Commission Summer Reading

To gear up for our meetings this fall, the Sustainability Commission is reading The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus by Mitchell Thomashow.  Share your thoughts in the comment section!

One of the great attributes of sustainability is that it can develop on both the small and the large scale.  Grassroots efforts have underpinned much of the sustainability movement so far and we must sustain these efforts as we look to bigger, cross-disciplinary initiatives.

When we make this shift from grassroots to institutional change, there is a critical step that, if we skip, could lead to failure before we even start.  The critical step is asking a simple question: What is the problem?  Defining the problem is usually harder than coming up with solutions, but without a clearly defined problem, it is impossible to get buy in on a large scale.

I was also drawn to Thomashow's question: "Why is a college campus the ideal setting for exploring, constructing, and practicing [sustainability]?"  His answer delves into not just why is it ideal, by why colleges and universities have an obligation to explore, construct, and practice sustainability.  His fifth reason is the one that hits at the heart of all those working in Higher Education: "Colleges and universities have an educational responsibility to address the most important issues of the times."  It reminded me of a recent AAC&U publication entitled "Creating the Connected Institution: Toward Realizing Benjamin Franklin and Ernest Boyer's Revolutionary Vision for American Higher Education" by Ira Harkavy.  In it, Harkavy states: "That core idea [of Franklin's and Boyer's work], simply put, is this: This primary purpose of higher education is service to society for the progressive betterment of the human condition."

College campuses often feel like a bubble, where we are so involved in the day-to-day that we forget a world outside exists, is changing, and needs involvement from us.  If the campus is insular and isolated, if we do not stray outside our field of expertise, if we do not look for connections outside the college, we are not serving society and we are not fostering students, faculty, and staff to positively influence the world.  That is a problem and it is problem to which Sustainability is an answer.

[N.B. One of the new JADE certificate workshops is aimed at defining this seemingly straightforward question (http://geneseosustainability.blogspot.com/ and http://gold.geneseo.edu/index.php?pg=jade) is called, "If Sustainability is the solution, What's the Problem?" Check it out!]

Solar Panel summary video c/o Dr. Stephen Padalino

Click to view video

SUNY Geneseo eGarden - Solar powered lighting

Yesterday we connected six 10 watt high intensity LED lamps to battery bank one. Battery bank one (BB1) is currently being charged by two of the eight eGarden solar panels during the day. At night BB1 supplies power up to 60 watts of power to the eGarden LED lamps. The LEDs  are turned on and off with a power saving program running on a $15  Arduino Uno microcontroller. The controller system hardware was assembled by Geneseo students and programmed by them. The control program can be altered by connecting the Arduino Uno to a laptop and downloading a new program. This can be done on site, making it convenient to experiment with alternate power saving programs. The six 10-Watt LED lamps produce the equivalent amount of visible light as 360 watts of incandescent or halogen lamp light. In other words, they run on 1/6 the energy. The energy is supplied by the sun. This system is completely off the grid. 

--Dr. Steve Padalino

Lighting of the high efficiency LED flood lamps; powered by the 2 of the 8 eGarden solar panels; you can see the solar array in the foreground. 

Solar powered foot lighting around the tent

SUNY Geneseo's eGarden - Solar Panel installation

Check out the progress made this summer on the eGarden at Geneseo.  Below are pictures from the solar panel installation that happened earlier this week.

Thanks to Professor Stephen Padalino for the pictures and all those involved in the installation.

Welcome to the Sustainability Commission!

Barb and I just returned from a week-long training at UVM on Campus Sustainability Leadership.  We learned about the vision, culture, policies, and projects that have been developed to support sustainability on that campus and have renewed focus and energy for Geneseo's Commission that will kick off this summer.

Please take a look at the charges to the commission and start thinking about what and where these initiatives are already happening on campus and where we can make a big impact with small changes.

Below are two quotes from Dr. John Tallmadge, an author and essayist, that sum up both the challenges and the beauty of sustainability:

"Think of sustainability as a type of infinite game in which the goal is not to win (which would end the game), but to keep on playing forever."

"In practical terms, sustainability must always manifest itself in some place with some people; it always has a local, personal flavor.  And because conditions and people change, sustainability always appears dynamic and evolving.  It involves learning and transformation: this is where creativity comes in.  You can't have sustainability without imagination."