Post in State University of NY is building environmentally friendly campus PLUS a curriculum on sustainability

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The Curriculum - The Sustainable Hampton - NYTimes.com




THE CURRICULUM
The Sustainable Hampton
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By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: July 27, 2008
AN old stone and shingle windmill, atop a bluff near the breezy far
end of Long Island, is the symbolic heart of the State University of
New Yorks newest campus. Built around 1713, the mill once harnessed
wind to generate power. Later, it was a guest house where Tennessee
Williams spent a summer in the 1950s. Now it is undergoing
reconstruction, its rotting beams replaced and huge blades rebuilt,
as the campus takes shape around it. Aptly, Stony Brook Southampton
is dedicated mind and body to the pursuit of sustainability.

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Maxine Hicks for The New York Times
SYMBOL Stony Brook Southamptons colonial windmill is being restored.
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Maxine Hicks for The New York Times
HARVEST Rainwater is collected in tanks and recycled.
In recent years, just about every campus has made some commitment to
learn anew how to co-exist with the natural world, to use less energy
and to reduce the carbon emissions it contributes to global warming.
But Stony Brook Southampton is building not only an environmentally
friendly campus but also a curriculum in which nearly every course
deals with sustainability. It is a public-education experiment being
watched across the country.

Stony Brook Southampton will certainly be among a limited number of
campuses with this level of commitment to sustainability, says Judy
Walton, acting executive director of the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Sustainability
is really a change in the mind-set of how we operate. Its like
seeing the world through a new lens.

There were only 200 students on campus this past school year, the
colleges first; 350 are expected for the fall, and officials hope
to reach 2,000 students within five years. If all goes according to
plan, they will live in harmony with nature on a campus with
geothermal technology and some wind-generated electricity; they will
eat local produce in a cafeteria that does not have to figure out how
to dispose of used cooking oil because it does not serve fried foods.
In fact, it does not have a deep fryer.

But most significant is how Southampton, a part of Stony Brook
University, is writing into its courses the concept of
sustainability. Students study it when they study literature,
economics, architecture or statistics.

Sustainability is one of those fuzzy academic areas that varies in
what it encompasses, even what its called. But on its philosophy
there is consensus: it takes a multidimensional approach to
understanding mans interactions with the natural and man-made
world, with a strong social-justice component (something
environmental studies has traditionally lacked).

Across-the-curriculum sustainability was once the exclusive province
of eco-colleges like Prescott in Arizona, which offers a Ph.D. in
sustainability education, and the College of the Atlantic in Maine,
where all students major in human ecology. But the subject has spread
to mainstream colleges, as an end in itself (usually as a minor) or
wrapped in another discipline (sustainability design, say, or
economics). Southampton will join the few institutions, among them
Arizona State University, offering bachelors and graduate degrees
in sustainability.

In the spring, Arizona States new School of Sustainability moved
into a 1950s building retrofitted to meet many green standards.
Charles L. Redman, director of the school, will welcome its first
sustainability majors this fall about 110 undergraduates along with
about 50 students in the graduate program. The focus of the
curriculum, he says, is problem-solving.

Our current view is, right now, sustainability means being able to
handle problems in a variety of situations, Dr. Redman says.
What we want for the students is not that they learn how to build a
structure in a certain way but that they learn the concepts of
collaboration, intellectual agility and problem-solving. If students
come out with those three things, were a success.

Solving myriad problems might take into account social equity,
economics, political science, physical sciences, cultural influences
and the environment. It would acknowledge the potential for food
shortages and energy drained when corn ethanol is produced as a
fossil fuel replacement. Or foresee the cultural obstacles in
introducing solar cookers to combat deforestation in rural Thailand,
where villagers cook indoors.

We cant just engineer ourselves out of these problems, says
Martin A. A. Schoonen, a geochemist who is interim dean of
Southampton. Rather, complex contemporary issues require system
thinking, he says, to better prepare students for whatever they
do.

LIKE other campuses moving in this direction, Southampton is a work
in progress. A lot of campuses have courses in sustainability, but
here we actually have a campus that is going to develop around this
idea, says Dr. Schoonen. Thats important because we learn a
lot outside the classroom.

Stony Brook Southampton sits on 82 acres of gently rolling land that
has served as a millionaires retreat (this is the Hamptons), an art
colony and, in the 1960s, a small liberal arts college that was part
of Long Island University. The weathered shingles of the windmill
make clear that the ocean is nearby; the broad, sloping lawn leads to
a dramatic view of Shinnecock Bay. Water, wind and sky are abundant,
whether people are outside or peering through the portholes in the
doors at Chancellors Hall.

The college that used to stand here, Southampton College, was known
for a marine research program and a graduate writing program, both of
which have been retained by Stony Brook and continue to attract
students. The state paid $35 million for the property.

Shirley Strum Kenny, president of Stony Brook, wanted Southampton to
be a center of sustainability like the one taking shape at Arizona
State. But first she had to explain sustainability to the state
university board of trustees. She says it wasnt a hard sell.
Sustainability is going to be the defining issue of the 21st
century, she says. Mindful that critics might object to a narrowly
drawn curriculum, Southampton was kept closely tied to Stony Brook,
whose liberal arts courses are available to Southampton students (via
biodiesel shuttle). Stony Brooks main campus, with more than 22,000
students, is about 50 miles away.

Not everyone there agreed this was the best way for the university to
grow. This spring, some 100 Stony Brook faculty members signed a
petition challenging Dr. Kennys leadership and priorities. They
cited, among other things, the opening of Southampton  just when
the state was reducing the university systems budget by about $52
million and Stony Brooks by almost $12 million. Last month Dr.
Kenny, who is 73, announced that for personal reasons she would
retire next June after 15 years as president. She dismisses the
critics as a marginal faction and says the money to reinvent
Southampton is coming from special allocations from the Legislature
about $45 million so far, with $12 million from other funds.

The plan is going to happen, period, she says. The future of
Southampton is secure.

When the first undergraduate trailblazers arrived here last
September, they had to put up with a campus that was anything but
finished.

Six 1960s-era dorms have been brought up to state university
standards. Others will be torn down and replaced with a 300-bed dorm
that meets at least a silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) standard. The library  actually called the
information commons because electronic information sources may
outnumber printed books  is to open in 2009. It will have a
geothermal system for heating and water, a rooftop collector for
rainwater to be used in the washrooms and large windows positioned to
take full advantage of the sun for light and heat.

Because there were so few students this first year, there wasnt
much in the way of social activities. Students joked that anyone
playing intramural sports could set school records. Academic options
were also limited, but last month the state education department
approved three new majors for the fall: ecosystems and human impact;
environmental design, policy and planning; and sustainability
studies, which, with its broad reach, Dr. Schoonen views as a new
version of the traditional liberal arts degree. The college also
offers majors in marine science, marine vertebrate biology and
environmental studies. That last will be phased out, Dr. Schoonen says.

To facilitate team-teaching and enable disciplines to be crossed,
faculty members are not grouped around traditional departments but
around issues related to sustainability. For example, a course that
deals with endangered species could draw on climate change and land
use as well as literature, with a reading of Moby Dick. The goal
is to create a synergy of science and humanities, engineering and
literature, statistics and poetry, all in the same syllabus.

One course recently approved, Ecology and Evolution in American
Literature, is a broad survey of American literature from
transcendentalism (Henry David Thoreau) to eco-feminism (Toni
Morrison) to journalism (Don DeLillo), with the focus always on the
evolution of ecological awareness in the United States. Another,
Collective Action and Advocacy, studies the way people act
collectively to address social problems, a key component of
sustainability, and examines environmental activism like the
Greenpeaceand Save the Whales campaigns.

Most important, the first students here have a chance to take part in
decisions that will shape the physical campus, learning firsthand
about the mechanical systems of the college and, so, basic lessons of
sustainability. Students are helping determine the layout of the
student center, which will either be expanded or torn down and built
anew. How much space should be dedicated to exercise equipment and
how much to lounging? They have decided that both effort and comfort
are necessary, and the space should be split evenly between the two.

Students are also to be involved in the design and construction of a
storm water collection system for irrigation that respects the
contours of the land, and a LEED-rated sewage treatment plant with
attached learning center. Understanding the waste cycle, Dr. Schoonen
says, equips students for the challenges of creating a sustainable
world in a way that economic theory or civil engineering would not.

Jeffrey C. Lang, a 20-year-old junior from Mattituck, N.Y., works on
a committee studying uses for a new greenhouse constructed of
recycled materials.

Students have compiled a long list of herbs, fruits and vegetables to
plant in the fall for use in the cafeteria and ornamental bushes to
beautify the campus. Native grasses will be grown to return lawns to
meadows, which dont require mowing. Fairly traditional stuff, says
Mr. Lang, who transferred to Southampton from Suffolk County
Community College to pursue his interest in architecture and the
environment. His committee is also working on plans to build a
radically different kind of greenhouse. Instead of just plants, we
would like to see a geodesic dome built at a central point of the
campus where people could get together, Mr. Lang says. Were
looking to redefine how a greenhouse is perceived.

Some of Southamptons first students were lured by its promise.
Others saw it as a back door to Stony Brook. Most of the charter
class came off the flagships wait list.

This fall, though, all 150 incoming freshmen had applied directly to
Southampton. (With 500 applications and 48 percent admitted, the
admissions rate is close to the main campuss.) Twelve students will
transfer from Stony Brook. But roughly 30 of last years first class
of students have decided that Southampton isnt for them.

One of them, Brianna R. Fletcher, 18, plans to be a physician
assistant. She says she enrolled at Southampton only because Stony
Brook did not have room for her. At Southampton she took biology,
chemistry, calculus and archaeology, all sprinkled with core concepts
of sustainability. The approach didnt suit her, she says, and she
found the small student body too much like her high school. Still,
Southampton had an effect on her: When Im back at home in
Buffalo now, I feel weird if I dont recycle, and if I use
hairspray, I feel kind of bad because of what I know it can
contribute to global warming.

Shalwyn Ullah, an 18-year-old from Brooklyn, also didnt know what
to expect when he didnt get into Stony Brook and instead took a
place at Southampton. He had to go online to find out what this place
was all about. He wasnt looking for the kind of program offered at
Southampton. But marine science seemed interesting.

First semester, he had a work-study job at the marine lab, feeding
striped bass, seahorses and other fish used for experiments or for
display. He says he liked working there because it helped him
understand the cycles of nature. Second semester, a course called
Peoples of South America opened his eyes to the environments
impact on the people in the third world. Now hes thinking about a
career with an international development agency or a green energy
company.

Other colleges practice sustainability by changing light bulbs and
recycling, he says, but Southampton actually practices what it
preaches by teaching sustainability as a major. Mr. Ullah says that
by now his father, who is from Bangladesh, understands pretty well
what sustainability is. But he still wants to know what someone can
do with a degree in sustainability.

The answer, Mr. Ullah says, is save the earth.

Anthony DePalma is a former reporter for The Times.


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