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October 4, 2002
"Greening"
the Ivory Towers
Whether
composting and recycling waste, reducing use of toxic cleaners
and electricity, or erecting energy efficient buildings, the institutions
that make up the Five College consortium are all taking steps
toward becoming more environmentally sustainable. On Monday, October
7, Thomas Millette, associate professor of geography and director
of the Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL), will join representatives
from Smith, Hampshire, and Amherst Colleges and the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst for a panel presentation and discussion
of sustainable campus initiatives. The public forum, titled "Greening
the Valley's Ivory Towers," is part of a monthlong series
of events in the Pioneer Valley focusing on sustainability that
is being coordinated by Sustainable Step New England (SSNE), the
Pioneer Valley Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and
Catherine Miller of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. The
event will take place at the Red Barn at Hampshire College from
7 to 9 pm.
Millette will speak
about the ways that MHC, through the CEL, is involving students
in "greening" the campus and curriculum. This summer,
for example, two students took core (lake bottom) samples from
the College's Lower Lake and established water probes that
will regularly measure sedimentation, nutrients, organisms, and
other data. Three other students worked with CEL staff on MHC's
Prospect Hill to establish solar-powered meteorological stations
that will track data such as temperature, precipitation, and wind
speed.
Other curricular stations
include three tree plots, at which students track tree growth
and forest structure over time, and a "trap and transport"
eel ladder at the south end of Lower Lake, which will allow students
to measure and study migratory American Eels, then transport the
creatures beyond dams that block their path to spawning areas
in the Sargasso Sea. The ladder, the first to be constructed on
a college campus, will be completed in November and operating
by April. Environmental information from these and other stations
will be transmitted directly to a campus server and used by environmental
studies and geology classes studying threats to water quality,
habitat, and biological diversity on both a global level and on
the College's own campus.
"At this point,
societies in the developed world have not responded to the ecological
crisis at hand," says Millette. "If there is no economic
basis for it, then no new ideas are generated. Educational institutions
have the luxury—and the responsibility—of pioneering
new ways of thinking that don't necessarily conform to the
values and limits that constrain Fortune 500 companies. We at
MHC are lucky; we have both the mandate from the highest levels
and a center to do this brave thinking and develop ideas that
will some day make good ecological and economic sense."
Also speaking will
be Aaron Hayden, capital projects manager/ engineer, design and
construction, for Amherst College's physical plant; Lawrence
Archey, director of campus planning at Hampshire College; Richard
White, Smith College professor emeritus of astronomy; and Steve
Goodwin, professor of microbiology, associate dean of the College
of Food and Natural Sciences, and chair of the ad-hoc committee
on sustainability at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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