Campus Context

As an increasing number of high school graduates enter the realm of higher education, there is more waste generated and more energy required on campuses across the country.  Now is the time to find new and better means of accommodating the growing populations.  With this quest to find ways to safely house and care for campus residents comes the possibility of green building .  It offers something innovative, intriguing, and beneficial to the environment , a means of providing an element that will promote a healthier lifestyle among students and commitment to care for the earth.

            The state of the environment  is becoming an important issue that must be faced by society at large.  Recycling , reducing consumerism, reducing water usage, and other steps in the direction of environmental recovery are emphasized every day, and soon to become a crucial step is building practices.  With green building , we are able to make a major positive impact on the surroundings of the establishments in which we live and/or spend most of our lives.  On a college campus, whether the building is residential or academic, students, administration, and faculty use it on a daily basis, and there is a great deal of waste produced by those who frequent the location.  By addressing these issues through green building and decreasing our impact on the environment, a college community will be able to create a substantial positive influence on the campus surroundings. 

            CSB/SJU is no different from other colleges in these respects.  Although there is a great deal being done in respect to keeping our surroundings preserved and establishing the importance of caring for the environment  through the teaching of Benedictine stewardship, there is so much more we can do to promote a healthier environment in central Minnesota.  Green building  and sustainable  living practices are very efficient means of doing just that.  By constructing a green building, CSB/SJU can continue the tradition of introducing innovative design  while at the same time living out a goal of Benedictine stewardship .  Adhering to this principle is an important rule of both institutions, a teaching that has been passed down from generation to generation of monastery inhabitants, as well as the students attending these schools.  Education of the building to accommodate the environment, as well as its occupants, should then also become an important element in the research and education practiced here.

            The Seton buildings appear to be excellent examples of environmentally-friendly architecture that blend the surrounding elements with the buildings.  At the time when these apartments were constructed, they were examples of sustainable  building and were designed and constructed with good intentions of stewardship  practices.  However, with time and out-dated technology, these buildings have acquired leaks, mold, and other negative aspects of faulty construction .  While many may see this as a reason to view green building  as an example of unreliable technology or a timely fad, the fact remains that green building has only grown in knowledge and reliability.  With knowledge of past mistakes, new green technology has emerged in the last few decades; this architecture is not only innovative, but also efficient and long-lasting.  If our campuses once again adopted these good environmental intentions that were upheld in the past, a very well-planned and stable building practice could encourage Benedictine stewardship far into the future.    

By adopting a green building  policy and practicing operations that benefit the environment  on one of the campuses, CSB/SJU will continue to follow the Benedictine calling to be stewards to the land.  Because God is believed to be manifested in finite things and present to the environment in which we live, we should take great concern in the impacts we generate upon His creation.  There is no division between the material and the sacred in this world; all materials are considered sacred aspects of God’s intended creation and for this reason, they should be treated with respect and care.

Along with stewardship , sustainability  needs to be brought even more into practice by the community.  This fosters a person’s ability to establish a special connection to a place and become involved in caring for that place, paying special attention to not harm the Earth.  Our campuses need to think in a generational mindset, remembering that our schools will be on this land far into the future.  Through sharing in this process of stability, the people who will actually make use of the building will establish their role of “place” and care for the area where it is built.  It will establish a connection to the immediate area of construction  and gain a sense of commitment from the people in the area.

The Benedictine value of frugality emphasizes the value of using as little as is necessary, embracing sparseness, and following the practice of thinking twice before using something that could be a potential nonrenewable  resource.  This building and the practices within it will limit the amount of consumption—through people and energy sources--that generates from other buildings on the two campuses.  According to Benediction tradition, the ecology of this campus should be given special attention and care, not only because it is crucial to our well-being as a human race dwelling among these elements, but also because it is a part of God’s special creation for which He has given us the responsibility of caring.  If we fail in our responsibility to care for and protect what has been placed here, there will be serious ecological consequences that will not only harm the environment  in which we live, but also harm our well-being.

Not only is it important to practice these environmentally friendly values, but it is important to teach them as well.  A green building  on our college campus is especially important, because it allows us to create an ecologically sustainable  living system and allow it to stand as an educational symbol that can be used to create awareness, knowledge, and creativity in the community.  Unlike green buildings constructed in a non-educational setting, a campus green building does not simply have to make the financial bottom line through increased worker productivity and decreased pollution costs.  Our campus can consider such values as increased educational resources, a better learning environment , and a continuing research potential in green building.

             Imagine a building that allows a management class to study tactics and reasons for increased worker happiness and productivity.  Biology classes would examine the workings of a grass roof system or the ecosystem connections of organisms in a living machine .  Psychology classes could explore the workings of stress relieving tactics such as day lighting , air quality, and connection to nature.  Chemistry students could study the process of improving water treatment.  It would be an invaluable resource for countless environmental studies classes.  A green building  itself would become an invaluable research tool, creating hands-on knowledge that benefits the student’s ability to learn and the professor’s ability to teach.  This knowledge would also add to the growing understanding of the new and innovative benefits of environmentally-conscious planning, contributing to the growing collective knowledge of this bustling field. 

Currently, there are some buildings at SJU that exemplify an environmentally friendly intention.  Once again, the Seton apartments at SJU were designed with such a purpose, boasting of grass roofs to control storm water and heat islands, large south-facing windows  to maximize sun exposure and passive heat, and very low visual impacts by being built into the ground.  Another apartment development at SJU, however, was exactly the opposite.  The largely visible and colorful Vincent apartments are a testament to bad ecological planning.  Their relation to the sun in order to maximize natural light was given little consideration, their lack of thermostat control creates massive amounts of excessive energy use, and their box construction  was made with little thought given to materials or their ecological footprint  (not to mention the over-extended massive parking lot).

 The Seton design strategy is the result of the gas shortages and high-energy prices of the 1970s.  Yet only a few years later when prices went down and resources seemed plentiful, the energy-hungry Vincent apartments were built.  This short-term building strategy is a very unwise practice for two important reasons:  First, CSB/SJU does not plan to end its stay on this land in a decade or two.  The monasteries were some of the first European settlements in this area, and it can be assumed that they do not plan on moving in the near future.  The Quadrangle, which is among these first buildings, still stands today.  Why would our colleges then adopt a building practice in which the type of building strategy changes completely within a decade?  Any building built on our campus should be built with the mindset that it will be here for centuries to come.  In the Cradle -to-Cradle model adopted by Michael Braungart and William McDonough,[i] materials are designed with the intention of being passed on beyond the sightline of our lifetime.  This is the approach our campus should take if we intend to inhabit this land for generations to come.

This idea brings us to the second reason why a short-term building strategy is a bad policy.  Although our world is presently dependent on cheap non-renewable  resources, this will not be the case in years to come.  These resources are rapidly depleting, as is the amount of renewable natural capital such as clean water and air.  By adopting a long-term perspective on our building practices, the benefits of an environmentally sound building can be seen very clearly.  In 100 years the majority of non-renewable resources will be exploited, marginal land use will be much higher, and more buildings will be needed to accommodate the growing population.  If our campus wants to construct a building that will be able to exist in such a world, it must be built in a fashion that makes it more self-sustainable , less ecologically intrusive, and flexible enough to be up-cycled with a changing campus.

Considering that the trends of building use on the Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s campuses show that the buildings can be used for well over a century, it is necessary for the institution to consider the potential changes just mentioned.  It then becomes essential to consider the type of building that would work best with any of those potential changes.  A green building  would be the most likely candidate for a structure that could be used and maintained for the next few hundred years.  A green building is preferable to standard building design, because if planned correctly, it would be the most adaptable to a large variety of uses, would use less energy if energy resources became scarce, and would use less water than the standard building design. 

            A large focus of green building  is on the adaptability and efficiency of a structure.  If a building is easily adaptable it is more likely to be used for a long time.  On the Saint John’s campus a good example of adaptability is the Quadrangle.  The Quad has been in use for more than one hundred years and is still a functional building today.  This example shows that a building which is adaptable can be functionally used for much longer than a standard building.  Additionally, if a building is highly efficient it will also be used through periods of scarcity and shortage.  When a building is both water efficient and energy efficient, it is more likely to remain in use if, for example, there were another shortage of energy resources.  With the incorporation of these green building aspects into the structures of CSB/SJU, these new buildings will have greater potential for use through much of what may come to pass in the uncertain future. 

            This then leads to the necessity of green building .  It becomes unwise to make the large investments necessary for a building when it will be unusable after a relatively short period of time.  This helps to demonstrate what the institutions will gain from adopting a green building policy.  With a policy of green building, the institutions will gain peace of mind, not only in the fact that they are being environmentally friendly, and thus are upholding the value of stewardship , but they also will gain the benefit of knowing that by constructing a green building they will be investing in yet another building that will stand the test of time and will be a productive and useful structure far into the future.

Multiple parties stand to benefit from a green building  policy.  CSB/SJU is in the position to benefit substantially from green building as well, both directly and indirectly.  The other parties that would benefit consist of the students, faculty, staff, the local  community, and surrounding environment .  All of the people that use the building stand to benefit, because it will be a cleaner and healthier place to work and live.  The students also stand to gain a valuable learning tool.  The experimental opportunities that are available in a green building are only limited by the imagination.  The faculty then stands to gain additional substance for their potential lesson plans, allowing their students to broaden their learning experience.  The local community also benefits from a green building, because the process brings a focus to use more local resources, thus stimulating the local economy.  Additionally, the local community benefits from the educational potential of a green building and the possibilities that will arise for education.  The surrounding environment is also a benefactor; this is due to the relative lack of pollution that is involved with green buildings.  All of these groups are beneficiaries to the green building process; however, the institution will be one of the main beneficiaries of such a project.

CSB/SJU will benefit both directly and indirectly from having a green building  policy.  The direct benefit that the institution will derive is from any recognition that it receives from constructing and having a green building on either campus.  Additionally, they will benefit from the lower resource expenses associated with the continual operation of such a green building.  However, the indirect benefits almost outweigh the direct benefits.  These indirect benefits are derived from all the benefits that the other parties receive.  When the students, faculty, and staff that use the building are healthier and more productive, they are better able to learn, teach, and work effectively.  If the students are able to be more productive and to use the building as a learning aid, they will leave the institution with a better understanding of green building and its importance.  This develops one more opportunity for the students to broaden their liberal arts education experience.  It benefits the institutions because any school’s main focus is quality education for its students, and this is another venue for increasing that quality education.  With proper development this could become a fundamental part of the CSB/SJU liberal arts education, thus blending its values of stewardship  and liberal arts.

CSB/SJU is known for providing an educational experience that is unique to any other college.  Their locations amid the lakes and woods of central Minnesota play a crucial part in what shapes and reflects the characters of these places.  It is important that the buildings constructed echo this character, and a green building  can do just that, upholding this ethical commitment to the beauty and stability of our campus environments.