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Clean Air-Cool Planet is the Northeast's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming.
  Outreach Audiences  |
FACULTY AND STAFF Few staff or faculty members have sustainability written into their job descriptions, and for many, their contribution to the campus’s environmental mission might not seem direct. Yet faculty and staff are central for your green-campus success because they can work to institutionalize your green efforts. Many schools have found success with the strategies listed below, and many work to help faculty and staff with greening and renewable energy strategies at their own homes. 1. Administrative Letters and Newsletters Internal newsletters and formal letters from the President and Dean can be great communication opportunities. Check out these examples from Massasoit Community College and UMASS Dartmouth below: Example 1: Massasoit Community College’s Administrative and Finance Newsletter always includes news on the school’s most recent sustainability initiatives. Check it out here. Example 2: UMASS Dartmouth’s Sustainability Initiative is another great example. Click here to read the pdf. Don’t forget that faculty and staff read the campus paper too! Example 1: UMASS’s Daily Collegiate recently covered the campus’s green campus initiatives. Read the article here: 3. Conferences and Lectures Conferences and lectures which are open to the whole community are a great way of increasing the public profile of your green or renewable initiatives. Here are two examples from Massachusetts campuses: Example 1: Bridgewater State College recently held a forum on the sustainability initiatives of the school and the other public campuses in the region. Read about the SE Connect Sustainability Summit. Example 2: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts called the entire campus community to a lecture given by Bill McKibben. Read about it here. 4. Course Catalogue Many schools have begun to indicate low-carbon or sustainability courses with a special designation in the course catalogue. This designation helps students select courses, but also helps faculty create interdisciplinary collaborations with interested colleagues. Example 1: UMASS Dartmouth has indicated sustainability-related courses by a “SUS” in the course catalogue. Find out more: http://www.umassd.edu/sustainability/curriculum.cfm Example 2: Cape Cod Community College has designed brochures exclusively about its environmental technology courses. They’re the envy of other campus departments! 5. Household Green Tips and Workshops Mount Wachusett Community College’s Sustainability program is reaching faculty and staff by hosting workshops and lectures on homeowner concerns. Thinking about faculty, staff, neighbors, and municipal leaders also as homeowners and helping them meet those green challenges is a great way of building capacity and help for the large-scale initiatives you hope to undertake on campus.
6. Local Press Invite the local press to your sustainability events, renewable energy installations, etc. Local press pieces can be an important way of informing staff and faculty of upcoming events since they are both employees and neighbors of your institution! Example 1: STCC connects with neighbors through frequent coverage in local papers. Click here to see a recent article about STCC’s renewable energy course offerings. Example 2: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts released this press release when its PV array went on line. 7. Local Schools Many faculty and staff members are parents! Keep them involved in campus green initiatives by including local schools and young students in your campus efforts. Example 1: UMASS Dartmouth’s Sustainability Camp Example 2: Mass Maritime’s Marine Environmental Symposium
8. National Press and Rankings The list of surveys and national magazines covering and ranking college and university sustainability grows by the day. Those undertaken by the Sustainable Endowments Institute and the National Wildlife Federation get a great deal of attention, but so do many others. To stay up to date on surveys and national press stories on sustainability, check out the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability’s 2007 Digest. In it, the section “Sustainability in the Media” has a compendium of the biggest articles and surveys of the year. Find it on-line at: http://www.aashe.org/publications/digest.php The research for sustainability features often begins where you or I would – with a Google™ search. Issuing frequent press releases and updating your website with your green intiatives, renewable energy courses, and sustainability events is a great way to increase your national green exposure. 9. Onsite Info and Brochures Be sure to include the campus community in your greening efforts through on-site advertisements and notices! Many campuses have found that informational posters in buildings with green or renewable features call attention to features that are often invisible, or difficult to visit. Posters and brochures about general sustainable or renewable initiatives are also important. Check out these examples below from UMASS Lowell, Cape Cod Community College, and Massasoit Community college, or click here to use our poster and brochure templates. Example 1: Sustainable Energy Lighting Measure from UMASS Lowell
Example 2: Massasoit’s “Able” Poster Campaign
Example 3: Cape Cod Community College’s
Renewable Energy course brochure
10. Ribbon Cuttings and Study Tours Take advantage of the natural interest in new renewable energy installations and green buildings by hosting ribbon cuttings and study tours. Since so many businesses, municipal leaders, students, and faculty wish to visit installations or new buildings, these tours can be a great way of reducing the number of visits so that your campus’s facilities manager can do things other than lead tours! Example 1: The ribbon cutting for Cape Cod Community College’s LEED Silver Lorusso Building was actually an electric cord cutting! The building’s tour was supplemented by this brochure. 11. Website Information and links on the college’s home page is a great way to inform alumni about campus greening and renewable energy efforts. Both Cape Cod Community College and Greenfield Community College have made explicit links to green efforts on their websites. Example 1: Greenfield Community College http://www.gcc.mass.edu Example 2: Cape Cod Community College 12. Workshops and Grants Supporting faculty to develop courses in sustainability is a great way to build capacity for green initiatives – many more projects can be completed as class projects than might otherwise be undertaken. Example 1: Massasoit Community College Tell Us Your Outreach Story! |
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