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Lean, Green
Campus Team
Introducing Sustain Champlain
By Danielle Frawley ’08
The road to environmental sustainability at Champlain College will be, at
times, an uphill climb. Helping the College stay on track in its drive toward
responsible energy consumption is the charge of the campus-based group
Sustain Champlain.
 Originally an informal group known as the Post-Carbon Coalition (PCC),
after its core mission to reduce campus carbon emissions, members included
Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen, Business Management Program
Director Jim Whitney, and Core Division Associate Professor Rob Williams. In
November ’07 the PCC became an official campus organization and changed
its name to Sustain Champlain. The group’s debut was the Focus the Nation
educational event. Part of a national initiative involving nearly 2,000 “teams,”
Focus the Nation Champlain included environmental film screenings, teach-ins,
workshops, and guest speakers——among them pioneering environmentalist and
author Bill McKibben (see “Focus the Nation” on page 12).
Focus the Nation was a success, but Sustain Champlain members are not
resting on their laurels. As Williams notes, meaningful progress toward a more
sustainable way of life will involve more than special events. “Our biggest challenge
is this: How do we take Focus the Nation’s good energy and momentum and infuse
it more deeply into the culture of Champlain College?” he asks. “How do we expand
the range of conversation and action to include a much wider community here
at Champlain?”
In the weeks following Focus the Nation, Sustain Champlain met with Greg
Strong, a consultant with Spring Hill Solutions overseeing a campus energy audit
(see “Going, Going Green” on page 9). At Strong’s suggestion, the group will roll
out a four-part program for fostering environmental awareness:
- Institutional Commitment—campus
master plans and Web sites
- Academics—courses, brown bag
talks, forums
- Operations—hardware and
campus energy systems
- Campus Culture—“Mug for
Everyone” program, surveys, “Change a Lightbulb” campaigns,
Car-Free Campus days
Part of Sustain Champlain’s
mission is to sustain a conversation
about global climate change that
generates awareness as well as
action toward a brighter energy
future. As Cohen puts it, “We
empower and educate people so they
think about what they are doing.”
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