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AVOIDING THE "LESSON OF HYPOCRISY":THE ROLE OF CAMPUS PRACTICE IN EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY |
Presented to:
Environmental
Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU 99)
The International Institute for Industrial
Environmental Economics at Lund University Lund, Sweden
May 31, 1999
A university strategy in support of
creating a more prosperous and sustainable society should focus on changing the mind-sets of the faculty,
staff, students and partners in their research and community service endeavors,
and not just the problem-sets in the
curriculum. It must take a more
comprehensive view of how students and faculty learn to think and behave, and how to promote the changes
necessary to educate citizens with the knowledge, commitment and tools to make
their communities and the world more sustainable. In this essay we argue that these strategies should reinforce leaming in the classroom with discovery in the research laboratory and
practice in the management of the campus.
Further, we believe that campus-oriented studies and practices are
essential to effecting the changes in higher education we desire. The author David Orr, in his book Ecological Literacy, presents an
excellent argument for the incorporation of the campus into our educational
agenda. He says,
“...students learn that it is sufficient only
to learn about injustice and ecological deterioration without having to do
much about them, which is to say, the lesson of hypocrisy. They hear that the vital signs of the planet
are in decline without leaming to question the de facto energy, food, materials, and waste policies of the very institution
that presumes to induct them into responsible adulthood."(1)
Our worldviews, or mind-sets, are shaped by
what we read, whom we meet, and what we experience in our daily lives. We believe that in order to advance our
thinking-and our behavior-towards more sustainable practices, we need to
experience them ourselves. Nothing
kills a movement like hypocrisy among its leaders; students and faculty know
this, and so do our partners in the community.
This isn't to say that our university campuses should be perfect; it's
part of the mind-set of sustainability that we will evolve towards a
more sustainable state.
In this essay we will explore the role of
campus practices in education for sustainability by examining the relationship
between such practices and behavioral change, and their relevance to the traditional
university missions. We will also
provide some insight into our experience at Georgia Tech and at selected
engineering programs in the United States.
OUR CONTEXT: THE GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
The Georgia Institute of Technology was
established in 1885 (after the civil war) to provide a technological base and
technically trained workforce for the economy in the reconstructed South. Since
then Georgia Tech has become a technological university with over 12,000 of
approximately 14,000 students majoring in engineering, sciences, computing or
architecture. We have:
* the
largest engineering school in the U.S. (8,452 students),
* ranking
3rd overall nationally at the graduate level, and
* 2nd
behind MIT in research expenditures.
Our entering
class of students has the highest average score among public institutions on
the standard
college entrance examination (Scholastic
Aptitude Test). We also graduate more
female and minority engineers than anyone else in the United States. We recognize that a sustainable society
requires a diverse and technically competent workforce.
As you may have guessed, Georgia Tech is
not a place that one would immediately associate with the Age of Aquarius
environmental movement. More
likely-according to a recent poll on the public perception of engineers-a place
like Georgia Tech would be associated with the creation of the problems we face
in society. At a recent presentation to
newspaper and television journalists, we challenged them to learn and report
about the next generation of the environmental movement: a generation of engineers, scientists, and architects who understand their role in creating a more prosperous and
sustainable society, and who have the
tools to make it happen. This is
our vision for Georgia Tech.
Of course, our hope was that this seemingly
ironic situation--conservative Georgia Tech engineers leading any environmental
movement--would be newsworthy. It
certainly is to many of our peer institutions in engineering and, whether we
like to admit it or not, is still news to some of our faculty and staff. While we're not expecting CNN to make us one
of the day's top stories, we do think that we can use our position in higher
education, in particular among our peers in engineering, to draw attention to
sustainability.
BASIS FOR A UNIVERSITY STRATEGY IN SUSTAINABILITY: THE THEORY OF REASONED ACTION
At Georgia Tech our goal is that every
graduate, and the members of our faculty and staff, understand their roles in
creating a more prosperous and sustainable society, and have the tools to make
it happen. Our pedagogical objective is
to inspire life-long creativity and action, not just knowledge about the facts
of sustainable technology and development.
Since a commitment to sustainable development is an ethical
decision--requirng a conscious choice to
provide for the needs of present and future generations-the challenge is to
develop a strategy that shapes citizens who recognize and choose to create, as well as demand as consumers, just and ecologically
sound technologies and communities. We
need a strategy that inspires more sustainable behavior, not just good intentions.
An individual's behavior is influenced by
his knowledge of facts and the values and norms of his community. An article written by researchers in Switzerland
and Germany provides an excellent overview of the relevant research in environmental
psychology and a useful framework for explaining our position that campus
practices are essential to our educational agenda.(2) The
authors use the theory of reasoned action
to explain the relationships among the variables associated with "ecological
behavior”(Figure 1). The authors extend
the theory of reasoned action by including consideration of the "influences
on behavior beyond people's control', or situational influences.
These situational influences (for example the influence of outside
temperature on energy consumption) explain why individuals with strong environmental
attitudes and intent may behave inconsistently.
After reviewing the literature published over the past 30 years, the
authors drew the following conclusions about ecological behavior:
(1) Environmental
knowledge is a significant precondition of behavior intention, which is the
immediate antecedent of overt behavior.
Factual knowledge alone does not correlate strongly with
ecological behavior; however the relationship is stronger when the factual
knowledge is about what and how something can be done (the behavior itself)
rather than factual knowledge about the environment.
(2) Environmental
values are significant preconditions of behavior intention, which is the
immediate antecedent of overt behavior.
The strength of a person's normative beliefs (what one is expected to
do) affects his motivation or intention to behave ecologically.
(3) The movement from intention to overt behavior depends on the relative ease or difficulty of the action (situational influences). (3)
Figure 1: The theory of reasoned action
adapted from Kaiser et al.(4)
1 FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE BEHAVIOR
INTENTION
Universities excel at imparting factual knowledge so it is not surprising
that the focus of many universities in the U.S. has been on enhancing the
elective courses in the curriculum
with facts about sustainable technology and development. Today there are courses on the environment
and sustainability throughout the curriculum, the result of incremental responses
to the increasing importance of environmental issues in society at-large.
A non-profit organization called Second Nature maintains an excellent
web site with profiles of universities and their curriculum for sustainability.(5)
We'd like to highlight a few examples drawn from our peer institutions in
engineering that reflect the various ways the concepts of sustainability appear
in the curriculum.(6)
We will conclude this section with reflections on our progress to date.
Environmental issues (more often than
“sustainability” per se) have
sprouted up in elective courses on ethics and the practice of engineering, or
courses focused on the special needs of the industry sector most closely
aligned with a particular engineering discipline (for example, chemical
engineering). Some of the more
interesting courses are those developed at the interfaces of disciplines. For example, all engineering students at
Stanford take electives in Technology in Society; or in mechanical engineering
at Carnegie Mellon on “green" product design. Most chemical engineering programs offer courses on environmental
regulation, with the program at the University of Texas expanding the
regulatory focus to include Technology and It's Impact on the Environment.
Engineering programs
focus on the environmental aspects of systems of technologies as well.
Particularly encouraging are those that focus on vital infrastructure
systems such as energy or the system of commerce.
One of the best power and energy systems courses can be found at Virginia
Tech. In this course students learn
about all sources of energy (fossil-fuel based, nuclear and renewable energy)
and the issues associated with their implementation, including ecological
aspects associated with generation and end-use, conservation and sustainable
development. At MIT, engineering faculty
are working with the Sloan School of Management to develop programs focused
on sustainability in business and industry. In addition to the traditional engineering
and technology issues, the programs address the business issues associated
with self-regulation, responses to governmental regulation, and managing future
growth. If you agree with the author
Paul Hawken--that business is the largest, most pervasive and powerful institution
capable of creating a more sustainable society(7)--then you may agree
that the collaboration between engineering and management schools, with a
focus on sustainability, is encouraging,
While we've made
progress, we cannot claim victory since many of these courses are offered as
electives, or are viewed as secondary to the required, core curriculum
courses. Often, these courses are
team-taught, engaging engineering and social science faculty who divide the
course content into their own domains of expertise. Such interaction can lead to on-going curriculum innovation
within the each faculty member’s respective discipline-focused courses. This was our experience with our General
Electric Fund project in the early 1990s.
Over a four-year period, we created a large community of professors who
explored the concepts of sustainability through the deployment of a sequence of
four courses on engineering and sustainability. Since then we've seen the emergence of the concepts into some of
the mainstream courses in the curriculum and a focus on sustainability in
several of the required senior design projects.
But what is
missing is the connection to the campus.
The fodder for many enhancements to the curriculum is in our own
backyards, our campuses. To quote David
Orr once again,
“Every educational institution processes not
only ideas and students but resources... The sources ... and sinks ... are
the least-discussed places in the contemporary curriculum. For the most part, these flows occur out of
sight and mind of both students and faculty.
Yet they are the most tangible connections between the campus and the
world beyond. The study of resource
flows transcends disciplinary boundaries; it connects the foreground of experience
with the background of larger issues and more distant places...”(8)
In order to achieve our vision we have to move the concepts of sustainabilfty into the
core of the curriculum, into the required courses so that students'
understanding of sustainability evolves with their understanding of their
discipline. Remember the findings in
environmental psychology on the importance of knowing what to do and how to do
it, in addition to knowing the facts about the outcomes. The courses should draw on the local context
for exercises, data, and design projects, building a base of relevant knowledge
that connects local action to global concerns.
We emphasize the required courses
in the curriculum because we don't want to give the impression that
sustainability is something one can elect to do, nor that it's something that
someone else should do, which would happen if we created a new degree program
in sustainable engineering. There's an
expression in higher education, that 'it's easier to change the course of
history than it is to change a history course'. Nonetheless, universities must commit to a long-term effort to
transform the core curriculum.
2 VALUES AND NORMS BEHAVIOR INTENTION
We began this essay
with a quote from David Orr, on the 'lesson of hypocrisy" drawn from
the contradictory messages the students receive in their classes and on the
campus. Our built environments, and
our practices for using and maintaining them, reflect our values and accepted
norms. Langdon Winner, a political
scientist at Renselaer Polytechnic Institute, argued that artifacts do in
fact have politics-meaning that they embody the values and attitudes of those
who design them and perhaps even those who deploy them.(9) He illustrated
his point using the designs of bridges in the New York City area; bridges
designed to limit access of public buses and their passengers to the beaches
and parks of the wealthy suburbs. With
respect to the topic of this essay, the physical manifestation of our commitment
to sustainable development plays an important role in our educational strategy.
The types of technologies and practices we implement on our campuses
represent our values and norms. These in turn shape the views of our students
and faculty on acceptable ways to behave.
There are numerous
examples of how universities are becoming 'greener'. In the U.S., the National Wildlife Federation and its Campus Ecology
program have compiled extensive case studies on campus action.(10)
Some campus stewardship programs are comprehensive, embracing a suite of activities
from procurement to recycling, from energy conservation to renewable energy.
Other campuses succeed in a few key areas, such as pollution prevention
or transportation management. Our facilities themselves reinforce our commitment.
The new environmental studies building at Oberlin College reflects
innovative sustainable design, generating more energy than it uses.
At Georgia Tech, the design of our new research facilities focus on
fostering interdisciplinary interactions by co-locating faculty from different
departments who share an interest in a particular research area. We call them research neighborhoods. In
our Environmental Science and Technology building, we will have chemical and
environmental engineers, chemists, biologists, geophysical scientists, and
social scientists all working together and having direct contact with privatesector
partners.
The values and norms of the university with
respect to sustainability must be articulated and implemented in its long-term
strategic plan and campus master plan.
Such plans start with the vision statement for the university, which
lends legitimacy to the sustainability agenda in the larger context of the university
mission. Our formal sustainability
program began in 1992 and after several years of exploration, our President
(equivalent to Lund University's Vice Chancellor) established a new vision
statement in 1995:
'Georgia
Tech will be a leader among those few technological universities whose students,
alumni, facuffy, and staff define and expand
the frontiers of knowledge and innovation. Georgia Tech seeks to create an enriched, more prosperous, and sustainable
society for the citizens of Georgia,
the nation, and the world.'
Following this strong statement of institutional
commitment, we created mechanisms to develop a university-wide strategy for
incorporating sustainability into the curriculum, research programs, and management
of the campus. The result was the
creation of the Sustainability Task Force, led by senior faculty in key positions,
which met monthly for over one year. Their recommendations, delivered in December
1997, reflect a vision that was developed from the top-down and the boftom-up.
The full report with their recommendations can be found on our web
site.(11) Many of the Task Force members also participated in developing
the campus master plan, a 15-year guide for the evolution of our built environment,
which was completed in 1998, The 'overarching vision" of the plan is
that the Georgia Tech campus
'should
be a sustainable environment within which the use of land, design of facilities
and methods of operation are conducted within established principles of
sustainability'.
The incorporation of commitments to
sustainability in the vision statements, strategic plans and master plans of
the university are essential first steps in
our overall agenda. To our faculty,
staff and students, they represent Georgia Tech's intention to promote the creation
of a more prosperous and sustainable society.
While we know that the development of factual knowledge and articulation
of values and norms are important preconditions for intentions to behave more sustainably, they don't necessarily
translate into action. A strategy is hollow without the commitment of resources. The university must make its commitment
a priority in its internal funding decisions.
In short, universities must demonstrate true leadership to overcome
numerous barriers and situational influences that bias our intentions towards
maintaining the status quo.
3 MOVING FROM GOOD INTENTIONS
TO MORE SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOR
We stated at the outset that universities
need a strategy that shapes citizens who recognize and choose to create, as well as demand as consumers, sustainable
technologies and communities. The move
from intention to action, to making, implementing and monitoring the outcomes
of more sustainable decisions, presents a leaming opportunity for the entire
campus community. Orr concludes his
essay on the campus as a living laboratory for sustainability by tying together
the education and campus management functions.
As a research university, we would add the participation and
contributions from our research programs.
He says,
. By engaging the entire campus community
in the study of resource flows, debate about the possible meanings of sustainability,
the design of campus resource policies, and curriculum innovation, the process
carries with it the potential to enliven the educational process.' (12)
Universities must develop programs that
support collaboration among students and their class projects, faculty and
their research projects, and campus managers with their 'real-wodd'
projects. Within the guidelines of a
master plan, the team would develop new knowledge on the current state of
affairs and options for more sustainable practices. Working with the bureaucrats in the decision-making system, they
would discover the situational influences and potential barriers to
change. Hopefully, they can devise
strategies for overcoming them. In this
context, we will find the real lessons about sustainability, lessons about
tolerance, compromise, and determination.
The third dimension of an educational strategy for sustainability is the
creation of collaborative decision making processes that build upon the
research, education, and campus. stewardship missions of the university. We will conclude this essay with a
discussion of a specific application of our integrated strategy for sustainabiiity:
education and research programs contributing to factual knowledge about
options, university policies and goals reflecting values and norms, and a
collaborative decision making framework that creates opportunities to learn.
CASE STUDY: THE UNIVERSITY AND
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
We believe that
a focus on global climate change will help universities and other public institutions
develop a common goal and indicator for their sustainability efforts.
We acknowledge that an American university talking about our obligation
to address global climate change may seem a bit ironic.
The actions in Europe under Agenda 21 planning, and in Sweden in particular
and its goal to achieve sustainable development in one generation, are both
inspirational and humbling. (13) Nonetheless,
even in the absence of a national commitment to the Kyoto Treaty, corporations,
government agencies and universities are engaging in open discussions about
voluntary initiatives to support the international agenda.(14)
A commitment to
quantifiable goals in energy and global climate change indicators poses a
significant challenge for our sustainability agenda.
It also provides the opportunity for true leadership and vision. It isn't that we lack the will to make it happen,
per se. A 15-year master plan is big, has a lot of detail. The team of managers and staff responsible
for implementing this plan are overwhelmed with our 'success'. For example, over the next 15 years we will
be adding the equivalent of one major research building (around 100,000sf
every year). This is in addition to
a 10-year renovation plan for all of our residence halls, restoration of green
space and pedestrian corridors, and the list goes on and on. The Georgia Tech campus is a land-locked urban
campus in a city in non-attainment status with national air quality standards
(for ground-level ozone and soon, particulate matter) and a congested transportation
system that rivals Los Angeles. We
lead the world in vehicle miles traveled per day. The situational influences and barriers to
change are significant. We are at
risk of not seeing the forest for the trees.
This is where the
global climate change issue, and its associated indicators such as greenhouse
gases, can focus our efforts. It isn't
the only indicator for sustainability, but we believe that it suits our
immediate needs better than most.
Climate change indicators are integrative, allowing for a wide range of
creative options across the campus; they're relevant to our regional context,
where energy and transportation lie at the heart of our region's economic
development woes; and they're relevant to our particular context. With so many renovation and construction
projects on the books, we have tremendous opportunities to improve our
performance.
We propose that
Georgia Tech consider two types of-energy
goals over the 15-year period of the master plan. First, future growth in our
campus should be accomplished within a quantifiable goal for greenhouse
gas emission levels. This goal should fall somewhere between
the Kyoto standard of 7% below 1990 levels and 'climate neutral'. We can offset the energy requirements for the
new facilities through energy conservation measures in existing structures
and operations, energy efficient design in the new structures, incorporation
of renewable energy into our energy portfolio, restoration of the urban forest
and investments in other carbon offsets.
Our second goal should push the incorporation of renewable
sources of energy into our campus energy portfolio by setting a numeric goal for the percentage of total
energy contributed by renewable sources.
As the U.S. energy industry moves toward a distributed market, we
believe that the percentage contribution of renewable energy to our campus
should at least reflect the relative amount of renewable energy available in
the U.S. market. We have one of the
largest rooftop photovoltaic arrays in the world. It was built on the roof of the Olympic natatorium as a research
site for our National Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics. It is inconceivable that we would have this
national asset in solar energy research and not include a commitment to solar
energy in our master plan.
The work required
to construct the baseline data and evaluate options is particularly suited to the
research and educational missions at a university. We are developing college-level strategic plans to move the
concepts of sustainable technology and development into the core curriculum and
design projects. Our initial plan is to
focus on those courses and research programs that can address our immediate
management need to define our quantifiable energy goals and short and long-term
policy and technology options for the campus.
In addition, we will be structuring our general education and awareness-raising
activities around Georgia Tech's overall commitment to creating a more
prosperous and sustainable society, and to the specific agenda to develop an
energy strategy.
A campus global
climate change initiative 'connects the foreground of experience with the
background of larger issues and more distant places' and fits with our belief
that campus-oriented studies and practices are essential to shaping the views
of citizens who will recognize and choose
to create a more sustainable society.
NOTES
1 Orr, David W. (1992) Ecological Literacy.- Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World,
Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, p. 104.
2 Kaiser, Florian G., Sybille Wolfing and Urs Fuhrer (1999) 'Environmental
Attitude and Ecological Behavior', Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 19, pp. 1-19.
3 Kaiser et al.
(1999) pp. 2-5.
4 Kaiser et al. (1999) p. 3.
5
For more information on
initiatives in higher education and sustainability, see the Second Nature web
site at: hftp://www.2nature.org/. JL Chameau serves on the advisory
board of this organization.
6
Chameau, Jean-Lou (1 999)
'Changing a Mind-Set, Not Just a Problem-Set: Sustainable Development in
Colleges of Engineering', presented at the 1999 Engineering Deans Institute, American
Society for Engineering Education, March 21-24, Maui, Hawaii.
7
Hawken, Paul (1993) The Ecology of Commerce, New York: HarperBusiness.
8
Orr, David W. (I992)
p. 105.
9
Winner, Langdon (1980)
'Do Artifacts Have Politics?', Daedalus,
Vol. 109, No. 1, Winter 1980. Reprinted
in McKenzie, Donald, and Judy Wajcman (eds.)
(1985) The Social Shaping of Technology,
London: Open
University Press.
10 Julian Keniry (1995) Ecodemia:
Campus Environmental Stewardship at the Tum of the 21st Century, Washington,
D.C.: National Wildlife Federation. Check
out their web site at: http://www.nwf.org/nwf/campus/.
11 The temporary URL for our website is: traffic.ce.gatech.edu/istd.
12
Orr, David W. (1992)
pp. 106-107.
13
'Sweden to Create Clean
Ecosystems in One Generation', Environment
News Service, http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr99/1999L-04-30-02.html.
14
Carmichael, Carol and
Jean-Lou Chameau (1999) 'Georgia Tech and Global Climate Change",
presented at Climate Change and Civil
Society. Acting Now to Protect Our Future,
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, MA,
April 24, 1999.
Committee on the Campus Environment
The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996