Students compete for mini-grants

Author: Ethan Lake

The Office of Campus Sustainability has sent campus wide e-mails announcing this spring's environmental competition. The challenge has been issued to Middlebury students - how can they improve campus sustainability using a frugal budget? Before this question is answered (the revealing of the winning grants in the near future will do just this), having a little background information on the Office of Campus Sustainability might be helpful.

What is a Mini-Grant? A Mini-Grant is a grant of money, amounting up to only $100, which is given by the Office of Campus Sustainability to motivated students interested in improving Middlebury's environmental impact and outlook, but who may lack the resources to do so.

The Office of Campus Sustainability has been offering grants to concerned students for the past five years. Students, working with staff and faculty, have developed over 45 grants within that time period to help improve our school. Through their auspices, around $70,000 has been spent to improve Middlebury's sustainability and environmental outlook. The grants highlight not only student concern and ingenuity but also the willingness of the Middlebury College community to come together to accomplish a worthy goal.

In past years, the Campus Sustainability Office has received up to $25,000 to support student environmental awareness and concern. This year, due to their uncertain funding situation, only $2,500 was received, and the Mini-Grant challenge was developed to maximize the paucity of funds. The Mini-Grants hope to not only raise awareness for the Campus Sustainability Program, with the intent of getting it a permanent budget, but also to foster an entrepreneurial spirit amongst the grant applicants. A similar contest was offered this fall, with slightly more grant money available, and two grants were selected and given about $1,500. These fall grants did not fully use up the funds given to the Campus Sustainability Office, so the Mini-Grant contest was formed.

One grant supported publicity for the student dishwashing initiative. This initiative, which started a couple of years ago, has students volunteer to wash dishes in the dining hall for dinner, raising awareness not only of how much food is wasted, but also of what an excellent job the College staff does to make student life more enjoyable. The money was spent this year on a banner to raise awareness and guides for students on how to work the dishwashing equipment.

The other grant paid for the updating of the dining hall posters that illustrate how Middlebury supports local food. The information on the posters had been somewhat out of date, so concerned students this fall requested and received a grant to update them to their current iteration.

Sadly, the entire grant initiative has an uncertain future. Without a concrete budjet for grants, the Campus Sustainability Office has had to rely on outside sources. In the past, a concerned president gave large amounts of his discretionary money to the program. Other times the program approached various commons or the Environmental Council for funding. Yet there remains hope for this worthy program. President Ronald D. Liebowitz has ordered a study of the grant program along with a proposed permanent budget for the program. The successful adoption of this budget may well hinge on the impact of and response to these Mini-Grants.