Academics & Culture Teaches Green to the Campus
The perpetuation of sustainability derives from student activity. Without teaching students the importance and feasibility of energy efficiency, resource conservation, and human environmental impact, there can be no real continuance of the philosophy. Educating the youth of the world represents the future outlook of this planet.
The Academics & Culture Committee is charged with incorporating sustainability and research efforts into the educational structure of the campus. "Learning sustainability can have a positive effect on career prospects," said Rich Legault, Senior Technical & Training Specialist for CITS and Co-Chair of the Academics & Culture Committee. "Businesses are more aware of the issues because consumers demand it. If it is found out that a business's practices are doing harm to the environment, consumers will stop buying. You can also improve profits through sustainability. Depending on how it's done, using these concepts can save money in the long-run."
With the introduction of the Sustainability Minor over the last year, the committee has been busy researching more courses that contain a meaningful environmental component in order to cross-list them. The idea behind the Minor is that it brings opportunities to use the University as a living laboratory. Because the Sustainability Minor only recently got started, the full structure of the program hasn't yet been codified. "There's a lot of faculty interested in cross-listing or developing courses for the minor," said Robert Darst, Director of the University Honors Program, Associate Professor of the Political Science Department, and Co-Chair of the Academics & Culture Committee. "If they weren't, we'd probably not be able to have the Minor."
An example of the cross-listing would be MKT 370, Social and Ethical Issues in Marketing, because part of the curriculum deals with the impact of business on the environment. Another example is there are certain classes in the History Department that are cross-listed with the Minor because they deal with the history of technology and how the Industrial Revolution moved the world into unsustainable living.
Another objective of the Committee is to investigate community outreach, both on local and regional levels, and campus organizations, like MASSPIRG and The Social Change Society, to determine how they fit in with the Sustainability Initiative and interact with the population of UMass Dartmouth. According to Dr. Darst, a Sustainability Club is organizing that will "try to serve as a meta-grouping to bring together students who are active on sustainability issues regardless of whether or not they are involved in other organizations." It will hopefully help to corral students to talk about the interests they have in common.
What is probably the most unique project of the Committee are its endeavors at analyzing the extent teaching has on the environment. "It's not something people usually think about. Could the processes of teaching and learning have less of an impact," pondered Dr. Darst. Measuring the amount of energy that goes into powering different types of classes is a primary concern. One example deals with the amounts of energy used by overhead projectors and other machines in classrooms, and what can be done for reduction. "The bulbs in the projectors take a minute to warm up, so the current recommendation is to leave it on standby mode the whole school day. That uses a lot of energy. Apparently turning them on and off all day also wears bulbs out faster, so I don't know the cost-benefit analysis between saving energy and replacing more bulbs," said Mr. Legault.
Another factor is lighting in offices and classrooms; is the current brightness necessary in all rooms and buildings? Information is being gathered for this study, such as types, brands, and brightness levels of light bulbs, how often lights are left on after a class ends, and if it could be possible to separate banks of lights so that you don't have to turn all the lights on at once. "During the day, when it is sunny outside, you don't need all the lights turned on," said Mr. Legault.
The Academics & Culture Committee is also concerned with reducing paper usage for classrooms and excess printing from students. Under supervision, various students are assembling data based on the paper usage of daily and weekly course activities. Statistics being collected include how much paper per day students use for notes, how much paper is given from handouts, how many pages are used for any given assignment, and how much online reading students print out for their classes. "Printing something out just adds more steps. The reality of the modern office place is that students in the real world will be bombarded with electronic documents. It simply will not be possible to print everything out. Decision-making over printing and online reading is a necessary skill for moving forward," said Dr. Darst.
A lot of the different committees' efforts overlap. "Everything's connected and you can't talk about one thing without talking about something else," said Mr. Legault, in regards to these conservation and resource issues also falling into the categories of Energy and Waste/Purchase.
The Academics & Culture Committee has a small advantage over others within the Initiative since much of the work has already been done for the Sustainability Minor, and there's less quantifiable measurements needed for its portion of the Assessment Report, due in the spring. Where things go from there is up to the Administration. "The University sees saving money as a very important thing. It's easy to get the University on board for a project when a financial goal is made clear," explained Mr. Legault.
