Jason Hamilton and Susan Swensen, Poster Presentation, “OneBuilding at a Time: IthacaCollege’s ‘CNS Sustainability Group’”. Ball State University. Muncie, IN. September 2005.
ABSTRACT:
The Center for Natural Sciences (CNS) at Ithaca College houses the faculty, students, and staff of the Biology, Chemistry, and Physics departments. Due to the equipment intensive needs of science teaching today, our building is the most energy-expensive building on campus. In an effort to raise awareness for sustainable practices on campus, the faculty, staff, and students of CNS have organized a group of committees whose mission is to reduce the ecological footprint of the building, to educate members of the building (and beyond) through seminars and outreach work, and to publicize our work to the campus and local community. The success of the organization relies on the diversity of participants that includes not only faculty, but administrative assistants, physical plant and maintenance staff, and students. The CNS Sustainability Group includes five committees (Footprint, Curriculum, Outreach, Seminar, Publicity) and a central organizing Core Committee composed of chairs and co-chairs of each committee. Successful inroads have already been made in developing lines of communication between academics and operations; the CNS Sustainability Group organized a walking tour of the building led by physical plant personnel and we have agreed to a temperature set-point for the building. Achievements by Outreach Committee so far include two seminars on sustainability given to President’s Advisory Committee and to the Humanities and Sciences Faculty Senate. As a consequence of the group’s outreach, students have been mobilized to create their own campus-wide group, “Students for Sustainability”. The Seminar Committee has organized four speakers for the spring of 2005. The Curriculum Committee has created a physical and electronic lending library of teaching materials for the college community. This committee is also involved in generating PowerPoint modules in response to needs of faculty who want to include sustainability in their teaching. The Footprint Committee has developed a footprint calculator for CNS and has estimated the building’s footprint based on fuel and electricity consumption as well as extensive research into use patterns of laboratory equipment, chemicals, paper, and water. In addition to reducing the CNS building footprint, the CNS Sustainability Group hopes to provide a model that will encourage other building-based sustainability groups to organize on campus and to promote sustainability to our administration.
