Taking the university to task.

• Author: Mansfield, William H., III
• Position: Participative environmental courses

For many colleges and universities, environmental studies are no longer just academic.

When Megan Dunn arrived at the University of Rochester, New York in the fall of 1994 she was shocked to see a plume of black smoke pouring from the school's heating plant. University officials responsible for enforcing state air pollution standards replied vaguely to her inquiries, so she decided to take on the menace herself. During her sophomore year Dunn mastered the intricacies of the university's coal-fired power plant. She met with the plant's chief engineer and toured the facility. She dug into the air-quality regulations. Through her research she found that the plant's fly-ash and soot emissions exceeded standards largely because two of the plant's filters were out of commission. Renovations to one of the filter bag houses alone would cost $400,000. And the state had been extending the university's emission permit for 14 years while the Rochester administrators sought to raise the money.

Aided by her English Professor David Bliesh, Dunn detailed her findings in an independent research paper, then took the bold step of meeting with the university's top officials. "I couldn't keep my findings a secret and I wanted to see some changes," she related at Ball State University's Greening of the Campus II Conference in Muncie, Indiana last September. "I made it clear that something needed to be done and that there was no more time for waiting." Her thoroughness and persistence paid off. The university made the necessary changes, including better management practices and more timely cleaning of the plant's filters, and soon the black smoke trailing over the campus disappeared. "Plant managers found out that these rules did not have to be a burden, but that they could actually help them run the plant effectively," Dunn reported. The administration now plans to phase in a natural-gas-fired generator to replace the existing coal-powered installation, further reducing pollution. Additionally, the university has decided to reduce energy consumption across campus by installing efficient lighting.

Dunn's experience illuminates a prominent new dimension to today's environmental education - students are challenging campus administrators to make the setting of their education more sustainable. Throughout the world students are taking part in college and university operations such as landscaping, food service, procurement, transportation, and waste-management aimed at improving the environments of their campuses. But more than that, these efforts are completely revolutionizing how education happens, moving beyond textbooks and lectures alone toward more experiential, interdisciplinary learning.

This movement is tearing down walls between academia and campus operations, often creating model programs that offer valuable lessons for businesses, governments, and communities. While these programs often cut operating costs and reduce the environmental impacts of the universities, they also help meet the desires of growing numbers of students to participate in environmental efforts. And they provide students with practical, job-related experience that buttresses their academic studies and enables them to apply classroom skills to solving real problems on campus.

The practices students are introducing - from organic farms and recycling programs to efficient buildings and conservation initiatives - can be employed equally well in their own communities in the future. As Oberlin College Professor David Orr writes in his book The Campus and Environmental Responsibility, "No institutions in modern society are better able to catalyze the necessary transition than schools, college, and universities .... The question is ... whether they have the vision and courage to do so."

Thomas Kelly, director of the Sustainability Program at the University of New Hampshire, describes the experience gained from students' efforts to combine environmental studies and day-to- day university operations as the "shadow curriculum." "One of the richest educational resources we have to help us integrate and internalize the values, principles, theories, facts, and skills for sustainable development," he says, "is our immediate surroundings - the campus. Campus operations and curricula are linked in principle, but they are often treated as separate and unrelated."

A strong advocate of incorporating campus operations into classroom work, Kelly says it requires nontraditional pedagogy: "Our campuses are overflowing with examples of ecologically irrational practices that arc often economically and socially unsound as well. By identifying and analyzing them, formulating alternatives, and participating in their implementation, students are empowered and emboldened to take on issues of institutional change. This connects the core educational mission to the daily life of our institutions and truly engenders responsible citizenship in our graduates."

Because institutions of higher learning are critical components, and oftentimes the hubs, of their communities, campus environmental stewardship encompasses virtually every facet of university and community life. Universities and colleges import energy, food, water, and other materials; they generate solid, organic, and toxic wastes; and their policies influence building construction, landscaping, transportation, and even local and international investments.

One starting point for identifying and taking on environmental issues at the campus and in the surrounding community is the so-called...