This is a downer of a blog post for Campus Sustainability Day.
Those who have been fighting battles for sustainability on campus should pick up the latest copy of BusinessWeek, which features an article about a corporate sustainability coordinator on its cover. Called “Little Green Lies” and billed as “the bitter education of a corporate environmentalist,” the piece focuses on Aspen Skiing Company’s quest for sustainability and the disillusionment of Auden Schendler, the man who has led the company to set up “green” power systems, replace inefficient light fixtures, and buy renewable-energy credits.
The problem, Mr. Schendler tells the reporter Ben Elgin, is that he doesn’t believe that his efforts are making much difference. The ski resort’s carbon emissions are still going up, he says, and he has to fight hard just to institute modest environmental programs at the company. Every decision at the company is evaluated for return on investment, which means that large and adventurous green projects are usually dead on arrival.
And some of his own ideas don’t work out as planned. Mr. Schendler is particularly disappointed with renewable energy credits, which he had pushed Aspen Skiing to buy. (A number of colleges are looking at purchasing them, too.) Renewable energy credits, or REC’s, are ostensibly a way to support the creation of green power to offset power from carbon-emitting sources — but Mr. Schendler doesn’t believe the credits actually do anything. The trouble, Mr. Elgin says, is that economics of REC’s don’t add up. Aspen Skiing has purchased credits for $2 a megawatt-hour, while wind power companies get $91 a megawatt-hour from utilities, tax breaks, and other sources. “Even many wind-power developers that stand to profit from REC’s concede that producers making $91 a megawatt hour aren’t going to expand production for another $2,” Mr. Elgin writes.
The whole tale might well apply to colleges. (In fact, one college on the East Coast will announce later today that it is purchasing “100-percent renewable energy” through REC’s. Stay tuned.) At conferences and in off-the-record conversations, we’ve heard story after story about the inconsistencies and shortcomings of colleges’ drives for sustainability in higher education. Higher ed, after all, operates like any business, and the efforts of sustainability coordinators and others have been hampered and dashed by organizational bureaucracy, old ways of thinking, and unsustainable business models.
At the annual conference for the Society for College and University Planning, in Chicago this year, we talked with a facilities manager at a prominent East Coast college who is fed up with business as usual at his college. As he sits in meetings covering new construction on campus, he tells administrators that their buildings are underutilized and that new buildings wouldn’t be needed if existing ones were used more efficiently. “I get laughed out of the room,” he said.
New buildings, after all, are thought to keep colleges competitive. “The only reason we have an Olympic-size swimming pool is because the college down the street has an Olympic-size pool,” the facilities director said.
Over the past week, we have talked with a number of college sustainability directors who feel they are making progress, but also acknowledge that the basic driving forces in colleges’ operations remain largely unchanged. One sustainability coordinator, employed at a college that recently declared sustainability a core value of the institution, was glum about the job. Every sustainability effort at the college involves a battle, the coordinator said. The administration wants the sustainability drive to be a “grass-roots” effort among students — in part, the coordinator believes, because students won’t know or care whether the college meets its lofty goals.
Today, on Campus Sustainability Day, headlines tell of California on fire, of sky-high oil prices, and of future water shortages. It’s time to reflect: What is the future of sustainability on campus, and what is higher education’s role in addressing the challenges that the world faces?
—Scott Carlson
Campus Architecture Supplement
SPACESHIP OHIO
Kenyon College's new athletics center looks like it's from outer space, but it is welcoming a growing number of students and faculty members to sports activities.
Graham Gund, a Kenyon College alumnus, designed its vast new athletics facility. (Photograph from David Lamb Photography)
A NEW ERA FOR DORMS
The University of Oregon and Princeton University are designing new dormitories aimed at improving student life. Plus, architects have seen the dorm room of the future, and it's modular, modular, modular.
UPDATED MODERNISM
An arts center at the College of Saint Benedict gets an addition sympathetic to the original building -- and at a bargain price.
HIGH-PROFILE PRESENCE
Make it big, make it work, and make it attractive, a U. of Pennsylvania official told architects planning a new lab building. They followed his instructions, with impressive results.
DESERT BLOOMS
The U. of Nevada at Las Vegas cultivates low-water "xeriscape" gardens to highlight local flora.
SUSTAINABLE ROUNDTABLE
A group of architects and campus-sustainability directors talk with The Chronicle about the role of colleges in energy use and environmental health.
MODERNIST MASTERPIECE
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Louis I. Kahn's first major building was an art gallery for Yale University. A three-year renovation has cleared away interior clutter and fixed Kahn's troublesome windows.
PLAIN AND FANCY
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Arizona State University has two new interdisciplinary science buildings. One is spectacular outside and plain within. The other has a low-key exterior and an interior worthy of M.C. Escher.
REINVENTING THE BOX
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: A new chemistry building at the University of Arizona conquers a tight budget and a tighter location. A new optical-sciences building has three zany skylights. Both buildings turn heads.
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Commentary
POSTWAR FAILURES
Since 1950, argues Allan Greenberg, most colleges seem to have given up on the challenge of designing campuses that are intellectually and architecturally coherent.
(Illustration by Tomasz Walenta)
POSTWAR APPRECIATION
Our collective inability to see buildings of the recent past as historic or of value is not a new phenomenon, writes Meredith Arms Bzdak.
MODERNISM'S UNKEPT PROMISES
An excerpt from Nathan Glazer's new book, "From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City."
URBAN AND URBANE
Omar Blaik makes a case for why an urban campus must integrate physically with the city in order to stay relevant.
REMEMBRANCE OF LIBRARIES PAST
Andrew Holleran recalls how even a beautifully constructed library, like Widener at Harvard, is a gilded cage for undergraduates forced to spend time there.
THE VIRTUES OF DENSITY
In the right proportions, density supports, rather than fights, our ideal of a campus, Ricardo Dumont argues.
A BILLBOARD FOR SCIENCE
A $48-million complex at Swarthmore College brings together biologists, chemists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists in an engaging -- and green -- environment.
Commentary
AGING STARS
Campuses seeking the "Bilbao effect" sometimes find that celebrity buildings' function suffers for their form, writes M. David Samson, an associate professor of art history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
CHAT ROOM
Campuses need public spaces, but those public spaces don't need to be grand or formal, says Carla Yanni, an associate professor of art history at Rutgers University at New Brunswick.
THE ART OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Michael J. Lewis, a professor of art history at Williams College, marvels at the grandeur of college museums, but worries that they might be slighting undergraduates.
BOUNDARY ISSUES
Urban campus expansions require finesse far beyond blueprints, writes Frances Halsband, a former dean of Pratt Institute's architecture school.
OOPS!
Fail to plan and you plan to fail, the saying goes. But in design, if you study those failures, you just might succeed, says Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University.
FORUM: Four experts discuss the state of college architecture.
CONSTRUCTION BOOM
In reports from Berkeley to the Bronx, The Chronicle looks at new and renovated campus buildings that were completed during 2004 and considers how colleges are dealing with the need for increasingly large buildings.
Commentary
DIVAS OF DESIGN
Working with a strong architect requires an equally strong client. Most colleges and universities are simply not up to the task, says Arthur J. Lidsky, president of Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates, a campus- and facility-planning firm in Belmont, Mass.
PLACES IN THE HEART
Once you've been inside them, some campus buildings stay inside you. Fourteen people reflect on their favorites.
A BRILLIANT, INVISIBLE HAND
Charles Z. Klauder's understated, thoughtful designs define some of America's most memorable campuses, writes Frances Halsband, a partner in the New York firm R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects.
YOU ARE WHERE YOU EAT
Food services have dispersed all over the campus, reflecting the networks of academic life, says Jamie Horwitz, an associate professor of architecture at Iowa State University.
ARMCHAIR TRAVELERS
Colleges go to great pains to offer students flexibility in their workspaces. So why do many faculty members balk at the same opportunities? Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, ponders the question.
SITE AND VISION
Landscape architects know better than anyone that no building is an island, writes Michael Van Valkenburgh, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University.
PATHS TO ACTIVE LIVING
Walkways should be central to campus planning, writes Phillip B. Sparling, a professor of applied physiology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
USE YOUR FACULTIES
If professors can navigate intricate research projects, surely they can understand and contribute to their campuses' building plans, says Mary Burgan, a former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors.
GROWING BY DESIGN
In a series of articles, The Chronicle looks at new and renovated campus buildings that were completed for the 2003-4 academic year -- and at some of the challenges of building in academe.
Commentary
BOXED IN
New dorms cater to students' every need -- except, perhaps, friendship, writes Witold Rybczynski.
ELBOW ROOM
Private colleges embrace intimacy, but they still need public spaces for free expression and discord, says Carol T. Christ.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
Too much campus planning can be inhibiting. Too little can be chaotic. The balance lies in wedding the needs for today with the wishes for tomorrow, writes Roger K. Lewis.
HELL ON WHEELS
To solve the campus parking problem, the answer isn't always more parking, Daniel R. Kenney says.
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