The Path to a Green Building Plan at CSB|SJU

This proposal represents the combined work of many people. While its primary authors are the senior Environmental Studies majors and minors from the Spring 2004 research seminar, its roots are much deeper, going back to the group of faculty who worked to create the first environmental studies program at CSB/SJU in the early 1990s. Their hard work and commitment to providing students with new opportunities to pursue environmental topics as a focused part of their undergraduate educations laid the foundation for the minor program that flourished in the late 1990s, and the major that was established in 2003.  Six seniors will graduate with majors in Environmental Studies in May 2004 (along with seven minors), marking the culmination not only of their individual undergraduate careers, but of the nearly fifteen year process of building an environmental studies program that reflects the values, strengths, and natural settings of our of schools.

Given this history, it is only logical that the first project for the ENVR 395: Research Seminar course be focused on the CSB/SJU campuses.  Taught for the first time in Spring 2004, this new research seminar was designed to provide senior environmental studies students with opportunities to both engage in a major interdisciplinary research project and to gain some experience working under conditions that approximate those commonly found outside academe. While all prior environmental studies graduates conducted independent research projects and wrote substantial papers as their academic capstones, the class of 2004 is the first to go through the research seminar as a group.  Under the new model, all senior environmental studies students work as a sort of consulting firm, sharing collective responsibility for a single project that is conducted on behalf of, and ultimately presented to, an actual client.  All stages of the scoping, research, writing, editing, and production are directed by the students, who also carry responsibility for evaluating their own performance and those of their peers.

It is the hope of the students involved in this project that their work will ultimately inform a change of direction at CSB/SJU. As their report indicates, building systems and their operations account for the large measure of our collective impact on the environment. By making some of the small changes around the margins suggested herein, our institutions could begin the process of systematically reducing our collective environmental impacts while also furthering the educational agenda of the college/university. A bolder change of direction is at the heart of this project though, one that suggests an entirely new vision for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of all campus buildings.  Should the recommendations contained in this report be adopted wholesale, CSB/SJU would clearly be embarking on a new era in environmental leadership that would draw national attention not only to our immediate actions, but also to the Benedictine values that serve as the bedrock of our institutional commitments to the welfare of other people, other forms of life, and the planet that sustains us all.

As Chairperson of the Environmental Studies Program and the instructor for the ENVR 395: Research Seminar, I am delighted to present this document to the community.  It represents the hard work not only of the students involved, but many others with whom they consulted for professional advice or research assistance, and in some cases were directly inspired by.  I believe    the result speaks for itself by providing not only an excellent overview of the pressing need for sustainability in building operations, but also a very clear map showing us how CSB/SJU might get there in the future.

Dr. Derek R. Larson

Environmental Studies Program Chair

Collegeville, MN

May 5, 2004