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Warren Wilson College 2006 Campus Sustainability Achievement Award Application

Category

Four-year and graduate institutions, under 1,000 student FTE

Contact

Stan Cross
Education Director, Environmental Leadership Center
Warren Wilson College
Asheville, NC
(828) 771-3782
scross@warren-wilson.edu

Governance & Administration

Warren Wilson College changed the College Mission Statement to reflect the institutional value of sustainability: The mission of Warren Wilson College is to provide an education combining liberal arts study, work, and service with a strong commitment to environmental responsibility and experiential opportunities for international and cross-cultural understanding in a setting that promotes wisdom, spiritual growth, and contribution to the common good. The new mission statement reflects the College's environmental commitment and a summary of all agreements can be read in full at http://www.warren-wilson.edu/environmental/greening/index.php.

Commitment Statement prelude: One of the major factors that encourage students, faculty, volunteers, and staff to come to Warren Wilson College is the perception that we are an active, participatory community that shares a deep commitment and a passionate concern for the health of our planet. We seek to display and honor that commitment and concern in the way we learn, the way we work, and the way we live. We are interested in conserving resources, reducing waste, and eliminating pollution, but our feelings extend deeper to a recognition that we are also component parts of an interdependent web of social and ecological relationships. The recognition of our membership in this ecological community leads us to reconsider our ideals, values, and organizing principles. Ours is a working landscape, rooted in a particular bioregion, and part of an interconnected, but limited, global commons. We recognize the need to exercise wise use of the resources of the global commons, and, at the same time, the need for a deep, aesthetic, spiritually-based involvement with the community that extends beyond the human inhabitants of Warren Wilson College.

WWC has an Environmental Leadership Center to catalyze and provide resources for sustainability progress on campus. This department reports to the Academic Dean and works with faculty, students and staff to create opportunities for engaged learning about environmental issues.

Last year the Board of Trustees approved a Strategic Plan, parts of which further deepen the College's environmental commitment:

• Provide opportunities for all community members to increase understanding of environmental concerns and solutions;
• Create a community that purposefully considers all actions in relation to the environment and that acts on environmental commitments;
• Develop, regularly update, and implement management plans for the core campus, physical plant, farm, garden, and forest that adhere to the College's Environmental Commitment Statement;
• Continue to develop the Environmental Leadership Center as a major outreach arm of the College, extending programs and services off-campus to the area community and beyond.

Operations

Warren Wilson College's environmental commitments are actualized through the campus' operations. These practices include a sustainably operated farm and forest, and organically managed garden, a sustainably designed EcoDorm, an on-campus environmental outreach center, an environmental studies department, and much more. The College made these notable strides over the past two years:

• New Admissions and College Relations building (Orr Cottage) is the first higher education LEED-Gold certified building in the Southeast and received the Green Building Project of the Year Award at the 16th annual Carolina Recycling Association Conference in Raleigh;
• Two new dorms that will house 80 students were built to LEED-Gold standards (final certification is still in progress);
• The remodel of classroom, office and dorm buildings is on-going in an effort to improve efficiency through the installation of geothermal heating systems, improved insulation of exterior walls, and replacement of inefficient windows.
• As a result of student initiation, the College now purchases wind energy to offset 100% of the on-campus electricity usage.
• The purchase of a GREENDRUM in-vessel compost system enables the College to compost over 30 tons of food scrap/year.
• The WWC Garden now produces 2000 pounds each of main crops (including potatoes, greens, zucchini, onions and winter squash) and 500 pounds each of lesser crops (including tomatoes, peppers, and leeks) for consumption in the college cafeteria.
• The college forestry operation now mills lumber from trees felled on campus to provide exterior siding and trim lumber for construction projects.
• The plumbing department completed insulation of all hot water pipes on campus.
• All campus cleaning products are now Green Seal certified.
• The Asheville City Transit System now provides daily bus service from Asheville to Warren Wilson College.
• Students erected a 'hitching post' to facilitate carpooling.
• The College purchased two additional hybrid vehicles and three ethanol (E85) mini-vans.
• All campus diesel engines now run on 100% bio diesel fuel in the summer and 50% in the winter.
• All campus lawnmowers were converted to propane fuel to reduce emissions, for which the College received the 2006 Propane Exceptional Energy Fleet Award from the Propane Education & Research Council.
• 12 grants of up to $500 each were awarded on a competitive basis to support student-initiated environmental projects that improve the College's operations.

Curriculum & Research

A distinctive aspect of Warren Wilson College is the triad. The triad is learning framework that includes academics, work and service learning. Each student is required to work 15 hours per week on a work crew that are essential to the daily operation of the College, perform 100 hours of community service, and meet all academic expectations. Here are some highlights from this the past three semesters:

Academics

• The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' accreditation process helped to set-up the mechanism to track all classes across all disciplines that have 'the environment' as a central theme.
• Four Warren Wilson College students who presented research papers in Greensboro at the 103rd meeting of the N.C. Academy of Science were awarded Derieux prizes for excellence in undergraduate research.
• Environmental Leadership Center's environmental journal, Heartstone, served as the common reader for all freshman seminars.
• Andrew Phillips, under the guidance of Environmental Studies faculty member John Brock, Ph.D., concluded an independent study that assessed and benchmarked the College's total energy use and emissions.

Work

• Warren Wilson College was selected as the 2006 Outstanding Conservation Farm Family for the Mountain Region of North Carolina for serving as a role model for improving water quality and wildlife habitat, in using agricultural best-management practices extensively, reducing/reusing and recycling a large portion of the campus waste stream, and acting as stewards to the environment.
• Warren Wilson College was selected by the Western North Carolina Regional Air Quality Agency to receive a "Standing Ovation" award for its efforts to protect and improve air quality in the region, specifically for the Campus Greening Crew's use of the EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool to conduct energy-benchmarking projects across campus.
• The Community Bike Crew opened the College Bike Shop where students and staff can bring their bikes to be maintained or fixed free-of-charge.
• The Food Preservation Crew began work preserving the garden's summer harvest for use in the cafeteria during the academic year.
• The Environmental Leadership Center Crew taught EcoTeam, an 8-lesson environmental education curriculum, to over 1,300 local third-grade children.
• The Dining Crew worked to educate the campus through the labeling of local and/or organic food served in the cafeteria.

Service: 9,500 hours of environmental service in the past two years

• Shady Valley Preserve, TN: students helped to restore part of the bog that contains an endangered species of turtle.
• Cumberland Island National Seashore, GA: students restored trails and removed invasive-exotic plants from the Seashore's backcountry.
• Pisgah National Forest, NC: students rehabilitated sections of an eroded trail and cleared drainage culverts along the Davidson River.
• Smoky Mountain Hiking Club, NC: students worked to maintain sections of the Appalachian Trail.
• Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, GA: students cleared canoe paths in the Okeefenokee Swamp and constructed part of a new backcountry camping platform.
• Katrina Relief Effort, LA & MS: students traveled to storm-damaged areas in southern Louisiana to engage in extensive environmental cleanup operations.

Community Service and Outreach

Beyond the service learning projects listed above, Warren Wilson College engages in outreach that focuses on a variety of sustainability issues. The Environmental Leadership Center is the main entity responsible for this outreach. Here are some of the Center's recent accomplishments:

• Environmental Voices Speaker Series: brought speakers to the region including Jane Goodall, Thomas Berry, E.O. Wilson, Peter Marin, David Orr, and Bill McKibben.
• EcoTeam: a third grade, science-based, environmental education outreach curriculum developed by the ELC and replicated at several universities in the Southeast through a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute;
• ELC Internships: forty-eight select WWC students interned at environmental organizations such as the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, two Nature Conservancy sites, Audubon's Seabird Restoration Project, Programme for Belize, and Rocky Mountain Institute (all students return to deliver three public presentations in the region);
• Heartstone: annual environmental journal has a readership of over 6000 readers across the country;
• Catalyst: newsletter mailed to 15,000 readers and informs its readership of the environmental activities and achievements of WWC students, faculty, and staff;
• Swannanoa Journal: each week the ELC airs an environmental radio commentary on two public radio stations featuring students and faculty and reaching a five state audience;
• The Green Walkabout© tour: showcases WWC's best environmental practices, the tour brings audiences from across the region, country and world to explore the success and challenges of sustainable living;
• Applied Services: draws upon the skills of ELC staff, WWC faculty, and regional adjunct colleagues to provide fee-for-service projects such as these:
• Organizational development consulting services for strategic planning, environmental education, and fundraising were provided for CooperRiis Healing Farm, Pacolet Area Conservancy, Evergreen Community Charter School, and Spruce Pine Montessori School.
• Mapping Change for Buncombe County, a GIS-based change analysis report for Buncombe County was created by Warren Wilson staff and faculty, and as a result of the credibility of this report, the ELC is now working with the US Fish and Wildlife to produce an annual GIS report tracking stream impairment in western North Carolina.
• Great Smoky Mountain National Park All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory grant-funded research resulted in the identification of 8 new species of the phylum Tardigrada.
• Economic Impact of Nonprofits in Western North Carolina, a study of the 18 western counties undertaken for the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina documents the economic value of the nonprofit sector.
• Realizing the Vision: Horizon 2100 Statewide Forum Series: ELC and Environmental Defense convened a statewide forum series to discuss the Horizon 2100 report and cultivate policy makers, business community and grass roots support for its recommendations.

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