Sustainability@Wooster

Nothing to do this summer and interested in examining Sustainability during an Off Campus Study program? Read on.

Program Website: http://northeastindia.voices.wooster.edu/

This 2 credit program (one: History/Politic Sci, one: Environmental Studies) takes place in the cities of Shillong and Darjeeling, located within the state of Meghalaya (highlighted in Red in the picture below), during May and June of 2013.

Information sessions (Lowry 119) : Thursday, January the 17th at 4 pm OR Friday, January the 18th at noon.

The deadline for applications is Monday, February the 4th, 2013 at 5 pm.  

Financial assistance is available.

Interested in the student experience itself? http://oneyearthreecontinents.wordpress.com/ and http://mataindia.blogspot.com/

Click HERE for the application form. (Log in with your Novell password)

Please direct any queries to Professor Peter Pozefsky or Nicola Kille.

Students of the 4-year ad hoc group, the Water Bottle Committee, can once again eat dinner with their friends on Sunday evenings. Their years of fighting the disposable plastic water bottle have come to an end, and on a high note. Starting this semester, water bottles will not be included in the items for purchase with flex or swipes. Disposable water bottles have been removed from Mom’s, Pop’s, MacLeod’s and Old Main so that they cannot be purchased with any money included in student meal plans.

The mentality that gave rise to calling flex dollars “monopoly money” has contributed to the voluminous purchase of the 1,000 water bottles each week. Look for Committee members in Lowry, tabling with their giant ‘water bottle’ made to represent these 1,000 bottles. Won’t it be nice to get all those out of our waste stream! If you have or hear any complaints, these should not be directed towards any Dining Services staff. Instead, email myself (sloder@wooster.edu) or attend an SGA Meeting.

Water Bottles Gone
Now Gus Fuguitt and Erin Plews-Ogan can graduate in peace (after they finish I.S. that is).

http://www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2013/february/water-ban

The other group that is being disbanded is REEF, the Revolving-Door Environmental Efficiency Fund. The idea started as an investment fund that would pay for any money-saving environmental initiative. Most simple ideas were quickly completed by the performance contract, which has made a huge impact on the efficiency of our campus in a short period of time, but consequently stunted the growth of REEF. These small projects not only grow the monetary funds, but also grow students’ capacity to write proposals, work with staff, and think about what our campus could be.

The new lights in the Underground will be the first and only project funded by REEF. Replacing old, energy-sucking lights, these new LED’s will start saving money now, and become an integral part of a larger upgrade in the future. Even with REEF, the U.G. still has to fit the cost of these lights into the budget. The difference in the future will be departments saving money for efficiency upgrades before they can get them.

It is sad to see the fund go, but that doesn’t mean anyone should stop proposing projects. Any initiative that could have been funded by REEF can still be funded by the affected department. Anyone can still accomplish good deal with collaboration, determination, and some good ideas.

When I graduated and began my apartment search, I kept thinking, “I need to be able to walk to work”. Come rain or shine, inches of ice or feet of snow, I was going to walk. Growing up in the snow belt of Ohio, I knew I was prepared for the challenge. Now I realize not everyone is acclimated to walking through three feet of snow a few months each year. Not that walking is the only way to get around Wooster, a town that does not regularly get three feet of accumulation, but it is convenient, free, and requires no maintenance. On campus, our grounds department does an incredible job of clearing paths to make walking the primary mode of transportation all year long.

To get around town, most students opt for a personal car once the weather gets cold. Before spending the gas, consider the Wooster Hospitality Transit. The bus runs up and down town daily, and everyone with a COW Card has free access to this service. Check the new bus schedule outside Lowry Center to see if they can get you where you’re going.

If you’re trying to get further off campus and don’t own a car, Hertz Rent-a-Car is always an option. Registration and rentals are online; contact Becky Frybarger with questions about getting your rental from the security office. www.wooster.edu/students/security/hertz

During breaks and weekends, check the RideShare website (rideshare.sites.wooster.edu) and catch a ride out of town. You could get a ride home or somewhere nearby, explore a new town or visit old friends. If you have a car and are travelling over break or just for a weekend and have an empty seat, post your ride to reduce the number of cars on the road. Most riders are willing to help pay for gas.

In the spring, look for rentals from the Bike Club. Their new garage is behind Iceman house, and their garage hours will be posted outside Lowry by the bus schedule. If you are interested in being a Bike Manager, contact Anna Mudd. There is a $40 deposit to rent bikes, but it will be repaid in full at any time during the year as long as you’ve returned your rentals on time and unbroken.

Early in December I had the chance to attend a screening of some short films by Wooster alumnus Ted Burger. Ted has been working primarily in China, where he has produced some award-winning films. More recently he has moved to Vietnam and Cambodia.

In Vietnam, he worked with adolescents to help them put together a film about the local impacts of climate change.  This is part of a project called participatory filmmaking, where the goal is not only to produce the film but to give the filmmakers the skills to make the film themselves, so they can continue after the project is done.

In Cambodia, he’s working on a project inspired by fellow Wooster alumna Dekila Chungyalpa, to document the role of Buddhist monks in educating their community about environmental conservation.

This intersection of environmental concern, activism, artistry, collaboration, and global involvement symbolizes to me what a liberal arts education can lead to: not a specific destination, but an openness to possibility and the skills to approach new opportunities in creative ways.

University students’ behaviors pertaining to sustainability: A structural equation model with sustainability-related attributes

Elvan Sahin, Hamide Ertepinar, and Gaye Teksoz in International Journal of Environmental & Science Education

The worldwide action plan, Agenda 21 was accepted in 1992 as a method to promote sustainable development through education. To promote sustainability, an individual should have certain knowledge, skills and attributes for living and working in a sustainable manner, where these behavioral factors are shaped through ‘values’, ‘attitudes’, and ‘behaviors’. The authors look at these socio-psychological behavioral factors among students in the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. The article gives more depth in understanding these three terms. In summary, ‘values’ are a conceptualized sense of what is essentially important, good or valuable to individuals. ‘Attitudes’ are manners of acting, feeling, or thinking that show one’s disposition or opinion. ‘Values’ are the cognitive element, ‘attitudes’ are the feeling element, and ‘actions/decisions’ are the behavior element. The resulting model that the authors found is as follows:

The authors spend a couple of pages describing the numbers and data and would prove useful should you have a general understanding of statistics. Their conclusion lays out the data in a more assessable manner. Pertaining to ‘values’ and ‘attitudes’, they find that their data coincides with previous literature reviews, where students with ‘environmental’ values and attitudes are likely to display sustainable behavior. Interestingly, they highlight that gender is a strong variable in shaping student’s behavior towards sustainability. The authors note that there educational material regarding sustainability across the world tend to display gender neutrality. Thus the authors pose is whether “gender inequality may result in unsustainable trends in higher education sector and gender mainstreaming should be considered.”

Looking at this study, might students on our own campus display such similarities?

I had to share this example of Wooster sustainability at work.  Until this year, soap in the campus soap dispensers did not include triclosan, a known endocrine-disrupting chemical.  When we switched to the new dispensers, alert chemistry professor Melissa Schultz noted that the new soap did contain triclosan.  She brought the matter to the campus sustainability committee; we contacted head of custodial services Ken Fletcher; and he arranged for us to switch to a different type of soap that did not contain the chemical. It was that easy!

Want to know more about triclosan, and why you should avoid it?

Check this article.

An up-cycling project is happening at the Winter Bash on December 7th, and they need your help!
WAC needs burnt-out incandescent light bulbs for their crafts next Friday evening. Bring your bulbs to the drop box in the Lowry Center and Student Activities office (lower floor Lowry) during business hours (8:30am-5pm) by Dec 7th. Any questions, email Julia Zimmer (jzimmer@wooster.edu).

Higher Education’s Sustainability Imperative: How to Practically Respond?

Kevin J. Krizek, Dave Newport, James White, Alan R. Townsend in International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

What is the path for achieving a sustainable campus? The authors proposes that institutes of higher education go through four generalized phases on the path towards sustainability. They flesh out these four phases and provides scope as to what challenges institutions commonly face and the authors offer their perspectives based upon their experiences. The authors first note that the larger and more complex the organization, the greater the challenge in conceptualizing and implementing sustainability into the daily operations; highlighting that educational institutions differ greatly to corporate organizations due to difference in organizational structure, and a tradition steeped in hierarchy. They note that the challenges educational institutions face are as follows. First, the goals of an institute, which are predominantly, research and service, and a typical philosophy protecting tradition and academic freedom which hinders sweeping change. Second, competing interest groups within the institution that each have their own views, namely students, faculty, staff and alumni. Third, sprawling support services that promote horizontal organization, and is not aided by ‘cost cutting’ being a policy norm. The paper then presents the four phases observed. First, the grassroots phase, where campus leadership resists or is minimally responsive towards sustainability measures. This phase is exemplified by student interest groups and campus committees dedicated to address issues of sustainability from a bottom up approach. Second, the Executive Acceptance of the Business case for Sustainability. During this phase, campus leadership sees the positives that emerge from efficiency programs and possible campus name reputation improvement. Overall, this phase is beaten down by leadership which are less supportive of broad-based stakeholder inclusion that requires broader life cycle and full cost evaluations. Third, the Visionary Campus Leader. This phase is summed up by leadership using sustainability as a platform, who prioritizes sustainability efforts and is supportive of stakeholder engagement, using political power to maneuver through the multiple rigid structures within the institution, to achieve their goal. Fourth, a Fully Self-Actualized and Integrated Campus Community. The authors acknowledge that they have no experience with this phase but posit that in this phase, systems-thinking and interdisciplinary cooperation would be the central mission of all campus departments. They believe that universities such as, Leuphana University of Germany and the Gothenburg University of Sweden display traits of the fourth phase. The authors acknowledge that sustainability is an unavoidable mega-trend in institutes of higher learning, an almost physical arms race for status and prestige. Ultimately posing the question of how can institutes get the most out of this ongoing trend.

This Friday, on the 11/16/12, the Environmental Studies Program will have yet another Environmental Brown Bag Session.

As usual, it will take place in Morgan 309 at 12.00 noon.

The talk will be presented by Professor Camille Washington-Ottombre from Oberlin College, and she will be talking about Social Capital and Responses to Climate Change and Variability in Sub-Saharan Africa, as quoted from an abstract provided by her:

“Sub-Saharan Africans are often judged to be the “double losers” of climate change. They will first lose because they will deeply suffer from the consequences of an anthropogenic climate change without having emitted much greenhouse gases. According to most scientists, they will also lose because their limited access to physical and financial capital will not allow them to develop the technologies needed to adapt to climate change.

Instead of analyzing how doomed Sub-Saharan Africans are, I will argue in this talk that local communities all over Sub-Saharan Africa can mobilize their social capital to successfully respond to climate change and variability. Drawing from research in Kenya and Zambia, I will show how local communities build on a multi-layered social capital to cope and adapt to climate change and variability.”

Coming up this week:
Tuesday, Nov 6: GreenHouse is playing “Crude” in Mateer Auditorium to kick off the ‘Fuel’ film series, Tuesdays at 7pm.
(It’s 105 minutes, don’t worry too much about missing the election coverage)

Saturday, Nov 10 at 1pm: Bike Club will be playing Bike Polo in Taylor Parking Lot. Players should bring bikes and closed-toed shoes. Spectators are welcome. We will have chai tea, hot chocolate and popcorn with caramel sauce and spices for all.

Meat-Conscious Week is next week, Nov 12-16

Monday: Personal Meatless Monday. Table tens will be provided in Lowry about the global and personal benefits of eating less meat.

Tuesday: Film showing “American Meat” in Mateer Auditorium at 7pm. Sponsored by Chipotle, they will have some give-aways.

Wednesday: GreenHouse Mixer in Lowry 119 @9pm. A social event, with vegan snacks provided. All are welcome.

Thursday: Westminster Vegan Potluck in Mackey Hall. Come cook a vegan dish with Natalie from Local Roots at 4pm. The meal will start at 6pm. RSVP http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090E49AFAF23A13-november1 or email Beth Coetzee.

Friday: Eat Less Meat 101 is an open discussion in Lowry Pit at 4pm. We’ll be discussing the challenges and the easy parts of going vegetarian and vegan. Some experienced veg*s will be there to share their tips about getting started, and then making the commitment.