CLU’s Campus Sustainability
Today I just finished the first day of my university’s annual one-and-a-half-day faculty retreat, and in the time between the end of the formal presentations and the barbecue on the beach — gotta love working in Ventura County — I thought I’d blog a little on one of the issues that was raised: the increasing amount of attention being paid to issues of sustainability on university campuses.
California Lutheran University is moving in the right direction — it’ll be building its first LEED-certified building in 2009-2010 (we’re hoping to hit silver); it’s working with solar power and recycled groundwater in many places; it has a recycling program in place; it has low-water, native-plant landscaping; it’s phasing out cafeteria trays and any non-compostable disposable cups and dishes; it’s encouraging students and faculty to drink tap water and re-use bottles by handing out metal drinking canteens or safe-plastic drinking bottles; and it’s working with Sodexho to increase organic and locally grown food offerings in the campus food courts.
What steps can I take in my role as a professor? For several years now I’ve been emailing out my syllabi, and perhaps I should add a “Save Paper — Don’t Print This Out” notice to the top of it to try to discourage students from using paper. I use electronic reserves for handouts and readings, in most but not all cases. Because I use a laptop, I’ve increasingly refrained from printing out information and bring my computer to meetings, instead — if only the battery lasted longer…. I use a coffee mug and water bottle for drinks, avoiding paper and styrofoam, and of course I dutifully sort my trash into the cans by my desk. I would like to moderate the air conditioning in my office, but, alas, as far as I can tell, the thermostat isn’t hooked up to anything that actually turns off the air conditioning!
One thing I’ve tried, discarded, but intend to try again is using an electronic portfolio program to collect, grade, and archive assignments. I’ve had some misgivings about e-grading because I use proofreading marks when I teach newswriting and copyediting. However, a service my university is testing out now has a freeform marking add-on that the campus could purchase, if enough of us used it. That would resolve the problem. (Alternatively, I suppose I could stop using them — perhaps as editing becomes increasingly electronic, they’ll die out?) I’m currently playing with the service, but the earliest I’d adopt it at this point would be spring semester. Collecting digital papers and grading electronically would, however, save most of the paper I use over the course of any given semester.
E-textbooks would be another way to save paper, although I definitely have mixed feelings about this. I don’t particularly like to read anything long on a screen, I find many reading programs to be slow, and I encourage students to highlight and mark their books because it often helps them sort through all the information, especially when they’re going back to study. Something to investigate further, I guess.
One of the questions that came up was “what is the relationship between sustainability and pedagogy? … What do you think of sustainability as a ‘big idea’ (e.g., is it ‘academically rich or rigorous enough to warrant inclusion in course work’)?” It’s an interesting question, and I’m not sure the discussion group I was in really tackled it thoroughly enough — we were getting pretty tired by the end of the day’s presentations. It’s one I want to think through a bit more.
However, in trying to think of comparisons, I immediately thought of diversity, which was one of the more recent “new” ideas in pedagogy. For me, diversity is an “of course it’s rich and rigorous enough to warrant inclusion” concept. I suspect sustainability is, too, but it needs to be conceptualized as more than just individual conservation steps — it needs to be thought of more in terms of systems theory and equilibrium. And how I can do that in the context of my primarily skills-based courses is going to take some thought.
At any rate, I was pleased to hear more in this retreat about the things CLU is doing to conserve energy and protect the environment, and I think it’s great that we’re addressing it together as a faculty.
drupagliassotti @ August 27, 2008