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Organizing Fellows:
Andrew J. Guswa, Engineering
Dano J. Weisbord, Director, Environmental Sustainability
The Committee on Sustainability, in coordination with Dano Weisbord, Environmental Sustainability Director, has been charged with producing a sustainability and climate action plan for Smith College. A draft of the document will be available in December 2009. The plan will be organized around specific functional areas, such as water, transportation, and energy. For each of the areas the plan will have identified a set of metrics to quantify the Smith College baseline, and will include reduction targets and strategies for achieving those goals.
The generation of this plan by Smith College provides a perfect opportunity to engage in a focused intellectual discussion of the notion of sustainability. Questions that arise naturally include: What are we trying to sustain? Do we value what is measured? What things do we value that are not being measured? Which strategies have the greatest promise for success? What are the differences between technical and behavioral strategies, especially in terms of their effects on the environment, our community, and culture? How does Smith’s institutional structure affect the implementation of the plan? How do the long-term goals reflect our values as an educational and scholarly institution? These important questions require input and insight from a range of perspectives, including the humanities, natural and social sciences, and engineering.
This short-term project will bring together a group of scholars whose research and thinking touches on questions of environmental sustainability in a variety of ways, and, through them, the Smith sustainability plan will be afforded a unique form of intellectual vetting. Faculty from a broad range of disciplines will come together to discuss and critique a draft of the sustainability plan, devoting particular attention to the metrics employed, the targets promised, and the methods of implementation.
The project will take place January 11–12, 2010 and will be structured so as to provide sufficient time for project Fellows to gain a reasonably full understanding of the plan, to raise questions and criticisms, and to collectively brainstorm ways in which it might be improved.
PROJECT SCHEDULE:
- Monday, January 11, 1-6:30 pm
- Tuesday, January 12, 9am-4pm
PROJECT FELLOWS:
- Andrew Guswa, Engineering, Director, Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability, ORGANIZING FELLOW
- Dano Weisbord, Director, Environmental Sustainability, ORGANIZING FELLOW
- John Burk, Biological Sciences
- John Brady, Geosciences
- Nathanael Fortune, Physics
- Katherine Halvorsen, Mathematics & Statistics
- Michelle Joffroy, Spanish & Portuguese
- Ann Leone, French Studies/Landscape Studies
- Lucy Mule, Education & Child Study
- Susan Stratton Sayre, Economics
- Greg White, Government
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