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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  |
TRUSTEES Large-scale renewable installations and major green building initiatives must be approved by college trustees (or regents or board). Including them in the excitement around sustainable initiatives can help secure support for your big-ticket items. 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. 2. Conferences and Lectures Conferences and lectures that 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 here. Example 2: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts called the entire campus community to a lecture given by Bill McKibben. Read about it here. 3. Graduation Events Graduation is a great opportunity to educate a larger community – students, alums, parents, neighbors – about your green efforts. Trustees are also very aware of graduation events even if they’re aren’t in attendance. It’s also a great way to tackle any number of green challenges on campus from food purchasing to transportation to composting! Example 1: Green Graduation at Colby College, Waterville, Maine Example 2: Oberlin College Climate Neutral Commencement Project Oberlin has undertaken a five-year plan to make Oberlin’s Commencement/Reunion Weekend climate neutral and will serve as a test case for the wider campus initiatives. Learn more about Oberlin’s green and reduced-waste purchasing plans and the Oberlin graduate green pledge here: (http://www.oberlin.edu/alumni/greenCommencement.html). 4. 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. 5. On-site Information 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 "green" buildings 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 the 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
7. Ribbon Cuttings and Study Tours Invite your trustees to ribbon cuttings! 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.
8. Trustee Meetings Many student organizations and campus green teams have found it effective to brief trustees on recent green efforts and green commitments – like to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. The meetings themselves can be a method for increasing the profile of green initiatives, like in the example below. Example 1: University of California Regents held a zero-waste meeting. Read more about it here: http://www.dailycal.org/article/26036 9. Website Information and links on the college’s home page is a great way to inform trustees 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
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