Oberlin College 2008 Campus Sustainability Leadership Award Application

Category

Four-year and Graduate Institutions 1,000 - 7,500 Student FTE

Students celebrate winning Oberlin's annual Dorm Energy Competition Photographer: College Relations

Contact

Nathan Engstrom
Coordinator
Office of Environmental Sustainability
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Oh
(440) 775-6354
nathan.engstrom@oberlin.edu

Governance & Administration

Three main precedents frame Oberlin’s commitment to sustainability.  These are the Environmental Policy approved the Board of Trustees in March of 2004, the Strategic Plan approved in March of 2005 and the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment signed in December of 2006.  These declarations formalize the College’s commitment to sustainability.

The Environmental Policy states that one aspect of Oberlin’s core mission is the demonstration by its actions of the College’s concern for, and protection of, the environment. As such, the College will seek 1) to reduce the rate at which it contributes to the depletion and degradation of natural resources; 2) to increase the use of renewable resources; and 3) to consider other measures that can enhance the physical environment in which we live.

One of the key components of the Strategic Plan is a commitment to move towards environmental sustainability. Specifically, this plan commits the College to seek to reduce the rate at which the College contributes to the depletion and degradation of natural resources, to increase the use of renewable resources, and to consider other measures that can enhance the physical environment in which we live. Similarly, the Plan directs Oberlin to develop and implement state-of-the-art standards for building design, and to enhance and develop further opportunities for students and faculty to participate in the continuing “greening” of the campus and the wider community through promoting course work in various curricular areas, independent research projects, and community service.

Oberlin was a charter signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and the first in its peer group to sign. Following the completion of the College’s greenhouse gas inventory, the College will release a comprehensive Campus Climate Action Plan.  This plan will assess the impacts of the Oberlin’s current level of emissions, develop indicators and targets for continual improvement and outline a specific implementation plan and priorities for improvement.  

To accomplish all this, in 2006 the College created the Office of Environmental Sustainability (OES). The OES provides leadership to the Oberlin community in implementing the College’s comprehensive Environmental Policy in support of the College’s strategic goal of sustainability.  The OES interacts with the administration, faculty, staff and students to focus attention on ways to maximize the environmental performance of Oberlin College and develop the tools and awareness required to respond dynamically to issues affecting them.

In November 2006 the General Faculty approved the creation of the Committee on Environmental Sustainability (CES). The OES works closely with the CES to develop a work plan for the office and sustainability priorities for the College. Together, the OES and CES review, propose and oversee implementation of the Oberlin College Environmental Policy.  Additionally, they support and facilitate efforts by the College to publicize its role as a leader in campus sustainability and environmental citizenship in general.

Operations

Oberlin's Trustees adopted a policy that all new buildings and major renovations must meet LEED Silver standards. Ground was broken on June 7, 2008 for the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Phyllis Litoff Building, which is expected to be the first music facility in the world to attain LEED Gold certification. The College has commissioned a feasibility study for a block-scale downtown redevelopment project known as the Oberlin College and Community Green Arts District.  The District is expected to expand the college’s art, music, cinema studies and theater programs as well as substantially increase community engagement and foster economic development in the central business district. Renovations are underway on the College’s Ice Rink which is on track to be LEED Silver, possibly Gold. Designs are being developed for a new residence hall that will open in September 2010 and which is also expected to obtain LEED Gold certification.  There is a student initiated sustainable living theme house called SEED (Student Experiment in Ecological Design) that spreads the advantages of sustainable living into the local community.  The Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies features many sustainable design principles and has won a number of national awards.

Faculty and students are collaborating to design and build a campus resource monitoring system, a web-based technology that continuously measures and displays electricity use in 16 dorms and 12 residential houses.  This system educates dorm residents about their electrical usage and empowers them to make a difference in campus resource use through becoming more aware of the effects of their own habits. On the web site, students can view consumption trends and compare their use with other dorms. The site also displays the environmental and economic costs of electricity in meaningful ways, such as the rates of greenhouse gas emissions, gallons of gas, miles driven, and dollars spent.   In combination with dormitory competitions this system has resulted in up to 56% reductions in electricity use in winning dorms. Pulsing glass orbs were installed in the lobbies of six dorms during spring break 2008, greeting returning students with the newest and most colorful feature of the Campus Resource Monitoring System. These peculiar devices, called Energy Orbs, change colors in response to a dorm's energy use. Because electricity is invisible, the orbs are an innovative breakthrough. Like a crystal ball, they make electricity visible by translating basic consumption information into a spectrum of colors.

In June of 2007 the College renewed its agreement to purchase an estimated 13,000 MWh per year in green electricity attributes from the local utility. Based on a carbon inventory completed by the Rocky Mountain Institute, the purchase of these green attributes off-set approximately one quarter of Oberlin’s carbon emissions—amounting to about a 12,600 ton reduction annually.

The installation of a solar parking pavilion adjacent to the existing photovoltaic array on the roof of the innovative Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies makes Oberlin College the home of the largest PV array in Ohio, with a total rated production of 159 kW.

Curriculum & Research

Oberlin has a well established and long-standing Environmental Studies Program.  David Orr, a national figure in the environmental movement, was hired as a professor for the program in the fall of 1990. The program offers a wide variety of classes and provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human interactions with the environment.

Oberlin was one of the first colleges to carefully study its resource flows and food system.  Beginning in 1988 with a course entitled “Campus in the Biosphere,” Oberlin students, faculty, and staff work together to look at these issues and assess ways that the college can reduce its ecological footprint, and consequently reduce the need to extract natural resources.  

Oberlin recently received a $1,126,382 grant as part of a five-year project to develop entrepreneurship initiatives in Ohio. The Creativity and Leadership Program features concept development grants awarded on a competitive basis to students who will spend the year after graduation moving their ideas from theory to implementation.  The program also offers courses, mentored experiential opportunities, workshops, and lectures to prepare students for the challenges of implementing their projects.  

Oberlin is home to a Living Machine, a system designed to process wastewater into reusable grey water via the natural cleansing methods that occur in a wetland.  It is located in the Environmental Studies Center and is operated by a group of 10 students.  The Living Machine provides excellent opportunities for Oberlin students and local school children to explore issues of wastewater, wetland ecology, microbiology and plant dynamics.

The College has provided land and support for the creation of experimental wetland restoration cells on the George Jones Memorial Farm, a college-owned organic farm.  These wetland cells have been created through a partnership between various professors at the college and the New Agrarian Center—an Oberlin alum’s non-profit that manages the farm.  This project was undertaken to assess the ability to successfully restore previously-existing Ohio wetlands.  Additional educational and research opportunities are available on the farm as well.

The Oberlin Wind Power Initiative is conducting research into the feasibility of constructing a wind turbine in the Oberlin area. After compiling a year of data, the group will assemble a business plan that will use a cost-benefit analysis to determine the most suitable level of production. If the data show the potential for effective wind production in Oberlin, the team will seek funding from the College, private investors and the city of Oberlin.

Beginning in fall 2007 a campus sustainability course was introduced to complement the larger efforts to implement the Environmental Policy and carbon neutrality commitment. Themes will change from year to year as the process of implementation moves forward but will include issues pertaining to energy consumption, water use, materials, food, transportation, and waste handling as well as technical matters of measurement standards and metrics to analyze data, analysis of technical options to improve efficiency, and strategies to promote organizational learning relative to climate and environment.

Campus Culture

From its founding in 1833, Oberlin was one of the first colleges to accept African-American students and was the first liberal arts college to grant bachelor’s degrees to women. Oberlin’s current student body represents 50 countries and nearly every state.  

Oberlin is home to one of the largest student-run co-ops in the country and is a crucial part of the college experience for many students.  The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) is a housing and dining cooperative that has about 640 members and operates 9 dining halls and 4 housing programs. Membership is open to all students. OSCA uses a consensus-based decision-making process in which each member has one vote, creating a unique and thoughtful community where political, social, and environmental concerns are carefully addressed.

The Experimental College (ExCo) serves as an experiment in alternative education, and provides the Oberlin community with some of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences in college learning today.  The ExCo is run as a student organization and headed by a volunteer committee that is responsible for choosing the curriculum and maintaining the integrity of the program. In a given semester there may be between 60 to 90 courses. Anyone may take classes--students, faculty members, staff members, and townspeople alike. Those who demonstrate expertise and enthusiasm may teach a course as long as that course is judged to have educational merit and a reasonably serious purpose.  Due to its flexible nature ExCo reflects the current academic, intellectual, social, ideological, philosophical, political, emotional, sexual, and fashion trends of the Oberlin community.

In addition to an ombudsperson and a counseling center, Oberlin maintains an innovative system of conflict resolution: the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center. Coordinated and overseen by the ombudsperson, the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center promotes social change through conflict transformation, mediation, community building, and dialogue. The center’s mediation team includes students, faculty, and staff who represent various constituencies on the Oberlin campus. These individuals are trained to mediate using the social justice model.  Through the Office of the Ombudsperson, the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center also assists individuals and the College community in confronting and resolving sources of community tension, particularly those stemming from racism and other socially derived sources of prejudice and misunderstanding.

Students established two funds to help the college go green--the Student Green Fund, supported by a $20 per student per semester fee, and the Oberlin Ecological Design and General Efficiency or Green EDGE Fund, a revolving loan fund supported by the college.  The College’s environmental alumni group, EnvirAlumns, is actively building an endowment targeted to be $1 million that already provides several thousand dollars each academic year to support sustainability projects in the Oberlin community.  EnviroAlumns has also developed a Student Sustainability Fund that provides grants to support student projects.

Community Service and Outreach

An anonymous donor purchased 10,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs that were given away this spring on campus and in the community through a student-led exchange program, the Light Bulb Brigade.  Student groups worked with local schools, churches, business associations and community groups to exchange inefficient incandescent bulbs for energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs at no cost.  

The Oberlin College Center for Service and Learning (CSL) works in partnership with the surrounding community to link students with educational service opportunities. Community service, advocacy, grassroots organizing and applied research are the norm at Oberlin, where each year over 55% of Oberlin undergraduate students do some form of curricular or co-curricular community service. The CSL encourages all students to become involved in community efforts in the Oberlinian belief that intellectual inquiry and community involvement reinforce and enrich one another.

The Oberlin Partnership is a collaborative effort headed by leaders from Oberlin College and the City of Oberlin.  Its purpose is to find cooperative and innovative solutions to pressing local issues of education, housing, economic development, and recreation.  Through the work of the Oberlin Partnership Oberlin College offers full tuition scholarships to qualified graduates of Oberlin High School.  

When Oberlin College agreed to purchase an estimated 50% of its electricity from green sources, the College worked with the municipal power utility and the City Council to create a Sustainable Reserve Fund from the money paid towards green attributes.  This fund contains the $2 per MWhr that Oberlin pays as a premium for green power.  This money is overseen by the City Council and is available for local energy conservation and greenhouse gas reducing projects.

Oberlin College hosts two car-sharing vehicles on campus through a Cleveland company called CityWheels.  Membership in this car-sharing program is available to anyone in the community over the age of18.  Everyone can join—students, academic departments, local business-owners, and residents.  The partnership with CityWheels offers affordable access to clean, fuel-efficient vehicles, promoting stewardship of resources through reducing the need for privately-owned, inefficient vehicles.

The Graduate Teacher Education Program was initiated as a partnership with the local school system.  Teachers in this program work in the local schools, developing a partnership of reciprocal collaboration in which Oberlin students gain from working with experienced teachers in a richly diverse setting and teachers will be given support and time to think about classroom goals.

In response to looming increases in utility costs and the pressing need of low-income residents for protection from these increases, a citizens group called POWER (Providing Oberlin With Efficiency Responsibly) was formed under the leadership of Oberlin College faculty and staff.  Through a series of group meetings, research efforts, one-on-one conversations, and focus groups, two solutions were developed:  a low interest revolving loan fund for middle-income homeowners and landlords to weatherize their properties; and a parallel grant program for low-income residents who would not qualify for a loan.  The organization is moving forward with both programs, and expects to pilot them this fall.