, established in 2000, is a collaborative effort headed by leaders from Oberlin College and the City of Oberlin.  Its purpose is to find cooperative and innovative solutions to pressing local issues of education, housing, economic development, and recreation.  Through the work of the Oberlin Partnership, in the 2001-02 academic year, Oberlin College began offering full tuition scholarships to qualified graduates of Oberlin High School.  In the 7 years that the program has been in existence, 31 students have received the scholarship.

When Oberlin College agreed to purchase an estimated 50% of its electricity from green sources, the College worked with the municipal power utility and the City Council to create a Sustainable Reserve Fund from the money paid towards green attributes.  This fund contains the $2 per MWhr that Oberlin pays as a premium for green power.  This money is overseen by the City Council and is available for local energy conservation and greenhouse gas reducing projects.  So far, portions of these funds have gone towards two local projects: the purchase and erection of a wind monitoring tower to assess the potential for local wind energy generation, and the infrastructure for a local biofuels station.

Oberlin College hosts two car-sharing vehicles on campus through a Cleveland company called CityWheels.  Membership in this car-sharing program is available to anyone in the community over the age of 21.  Everyone can join—students, academic departments, local business-owners, and residents.  The partnership with CityWheels offers affordable access to clean, fuel-efficient vehicles, promoting stewardship of resources through reducing the need for privately-owned, inefficient vehicles.

The Graduate Teacher Education Program began accepting students in this June.  The program was initiated as a partnership with the local school system.  Teachers in this program will work in the local schools, developing a partnership of reciprocal collaboration in which Oberlin students gain from working with experienced teachers in a richly diverse setting and teachers will be given support and time to think about classroom goals.

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