New England Campus Sustainability Forum
New England Campus Sustainability Forum
Session Descriptions
Walking Tour
| Urban Greenspace Tour: Olmsted's Emerald Necklace | 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM |
| A Guided Walking Tour of Boston's Historic Parkland Join us in the Back Bay Fens across from the historic Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for a walking tour of one of the nation’s oldest urban parks. A local expert from the Emerald Necklace Conservancy will describe the history, flora, and fauna of this local treasure, located just five minutes from the entrance to the Wentworth Institute of Technology (walking distance). The tour will begin promptly at 7:30 a.m. and meet at the registration desk.
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Welcome
| Registration | 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM |
| Breakfast & Networking | 8:00 AM - 8:45 AM |
| Poster Session Available for Viewing | 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
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Morning Keynote
| Conference Introduction: Rob Pratt, Chairman and CEO, GreenerU |
9:00AM - 10:00AM |
| Opening Remarks: Claire Ramsbottom, Executive Director, Colleges of the Fenway |
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| Opening Reflection: Small Campus, Sustainability and Dynamic Urban Setting Zorica Pantic, President, Wentworth Institute of Technology |
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| Keynote Session: Leonardo Da Vinci to Higher Education: Lead Us On A Healthy, Just, and Sustainable Path Now, Tony Cortese, Founding President & Senior Fellow, Second Nature
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| Break & Networking | 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
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Concurrent Sessions
| Effectively Harnessing Student Interest & Activism | 10:30 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Campus as a Living Lab Ezra Small, Sustainability Manager, UMass Amherst Josh Stoffel, Manager of Sustainability, Connecticut College Rosi Kerr, Director of Sustainability, Dartmouth College Students are the lifeblood of many sustainability initiatives at colleges and universities around the country. They bring enthusiasm and energy to projects and generate new routes to advance sustainability on their campuses. However, the proliferation of opportunities on campus can spread students thin—causing them to incompletely plan projects or to leave projects before completion. Well-developed sustainability engagement programs (i.e. Eco-Reps) and living-learning communities are proven mechanisms to educate students and focus their energy in productive ways. Join three campus sustainability professionals for an interactive workshop that will help you to identify the challenges you are facing in harnessing student interest and energy, and teach you to establish programs that can help you to overcome these challenges at your institution.
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| Sustainable Sustainability Financing | 10:30 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Financial Strategies Ed Terceiro, Executive Vice President Emeritus and Resident Engineer, Mount Wachusett Community College Mark Orlowski, Founder & Executive Director, Sustainable Endowments Institute David Kopans, Cofounder and Chief Financial Officer, GreenerU Long-term, flexible, and self-renewing resources can allow higher education sustainability professionals to move beyond triage or low-hanging fruit models—in which projects are chosen out of urgency or ease—to a holistic approach. This moderated panel discussion will explore development of sustainable sustainability funds, as well as a variety of funding and financing strategies including power or thermal purchasing agreements; green revolving loan funds; alumni/donor investments. These financial models can provide inexpensive capital, stretch dollars in times of limited resources, and build partnerships that strengthen the mission of the institution.
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| Green Office | 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Operational Practices Shela Fletcher, Senior Manager, Office Depot Green Office programs are a great opportunities to engage with your full-time building occupants (faculty & staff) while enhancing the campus through a sustainable lens. By connecting directly with these valuable stakeholders you can engage a broad spectrum of change agents who play a vital role in the success of your organization's future. This session will provide process development programs, areas of focus, and engagement tactics.
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| Measure, Message, Motivate: Building an Inclusive and Empowered Campus Sustainability Culture | 10:30 AM - 11:15 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Organization and Coalition Building Melissa Goodall, Assistant Director of the Office of Sustainability, Yale University Campuses around the world are tracking sustainability metrics, but how do we communicate those measurements in a way that engages and empowers students, staff, and faculty? Participants will learn to create a visibility plan for sustainability programs--including establishment of graphic identity guidelines and identification of practical and effective communications tools. Participants will learn to create a student-based visibility team to translate the university’s sustainability metrics into fact sheets, posters news items, classes, training sessions, and more.
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| Selecting and Prioritizing GHG Mitigation Strategies | 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Organization and Coalition Building Jenn Andrews, Director of Program Planning and Coordination, Clean Air-Cool Planet Susan Sloan-Rossiter, Senior Project Manager, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. Given that potential strategies for cutting campus energy use and carbon emissions are myriad, how do you identify the best options and move forward on them? The quantitative answer depends upon a financial analysis including lifecycle cost accounting and strategic project bundling to achieve a portfolio of strategies with the lowest cost per ton possible. The Campus Carbon Calculator’s Solutions Module allows users to easily undertake this type of analysis, and this session will demonstrate how. The session will also explore how to weigh qualitative considerations by highlighting case studies from Vanasse Hangen Brustlin’s work with colleges and universities on Transportation Demand Management.
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| Sourcing to Achieve Zero Solid Waste - The Critical Connection | 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Operational Practices Bonny Bentzin, Director of Sustainability, GreenerU Paul Ligon, Vice President, Casella Resource Solutions The priorities and values of the solid waste stream are shifting. It is no longer satisfactory merely to manage a single stream, a single container, and a hole in the ground—the new solid waste paradigm relies on an increasingly complex (and potentially resource-intensive) combination of aversion and diversion tactics. Mastery of the new paradigm necessitates a re-evaluation of management processes from their conception—the solid waste contract. The EPA has worked with stakeholders to develop best practices for management sourcing to dramatically increase waste diversion rates. Their approach is performance-based, and may be the key to management under a zero solid waste standard. This session is not a sales pitch and will present concepts and processes from this approach to seed a dialogue meant to rethink campus waste stream management beginning with the contract—an approach that works with any type of campus, whether the institution manages the waste stream internally or works with an external contractor.
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Lunch Keynote
| Remarks: Adam Markham, President, Clean Air-Cool Planet |
12:30PM - 1:45PM |
| Keynote Session: Transforming Campuses, Transforming Lives, Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capitalism Solutions Adam Markham, President, Clean Air-Cool Planet |
Concurrent Sessions
| Strategic Approaches for Comprehensive Returns | 2:00 PM - 3:45 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Financial Strategies Bill Leahy, Director, The Institute for Sustainable Energy at Eastern Connecticut State University Chris Powell, Director of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Initiatives, Brown University Michael Stoddard, Executive Director, Efficiency Maine Michele Madia, Director of Sustainability Financing and Strategy, Second Nature - Moderator An integrated approach to planning, funding, and implementing energy and environmental projects on campus can shift sustainability initiatives from cost centers to investment opportunities that result in significantly higher risk-adjusted returns compared to other campus investment strategies. The use of lifecycle cost accounting, strategic project bundling, and a holistic approach to building solutions has allowed many institutions to achieve significant efficiencies and even financial returns on investment—while improving campus operations and infrastructure, engaging the campus community, and enhancing learning environments. In this combination moderated panel discussion and participant discussion, learn how these strategies are working for others and consider how they can work on your own campus.
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| Behavior Change | 2:00 PM - 3:45 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Organization and Coalition Building Antje Danielson, Administrative Director, Tufts University Institute of the Environment Libby Mahaffy, Communications Specialist, Tufts Institute of the Environment Dallase Scott, Sustainability Program Manager, GreenerU A growing number of students, faculty, and staff are increasingly concerned about their environmental impacts. Despite good intentions, these same people, armed with the knowledge that their individual behavior can negatively impact the environment, continue to act with environmental disregard (e.g. leaving windows open during heating season, leaving lights on when leaving the room). This session will provide participants with strategies, developed from behavior theory, to shift campus constituents from saying that they want to care for the environment to actually taking pro-environmental action.
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| Campus Living Laboratory from Headache to Halo: Connecting the Dots for High Impact Student Projects |
2:00 PM - 3:45 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Campus as a Living Lab Kurt Teichert, Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Manager of Environmental Stewardship Initiatives, Brown University Mary Jensen, Campus Sustainability Officer, Keene State College Jack Byrne, Director of Sustainability Integration, Middlebury College Campus living laboratories are a common topic among campus sustainability programs, yet success can be challenging to achieve. This session addresses the challenges of living lab programs, the impetus for their design, and the tactics that can be applied to harness the often elusive link between student projects and campus operations. Successful programs can turn campus challenges into effective applied learning platforms for the entire community.
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| Problem-Based Learning (PBL) For Sustainable Technology | 2:00 PM - 2:45 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Operational Practices Fenna Hanes, Senior Director of Professional and Resource Development, New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE); Principal Investigator, STEM PBL James DeLaura, Chair, Technology and Engineering Education Department, Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) Susan Mooney, Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Program Director, Stonehill College Gabriella Gobiel, Environmental Studies Major, Undergraduate Student, Stonehill College The STEM PBL Project is a New England Board of Higher Education project funded by the National Science Foundation that aims to increase the number of middle school, high school, and college faculty skilled in the use of PBL in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) with a focus on sustainable technology education. Compared with lecture-based instruction, PBL has been found to improve student motivation, critical thinking, problem solving, learning retention, and ability to adapt to novel situations—critical skills for the 21st century workplace. A new PBL course for pre-service and graduate students developed at Central Connecticut State University will be described. In addition, a Stonehill College professor and student will describe how they implemented the STEM PBL instructional materials in a Environmental Science course.
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| Green Chemistry | 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM |
| Concurrent Session Track: Operational Practices Kate Anderson, Director of Education, Beyond Benign Beyond Benign is a non-profit dedicated to green chemistry education with an initiative designed specifically for a chemistry department’s curriculum. The Green Chemistry Commitment is a systematic approach to the demand for safer, non-toxic products and processes. The commitment shifts our educational institutions to prepare students to enter the workforce armed with the skills and knowledge to create society’s next generation of sustainable materials.
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| Break & Networking
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3:45 PM - 4:15 PM |
President's Panel
| Sustaining Sustainability Programs Through Transition | 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM |
| Len Schlesinger, President, Babson College; Mark Huddleston, President, University of New Hampshire; Gloria Larson, President, Bentley University; and Robert Pura, President, Greenfield Community College
To be moderated by David Hales, President, Second Nature.
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Pub Visit: Optional Networking Event
| Squealing Pig 134 Smith Street, Roxbury Crossing, MA |
5:30 PM |
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