Dickinson College
Campus Category
Four year and graduate institutions under 5,000 student FTE
Contact Information
Sarah Brylinsky
Sustainability Education Coordinator
The Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education (CESE)
Education and Research
In August 2008, President William Durden announced a new take on Dickinson’s long-standing sustainability initiative by establishing sustainability as a defining characteristic of a Dickinson education, equivalent in status to our esteemed Global Education program. In addition to long-standing residential, co-curricular, and working experiences, Dickinson now provides sustainability across the curriculum and campus by focusing students on the significant and complex challenges of sustainability and climate change by empowering them with the knowledge, skills and experiences to make meaningful change.
In Fall 2008, the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education (CESE) was created to oversee the initiative, which compliments existing opportunities like the Environmental Studies integrated watershed semester. Students are immersed as spokespersons and scientists from Carlisle to New Orleans in the Chesapeake Bay and lower Mississippi River Basin, focusing on aquatic science, environmental justice, coastal geomorphology, resource-dependent communities, and environmental policy and management with challenged communities. The 4th successful semester will be completed this Fall.
Salient projects coordinated by CESE in its first year include:
Valley and Ridge: Faculty study group enhances ecological literacy and sustainability content across the curriculum. With an emphasis on transdisciplinarity, service learning, and local/living laboratory experiences, professors from 15 of 41 departments have produced 18 new/revised courses, including offerings in East Asian Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Religion, Sociology, and English.
Living Laboratory Initiative: By using the campus as the field and focus of study, academics are merged with operations in order to make firm and meaningful connections between classroom learning and the systemic world. Opportunities include:
1. LEED Building Research: Students in the Environmental Studies 2009 Senior Seminar researched and designed renovation of their building, a former factory and Brownfield site.
2. Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM): Trains students to provide monitoring and protection skills to community associations for long-term protection. Resulting protection covers 10,000 square miles of watershed.
3. Climate Change Action Plan: Students are central to the organizing committee, and 2 Fall courses will focus on the CCAP: ‘Going Green at Dickinson’ and ‘From Kyoto to Copenhagen.’ The latter take 15 cross-disciplinary students to the UNFCCC COP15 in December to conduct a team-research project on negotiations and public empowerment.
4. The College Farm: Oversees student research, internships, and classroom visits to experience and learn about sustainable farming, composting, and renewable energy. ‘Art on the Farm’ features student ecological aesthetic projects, and a solar-powered utility-vehicle was the focus of a physics project this year.
Environmental Education Fund (EEF): A new initiative supporting $156,000 in professional and curriculum development and student-faculty research. Initial awards integrated sustainability into the calculus curriculum, purchased GIS and GPS units, contributed to development of a Chinese ecocriticism textbook, and initiated long-term research on local threatened species.
Leadership for Sustainability Education: Dickinson led workshop sessions at meetings of AAC&U Shared Futures and Bringing Theory to Practice, hosted inter-college conferences including Sustainable Energy Fund (SEF) Solar Scholars, and Fueling the School, Pennsylvania's first intercollegiate biodiesel conference, and is developing climate change curriculum for the NCSE Climate Solutions project.
Campus Operations
The Campus Operations (CO) Division has been an early driver of sustainability at Dickinson. While efficiency, resource management and financial sustainability have always been important division objectives, environmental sustainability tied these concerns to a broader all-college initiative, elevating the relevance of the division’s work in the process. Accomplishments of note this year include:
2 LEED Gold campus buildings: A science building and a residence hall, both surpassing the college policy of LEED Silver.
The PA Governor’s Award for Excellence 2009: A prestigious state award given to the college’s composting program.
2007 PADEP Energy Harvest Grant: $250k to install a 70 kw solar voltaic array at our Central Energy Plant – establishing a sun-powered chilled water system for the campus.
100% Wind power: 100% of the College’s electricity consumption and associated CO2e emissions will be offset with wind power starting in September 2009. The college has been 50% wind since 2007.
Sustainability Coordinator: Fifth year of funding a full-time position supervising student interns to advance environmental sustainability initiatives and behaviors throughout the community.
Biodiesel Laboratory: Student-run with the assistance of CO personnel, the shop has produced biodiesel from waste vegetable oil for 3 years. Annual production exceeds 1500 gallons.
President’s Climate Commitment: In 2008, students completed the first GHG inventory, and CO has been proactive in incorporating CCAP planning which will be completed by September.
Dining Services: 30% of all food served on campus is local. 100% food waste and corn-based plastic ware are sent to the farm for composting, diverting 50% of dining services waste from the landfill.
College Farm: Supplies vegetables to the Dining Hall, supports the composting operation, and supplies a 60-family CSA and local foodbank. The farm is working toward organic certification using sustainable, chemical free practices and has grey-water systems, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic systems to offset carbon emissions.
Transportation: Dickinson co-sponsored a traffic study that resulted in a $2.8 million grant for a ‘Road Diet’ to calm traffic and make Carlisle pedestrian and bike friendly. Other commitments include continued support of the bike lending program founded in 2006, purchase of 6 college hybrid cars (with plans to continue replacing), and biodiesel use for the President’s car and facilities vehicles.
Conservation: Efforts include Energy Star purchasing policy, FSC paper, and green cleaning products; installed efficient laundry machines and ultra low-flow showerheads in our dorms; recycle extensively to reduce landfill waste. New printing and laundry limits have been adopted for 2009 to reduce resource use.
Collaboration: Sponsored and organized the PERC Sustainability Coordinators Conference in May 2009 for networking across Pennsylvania and training on common goals and initiatives.
Administration and Finance
Dickinson received the highest grade on SEI’s 2009 Sustainability Report Card (awarded to only 15 schools), A-, with an A for administration. Sustainability has been incorporated in the strategic and master plans since 2005, and in Spring 2009, the President’s Commission on Environmental Sustainability was created to provide further strategic planning for institutional efforts. PCES, composed of senior officers for each major division of the college, reports directly to the president. Dickinson’s Society Advocating Environmental Sustainability (SAVES), the ‘brainstorming’ full-community forum, - pivotal in Dickinson’s evolutionary progress toward environmental justice and sustainability since 1991 – introduced expanded local, organic, and vegetarian options to Dining Services, increased and collaborative student planning for campus sustainability days, and contributed to ‘trayless pilots’ which prompted the removal of trays for the next academic year.
Dickinson employs 8 full-time sustainability staff and 40 student positions. Staff include the Sustainability Coordinator, a Director and Sustainability Education Coordinator of CESE, and Directors and Co-director of the College Farm, 2 ALLARM staff, and Biodiesel Shop Manager, in addition to Sustainability Interns, Eco-Reps, Educational Interns, and various farm, biodiesel, and ALLARM positions. Students are encouraged to create independent study and internships in the campus and community in keeping with the ‘living laboratory’ approach to sustainability education.
The Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Committee applies a ‘triple bottom line’ framework to advise the college on investment policies and proxy votes. Created in response to student interest in the college’s investment policies regarding Darfur, SRI is composed of students, faculty and administrators and chaired by the Vice President for Finance.
Diversity of our student body has substantially increased over the past decade due to increased financial aid, Academic Affairs and campus support programs. 15% of students are minorities and 56% receive financial aid; the average award is $23,000. The Office of Diversity Initiatives, and new Women’s Center, collaborate with CESE and Student Life to enrich students’ cultural experiences through mutual programs and training. Dickinson hosts 2 Posse Foundation chapters that provide support networks to help students from urban areas to succeed at Dickinson.
Public engagement includes promoting regional rail with the Carlisle Borough Council, air quality initiatives with our county Clean Air Board and sustainable agriculture through Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and environmental education in local schools. The Community Studies Center ‘Mosaics’ - intensive, interdisciplinary, semester-long research programs designed around ethnographic fieldwork and immersion in domestic and global communities – explore topics such as Sustainable Agro-Ecosytems and Cooperative Movements which integrated Cumberland Valley food movements with those of Venezuela, Patagonia, which examined trans-Atlantic migration, ethnic and labor relations, and community development among various ethnic groups in the oil company town of Comodoro Rivadavia, in Argentina, and Montserrat which led students on a two-week field study on the island where they used sociology and geology to study individual and collective trauma and the geology of cataclysmic events.
