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A Toolkit for Building Sustainability at Dartmouth Environmental Studies 50, Spring 2011 1 Table of Contents Contributors……………………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction ……………………………….……………………..………………………………4 Chapter I: A Recipe for Success…………………………………………………………………..7 Chapter II: Sustainability within Dartmouth Sub-Culture………...…………………………… 51 Chapter III: Assessing Student Environmental Knowledge and Curricular Integration of Sustainability……………………………………………………………………………………..83 Chapter IV: Improving Student Group Communication……………………………………….122 Conclusion…………………………………… ………………………………………………156 Acknlowedgements…………………………………………….………………………………158 2 Contributors Kathryn Arion ‘11 Marshall Bartlett ‘11 Joseph Coleman ‘11 Daryl Concha ‘11 Desiree Deschenie ‘11 Thomas Flynn ‘11 David Garczynski ‘12 Marissa Greco ‘12 Jessica Hartman ‘11 Donald Kephart ‘11 James Kim ‘11 Edward Molleo ‘07 Jenna Musco ‘11 Travis Price ‘11 Zachary Schwartz ‘11 Virginia Selden ‘11 Timothy Sirkoi ‘11 3 Introduction In the “Environment Problems and Analysis” course at Dartmouth College, a group of students come together to formulate and justify policy measures that deal with a local environmental problem affecting Dartmouth College, the Upper-Valley, or a nearby community. This year, formulation of a project for the class coincided with the recently initiated Dartmouth College Sustainability Strategic Planning Process. Dartmouth College has a strong legacy of sustainability efforts (ENVS 50 course syllabus, 2011) and a reputation for being connected to the outdoors. Today, however, other universities, such as Arizona State University, Yale, Oberlin, Harvard and Middlebury, are racing forward with new sustainability initiatives, sustainable building designs, and new, innovative academic programs. Dartmouth’s status as a “leader in sustainability” has been left in the dust. Initiation of the Sustainability Strategic Planning Process is an effort by the College to restore its role as a leader in sustainability by laying out a high- level road map towards sustainability leadership with specific milestones to bring the College to its desired destination (ENVS 50 course syllabus, 2011). The Sustainability Strategic Planning Process is driven by the Sustainability Steering Committee, who has designated three working groups to focus sustainability in particular areas of the Dartmouth community, namely, Energy, Culture and Learning, and Material Flows. The working groups integrate feedback into their final deliverables from several sounding boards including one made up of alumni and one of Upper Valley and Hanover community residents. Each working group is tasked with presenting a set of deliverables to the Steering Committee: A base case, “where we are now in 2011” summary A “Leadership in this area = _____” Vision Statement A high level map to leadership, including actions A description of the ongoing governance required for lasting sustainability and continuity of efforts What structures are needed for long-term success in this area? A communication plan for this area What kind of communication is needed for success? (The Sustainability Planning Process for WG Members 4.11.11) 4 After learning more about the Sustainability Strategic Planning process, our class decided that, in our role as students, we would be most effective in supporting the efforts of the Culture and Learning Working Group. To do this, our class has created an informational “tool-kit” that provides foundational information about sustainability at Dartmouth that can help the working group begin to develop its deliverables. The Culture and Learning tool-kit consists of four components, each targeted at providing supporting information and research relevant to a particular deliverable of the Culture and Learning Working Group. 1. A Recipe for Success: This chapter examines the successes and failures of past student-initiated sustainability projects, similar to this one, in an effort to contribute to the base- case summary of where are we now in terms of sustainability at Dartmouth. The group focused on particular case studies of: the Dartmouth Organic Farm, the Sustainable Living Center, the Big Green Bus and the Dartmouth GreenLITE project. After examining these projects, they developed a “recipe of success” that provides students and the working group guidelines that they can follow when starting and implementing future projects from scratch here at Dartmouth. 2. Sustainability within Dartmouth Sub-Culture: This chapter seeks to define sustainability within several of Dartmouth’s larger sub-communities of students, namely the athletic and Greek communities. Armed with insight into these communities, the group has recommended a set of standards to follow when addressing sustainability within each “mini- culture” and creating effective sustainable solutions to any identified problems. 3. Assessing Student Environmental Knowledge and Curricular Integration of Sustainability: This chapter examines specifically the “Learning” piece of the working group. This chapter examines student sustainability knowledge at Dartmouth, as well as the integration of sustainability teaching into academic departments with the largest number of declared majors. A statistical analysis revealed an important link between declared major, curricular integration of sustainability teaching, and sustainability knowledge. The chapter makes several recommendations about further integration of sustainability concepts into department curricula and an assessment of the student body’s understanding of sustainability. 4. Improving Student Group Communication: This chapter looks at trends in communication patterns among different groups and departments on campus. Common frustrations, such as issues with Blitz-mail, student culture, and lack of coordination, are 5 identified, as are best practices, exemplified in the organization of two campus groups, the Pan- Asian Council and the Dartmouth Outing Club. After describing the communication landscape at Dartmouth, suggestions are made as to how green groups can better organize and network. A comprehensive and cohesive model for effective communication will be instrumental in implementing sustainable change at Dartmouth. The tool-kit outlined above will provide the Culture and Learning Working Group of the Sustainability Strategic Planning process with essential groundwork for starting its mission to develop a high-level system of governance that will accomplish the nuts and bolts of sustainability at Dartmouth College (The Sustainability Planning Process for WG Members 4.11.11). Last year’s ENVS 50 class presented convincing evidence that the Dartmouth community, students, faculty, and administrators alike believe that Dartmouth College should push itself to become an innovative leader in sustainability (ENVS 50,2010). The tool-kit has developed the essential mechanisms for transforming this optimism and energy around sustainability into a concrete framework to accomplish this vision. 6 Chapter I: A Recipe for Success Desiree A. Deschenie James M. Kim Edward F. Molleo IV Timothy K. Sirkoi 7 Introduction Some recent sustainability projects at Dartmouth have advanced sustainability on campus; others have not. In the examination of some of these projects, we find some interesting lessons for the future of sustainability initiatives at the College. Specifically, the Dartmouth Organic Farm, the Sustainable Living Center, the Big Green Bus and the Dartmouth GreenLITE projects each represent a student-involved initiative with mixed results. Our goal in studying these is to develop a “Recipe for Success”, by drawing conclusions from the results of our research and giving future students guidance to follow when planning and implementing future projects at Dartmouth. The format of our report is as follows. We begin by describing each project, outlining each project’s objectives, and identifying the project’s main actors and governance structures before examining impacts and records of success at Dartmouth. In our examination, we analyze different ways in which these projects have succeeded or failed, and suggest common themes that explain aspects of their success or failure. We take a particularly close look at factors that have hindered the expansion of each of the four projects. We report on interviews with some of the main actors involved in the four projects. These actors include faculty and staff such as Scott Stokoe (Organic Farm and the Sustainable Living Center), Rory Gawler (Big Green Bus) and Professor Lorie Loeb (GreenLITE), as well as various students who were involved in these projects in different capacities. What is Success? During our research, we were faced with the fundamental question of defining success for sustainability projects at Dartmouth. In considering several different definitions, we settled on one that defines project success as “the degree to which project objectives are met” (de Wit, p. 164), as we feel that each individual project occurs in a unique situation of time and resources. As such, the only fair way to measure each project's accomplishments is by its own criteria. We find this definition to be the most applicable to the four case studies that we have chosen because all four projects had stated objectives that they wanted to achieve at the time of their founding. 8 It then makes sense that we evaluate each of the four case studies to be mixed successes, because if all objectives had been accomplished, there would be no need for the project's continued existence.