Motto Fuels 'Lasting' Effort

The intermittent showers that fell Sunday, May 15, did little to dampen the Commencement spirit shared by a record-breaking 774 graduates.

 

“Sustainability is at the center of what we do as an institution,” wrote President Lee Pelton last November in an announcement that kicked off the initiative and formed the campus Sustainability Council. “The choices we make now affect the lives of present and future generations.”

The “four E’s” of sustainability — equity, education, economics and environment — are already inherent in the University’s creed and actions. “Willamette has a strong tradition of social justice,” says Joe Bowersox, associate professor of politics and chair of the Sustainability Council. “President Pelton has charged us with incorporating concepts of social and environmental sustainability into our teaching, our research, the administration, maintenance of our facilities and our community outreach.”

Four years ago, student leaders like environmental studies major Kai Wallin ’05 led the drive to formalize and expand the University’s sustainable efforts on campus and make sustainability a guiding principle. “We met with President Pelton and faculty and urged them to support sustainability on campus,” says Wallin, who now works on stream restoration for the City of Salem.

The result was WEST, the Willamette Environmental Sustainability Team, a committee of students, faculty and staff formed to study how the University could step up its environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices. One of the first successes was more efficient energy consumption. Despite soaring fuel costs and the addition of nearly 30,000 square feet of building space since 1999, Physical Plant has been able to keep energy costs relatively stable. Through measures including more energy efficient lighting, automatic on-off occupancy sensors and scheduling energy usage based on building occupancy, Willamette reduced its electrical energy costs from $1.98 per square foot in 2001 to $0.78 in FY 2003–04. Now average electrical energy consumption for buildings larger than 5,000 square feet exceeds the national “Energystar” efficiency standard. Another early success involved encouraging the University’s food service to decrease waste, increase the use of local and organic products and seek out more environmentally friendly food containers.

At a two-day retreat this August, 40 members of the campus community created a campus sustainability blueprint. Ideas ranged from the quad to the classroom and beyond — landscaping with native plants, using environmentally friendly pesticides and cleaning products, constructing “green” buildings and retrofitting existing facilities, encouraging alternative forms of transportation to campus, integrating sustainability into teaching and research and choosing more socially responsible investments.

“Part of the journey is thinking about a future that’s filled with the things we want,” says Professor Robin Morris Collin, who teaches law and sustainability at the College of Law. “Whether it’s finances or which cleaning products to use, we need to ask ‘What are the environmental, economic and fairness and justice impacts of our decisions? What are the educational issues we need to address?’ I can’t say exactly where we’ll be in 20 years. I do know we’ll be healthier. We won’t be contaminating the land we live on. And our students will be getting a rich and inspired perspective that will make them more constructive and optimistic.”