Sustainability

New Roots for a New Day

/ Peter Bardaglio / Leave a comment

“Now,” observed President Barack Obama in his Inaugural Address, “there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.” Hearing these words, I found it hard, as one of the leaders of New Roots Charter School, not to think of recent debates in our community.

 Too often in the face of economic downturns and fiscal crisis we are urged to put aside new ideas and fresh thinking. “We can’t afford to do this now,” “maybe later,” “a terrible time to start a project like this” are common refrains in times like these. Yet this is exactly when new ideas and fresh thinking are called for. It is exactly because times are tough that we should be encouraging new approaches to educating our future leaders and the work force of tomorrow.

The commitment of New Roots to innovation, creativity, hands on learning, and interdisciplinary problem solving will provide students with the skills and tools they need to succeed in a world where, as President Obama puts it, “the ground has shifted beneath them” and many of the old assumptions no longer hold true.

Education to get ready for this new world, as the sight of Obama taking the oath of office underscores, cannot be a luxury for an elite few. Hence the commitment of New Roots to serve a broad, diverse student population, especially those who have struggled in a large school environment and require individual attention to flourish. Too many of our youth have talents, interests, and abilities that go unrecognized and unsupported in traditional high schools.

New Roots will be firmly grounded in research-based, nationally recognized educational models that support high achievement for every student. Working collaboratively, students will develop common visions, goals, and relationships of mutual respect across boundaries of race and class. This experience will directly address tensions that can develop among young people from different backgrounds, offering concrete examples of how they can co-create just, democratic, sustainable communities.

But we already have an alternative school in Ithaca, you say. We don’t need another one.  There is no question that the Lehman Alternative Community School has served and continues to serve a valuable role in the Ithaca City School District (ICSD). But there also is no question that there are students whose needs are still unmet, and that they face new challenges such as climate change, the end of cheap energy, global economic competition, and clean technology.

Perhaps the biggest misconception of all is the notion that we are engaged in a “zero-sum” game where there will inevitably be losers and winners. The Ithaca Journal’s editorial pages have been filled with this kind of thinking regarding New Roots.  If state aid weren’t going to New Roots, one of the arguments goes, then it could be used to help mitigate the budget cuts facing ICSD.

Of course, as the Journal itself reported, the money from New York State is a pass through from the federal government and couldn’t be used for any purpose other than the start up of charter schools.

But, even so, what about the money coming out of the ICSD budget that will be allocated to New Roots by state law? What gets forgotten here is that, for every student who attends New Roots, ICSD will get to keep a significant proportion of the cost for educating that student, even though the student will not be attending Ithaca High School. This means the overall impact will be a net increase, not decrease, in the per pupil amount for those students who remain in ICSD.

A recent study of charter schools in New Jersey, which operates according to a similar method of financing, bears out this conclusion. There charter schools receive 90 percent of what other district schools receive in per-pupil funding from state and local sources. All the more true, then, in New York, where charter schools receive an average of one-third less money per student than traditional public schools, and no money at all for buildings.

Rather than engage in these kinds of disputes, we should consider the new synergies that might be possible because of New Roots. Clearly, for example, the Obama Administration plans new investments in education, green-collar workforce development, and clean technology. Ithaca, because of its leadership on sustainability, might well become a beneficiary of these new federal funds, a possibility enhanced, not undermined, by the founding of New Roots, which is positioned to become a national model of sustainability education.

Choosing hope over fear, identifying opportunity where others see crisis, is what distinguishes communities that thrive in times of change and upheaval from those that stagnate and go into decline. Those of us who support New Roots, and who have invested time, energy, and money in this effort, have little doubt that it embodies both hope and opportunity, and that now more than ever it can help provide solutions that will ensure a prosperous and secure future.

Note: This essay was originally published in a slightly different form as “Students Will Benefit from New Roots,” Ithaca Journal, January 26, 2009.

Rethinking Financial Sustainability in Tough Times

/ Peter Bardaglio / Leave a comment

Last week’s release of the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 raises an important question:  What does it mean for higher education to adopt sustainability as a core financial strategy?

As Andrea Putman and I discuss in our forthcoming book, Boldly Sustainable: Hope and Opportunity for Higher Education in the Age of Climate Change, a commitment to sustainability can both maximize the upside benefits and minimize the downside risks.  It can lead to a more efficient use of limited resources, higher productivity, the development of distributed leadership on campus, greater collaboration across organizational silos, strengthened trust with external stakeholders, and an enhanced brand value that makes it easier to recruit outstanding students, faculty, and staff and retain them, all of which can produce a significant competitive advantage for the institution.

Just as important, adopting sustainability as a core financial strategy means implementing a broader approach to investment. Higher education, if it intends to take its own long-term sustainability seriously, needs to focus on how increases in endowment spending can improve the well being of society and the environment.

Why?

Berea College in Kentucky

It’s pretty simple, actually.  Colleges and universities can only thrive if society and the biosphere are healthy. Any college or university that is so shortsighted as to pursue its ends without taking into account the interests of the larger community or ecosystem in which it is enmeshed will not thrive over the long haul. In the end, it will find itself forced, one way or the other, to deal with the fact that its future is inextricably linked to that of the larger web of social and ecological relations in which it is embedded. It is recognition of this interdependence, for example, that has driven Yale University to invest in the city of New Haven and Berea College to invest in the people and land of the Appalachian South.

College and university endowments, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, could be a powerful force for social and environmental good even as these institutions pursue their own self interest. Yet only 35% of the institutions surveyed in the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 invest in renewable energy and only 10% in community development funds.

If a healthy future is to be evenly distributed, higher education institutions must embrace a larger understanding of their mission and not confine themselves simply to growing their endowments while the communities around them come unraveled and the rapid degradation of the environment continues unabated.

One of the best ways that universities can have a positive effect on the environment and local economy is for them to set aside a certain proportion of their endowments to use as a revolving loan fund for cities and towns to use in communitywide energy efficiency retrofits. These loans have the potential for returns on investment as good as anything in the financial markets today.  Of course, considering the state of Wall Street, that’s not saying much.

In making such investments, universities and colleges not only can help reduce the carbon footprint of the community, but also keep dollars from flowing out of the community and into the pockets of the utility companies. These dollars will recirculate in the community, increasing spending and indirectly contributing to the creation of new jobs.  And, as Van Jones points out, investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy also directly create new green collar jobs that can provide much needed economic stability during even the toughest of recessions.

Given the latest economic forecasts, it’s an idea worth considering.

Note: This post originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Building and Grounds Blog here.

Code Green for Higher Education?

/ Peter Bardaglio / Leave a comment

Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, is an impassioned plea for what he calls “Code Green” — a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that would address global climate change and sustainability while also renewing the spirit of innovation and idealism in the U.S.

So what would “Code Green” mean for higher education? As the National Wildlife Federation’s report on campus sustainability noted last month, the record for colleges and universities is mixed. The survey of 1,068 institutions found that real headway had been made in the areas of research, campus operations, and community outreach, but it revealed much less success in greening the classroom.

Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that most colleges and universities are treating sustainability either as a fad or as one more thing to stir into the mix, rather than as a transformative process. A good sign — perhaps the best one — that an institution is taking sustainability seriously is when it begins to integrate sustainability across the curriculum. That’s the heart of the matter, after all.

Frank Rhodes, former president of Cornell University suggests that the concept of sustainability offers “a new foundation for the liberal arts and sciences.” It provides a new focus, sense of urgency, and curricular coherence at a time of drift, fragmentation, and insularity in higher education, what he calls “a new kind of global map.”

At the same time, though, Rhodes notes that the “broad range of questions that sustainability raises have no single set of answers.” Experimentation, discovery, and exploration, rather than dogma and indoctrination, are the keys to mining its value as a way to frame the crucial issues of our time.

“Code Green” can provide a vital source of hope and opportunity for facilitating institutional renewal and revitalizing higher education’s sense of mission. Growing out of a keen awareness that the economy, society, and environment are closely intertwined, sustainability fosters a culture of innovation, creativity, and holistic thinking. It provides a way to bring fresh thinking to bear on old problems and identifies new solutions that can move higher education forward even as it better prepares students to be engaged citizens, active leaders, and successful professionals.

Embracing Friedman’s call for “Code Green” in higher education would mean adopting it as a core strategy. As Andrea Putman and I argue in our forthcoming book, Boldly Sustainable: Hope and Opportunity for Higher Education in the Age of Climate Change, it would mean not viewing sustainability as marginal to the real business of colleges and universities or as an “add on.” Instead, sustainability would be seen as the central organizing principle in an intellectual, social, and financial sense. And it would be recognized that these three strands cannot be unraveled and separated out, one from the other, without undermining the capacity of higher education to be an effective force in 21st-century democratic society.

Note: This post originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Building and Grounds Blog here.

Sustainability Thinking and Entrepreneurship at Ithaca College

/ Peter Bardaglio / 1 Comment

Academic entrepreneurship, in its narrowest sense, involves the creation of new business ventures by university and college faculty, administrators, and students. More broadly, academic entrepreneurship seeks to establish connections across disciplines, between student and academic affairs, and between the campus and community. It draws on the spirit of innovation, creativity, and opportunity that animates entrepreneurial activity in the business world to provide the richest learning experience possible for students

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Ithaca College

Academic entrepreneurship has been part of Ithaca College’s institutional DNA since its founding in 1892 as a music conservatory. Ithaca, an independent, predominantly undergraduate college of 6,400 students in the Finger Lakes region of New York, offers a diverse curriculum in more than 100 degree programs in business, communications, health sciences and human performance, humanities and sciences, music, and interdisciplinary studies.  The music program’s original emphasis on performance and hands-on learning spread throughout the curriculum as the college grew and influenced other programs in theater arts, physical education, physical therapy, radio, and television.

As a founding member of Associated New American Colleges (ANAC), a national consortium of about twenty small and mid-sized institutions, Ithaca is committed to Ernest Boyer’s vision of undergraduate education, one that combines liberal and professional learning with a strong emphasis on experiential learning and civic engagement. This marriage of pragmatism and idealism equips Ithaca students with the ability to solve real world problems in ways that advance the college’s core values: intellect, character, creativity, community, and global citizenship. The recent campus-wide sustainability initiative is but the latest manifestation of Ithaca’s distinctive brand of undergraduate education.

Ithaca College has been exploring and applying the concept of sustainability for several years. Our sustainability initiative involves three dimensions: 1) the curriculum, 2) college operations, and 3) community outreach. The framework supplied by sustainability thinking—with its emphasis on interconnectedness, the dynamic nature of complex systems, and the importance of taking the long view—has much in common with the strategic approach adopted by the college’s institutional plan. Indeed, the move towards sustainability has emerged organically out of the priorities established by the institutional plan.

Sustainability thinking and entrepreneurship, then, have become inextricably linked at Ithaca College. The institution’s long history of innovation and pragmatism has furnished a fertile seedbed for the growth of the sustainability initiative, which in turn has helped to facilitate the integration of a liberal education and professional studies, with a strong emphasis on civic engagement. As a result, Ithaca is helping to forge a unique approach to undergraduate learning, an approach that represents the cutting edge of U.S. higher education in the twenty-first century.

Note: This is an abridged version of an essay that first appeared as “Sustainability Thinking and Entrepreneurship: A Case Study,” Peer Review, Vol. 7, no. 3 (Spring 2005): 18-20.