College nets further praise for environmentalism

Author: Jaime Fuller

Middlebury College added to its list of environmental commendations last week when the College was selected as one of 15 "Overall College Sustainability Leader" institutions in the United States and Canada. The list was compiled in the 2009 edition of the College Sustainability Report Card, which is published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The report card is in its third year of ranking the environmental aspirations of institutions of higher education.

The College received a grade of A-, receiving a grade of A in nearly all the subcategories, which included administration, climate control and energy, food and recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, investment priorities and shareholder engagement. The only subcategory that Middlebury did not excel in was Endowment Transparency, in which the College received a D. The report card cited that the College "makes a list of endowment holdings available to trustees, senior administrators and other select members of the school community," and does not release shareholder voting records, which led to the College's only substandard grade.

Middlebury College Director of Sustainabilty Jack Byrne has already started planning on how the College can improve.

"The good news is that Patrick Norton, Middlebury's Chief Financial Officer, has asked the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing to research other institutions that got high marks in this category," Byrne wrote in an e-mail. "I would anticipate that they will find some solutions that will be reflected in a better score in that category next year."

The initiatives that contributed the most to Middlebury's high marks included the plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2016, the dining halls' commitment to serving local products and the biomass facility construction. The report card also drew attention to the College's commitment to green building, which has grown considerably since the construction of the Janet Halstead Franklin '72 and Churchill G. Franklin '71 Environmental Center at Hillcrest. The building, which is made of 80 percent deconstructed and recycled materials, is pending Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The College hopes their efforts in green building will result in Hillcrest receiving the top prize of a Gold LEED rating.

Student involvement also drew the attention of the Sustainable Endowments Institute; the report card named the College's involvement with the Power Shift 2007 conference as another reason for the College's high score. The College paid for 80 Middlebury students to attend the conference in Washington D.C last fall, where college and university students from all over the nation called for more governmental commitment to solving the climate crisis. Other student initiatives that were mentioned in the report card were the student-run organic garden and the new program that is seeking to create environmentally sensitive study abroad opportunities.

15 other schools received the same grade of A- on their Sustainability Report Card: Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Carleton, Dartmouth, Dickinson, Oberlin, and the Universities of British Columbia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington. 43 schools, including Middlebury received "Campus Sustainability Leader" status, by receiving exemplary ratings in six non-finance subcategories. Only four of the 300 colleges and universities graded received an F, Brigham Young University, Howard University, Bryant University and Hillsdale University.

"It's heartening to see the significant progress being made by other colleges and universities to demonstrate leadership in this area in their own ways," wrote Byrne. "What's going on here is not just "being green." It's also showing how we can create a more durable and positive future at a time when we seem to have lost sight of the fact that how we choose to live today reverberates long into the future where our successors reap or suffer, the consequences of our choice"

The increase in colleges and universities receiving top grades in the College Sustainability Report Card shows how the environment is becoming a major priority in the realm of college administrative affairs. According to the institute, this year's results have 191 schools showing an improvement in their commitment to sustainable practices, with the number of schools with full-time sustainability staff positions growing from 37 to 66 percent. 54 percent of colleges have committed to addressing the climate through carbon reductions, compared to 45 percent last year.

"Making a commitment to sustainability, ranging from local food sourcing to renewable energy investments, is no longer a priority of only environmentalists," said Mark Orlowski, Executive Director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute. "Such innovations are capturing the attention of everyone, from college trustees to admissions applicants."

Students hastened to agree with such a sentiment.

"Even with the official rankings, it is obvious from all the projects the College has taken on that it is a priority for the College to be environmentally aware," said Sarah Simonds '11. "With the biomass plant and all the green building projects, I'm proud to tell people that I'm a student at Middlebury."

Romany Redman '11 agreed in principle, but cautioned that the College should not get caught up in its achievements.

"I think it's really great that Middlebury's grades improved in the last year, but I don't think that should be the end goal," she said.