by Sean Keithly
In recent years, colleges and university campuses have emerged as a market with high potential for integrated, leading-edge sustainable development. It’s no coincidence that some of the most encouraging trends in sustainability and green building are taking place on college campuses, and that much more fertile ground exists for campus sustainability initiatives. With large land areas, single-ownership, and centralized utility systems, the physical sites of college campuses provide the necessary raw materials for creating innovation in sustainability. Added to this is the intellectual capital of the campus population and the potential for inter-departmental research, pilot projects, and meaningful relationships with off-campus entities. A surprising number of schools have hired full-time sustainability coordinators who, among other things, provide the link between the intellectual resources of the institution with campus operations, capital projects, and planning.
What does this mean in the larger context of campus planning and development? As institutions modernize their student housing and work to brand themselves as leaders in green development, the marketing of campus sustainability is increasingly becoming an important tool to attract new students and heighten overall visibility in their communities. A significant and growing number of schools require LEED for all new construction, have locally-sourced food purchasing programs, and some, such as the University of New Hampshire, have designated “living green” communities on campus. Even local community colleges, such as North Seattle Community College, have hired dedicated sustainability staff who are responsible for working with students and the administration to implement plans for greening their campuses.
Among the more useful online resources available for researching campus sustainability initiatives are the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card and the Association for Advancing Sustainability in Higher Education. The Sustainability Report Card uses an indicators-based system to rank institutions in terms of their performance on a variety of metrics. Key findings for the 2010 report:
- Campus Sustainability Leader” designation. All such schools received an average grade of “A-” or better for the campus categories.
- More than 2/3 of the 332 schools surveyed had full-time staff dedicated to sustainability.
- 45% of the schools have onsite wind, solar, or geothermal energy production. For example, Middlebury College uses an on-site manure digester to provide a source for alternative energy production via methane.
- More than half of schools have committed to achieving carbon neutrality in the long term by signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
Additional information can be found at http://www.greenreportcard.org/ (Sustainability Report Card) and http://www.aashe.org (Association for Advancing Sustainability in Higher Education).
The above factors, along with general growth in campus populations and increasing competition for student dollars all provide potential for new opportunities for architecture, engineering, and planning firms to become leaders in the field of sustainable campus development. Firms that work diligently to create meaningful and long-lasting relationships with institutions as green partners can expect to emerge as leaders in the field of sustainable campus planning and development.