Case study: connecting climate planning and curriculum at Rice University

Citation

Johnson, R.R. (2009), "Case study: connecting climate planning and curriculum at Rice University", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 10 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe.2009.24910caf.001

Case study: connecting climate planning and curriculum at Rice University

Article Type: Feature From: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Volume 10, Issue 3

Introduction

Planning for climate neutrality offers universities a powerful teaching opportunity. Presidents at over 600 institutions of higher education have signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) as of this writing, pledging to adopt plans to lead their schools to climate neutrality. The experience of Rice University – an ACUPCC signatory – suggests that a compelling model for launching a school’s climate planning efforts is to integrate them directly with the curriculum. This paper discusses Rice’s classroom-based approach to the ACUPCC (and the origins of this approach), identifies key learnings from these experiences, and forwards a series of recommendations to guide other schools as they consider next steps after becoming an ACUPCC signatory.

Context

In his commencement address at Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in the spring of 1990, Dr David Orr issued an assignment for university campuses, wrapped in a series of four proposals. One of the proposals suggests that faculty and students examine the resource flows of their campus – both inputs and waste streams – and begin a process of reducing the environmental impact of these flows. To the point, he states:

[…] the results of these studies should be woven into the curriculum as interdisciplinary courses, seminars, lectures, and research. No student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the opportunity to participate in the creation of real solutions to real problems (Orr, 1991).

s speech may very well have marked the birth of the modern campus sustainability movement. Dr Orr’s framing of how a university should fuse environmental action and improvement with education proved inspirational to a group of Rice University Faculty who in an effort to “do something” about improving the university’s environmental performance formed a class in the spring of 1998 to begin the task of mapping the school’s resource flows. The following Spring of 1999, this class focused on what the previous class had identified as the single biggest source of the university’s environmental impact: greenhouse gas emissions. Over the course of the semester, the class created a methodology for conducting a greenhouse gas inventory (online calculators and widely recognized inventory protocols were not available at the time) and worked extensively with the university’s facilities personnel to understand the nuances of Rice’s energy consumption, metering, purchasing, and on-site energy production practices. Their final report included the university’s first greenhouse gas inventory, with data covering the time period of 1990-1998, and projected future growth in emissions based on the university’s expected plans for expansion. As part of this report, the class identified a series of steps that the university could take to reduce this future growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Their final paper was presented to several key administrators; but they received no response.

Not to be deterred, when the class reconvened in the spring of 2000, the planned topic of developing further suggestions for mitigating the expected grown in the university’s greenhouse gas emissions was scrapped in favor of examining administrative barriers to sustainability at Rice. By speaking with administrators and studying the example of other universities, the class realized that Rice needed both a sustainability policy and a dedicated campus sustainability professional to bring issues of sustainability to the forefront of university decision making. After several years spent by students working directly and cooperatively with administrators, in 2004 a sustainability policy drafted by the students was adopted by the Board of Trustees, and the new position of “Sustainability planner” (now Director of Sustainability) was created to coordinate, support, and lead campus sustainability efforts.

Remaining true to Dr Orr’s call to reduce the environmental impact of the university, the class – by then carrying its present title “Environmental issues: rice into the future” – focused its attention on project teams of three to five students each, using the campus as a laboratory for learning about sustainability and implementing environmental change. The success of the class in creating the sustainability policy led to a unique partnership, whereby staff and administrators became increasingly comfortable collaborating with students on environmental projects within the controlled setting of the classroom.

This growing trust bred further success, as the university’s commitment to green building and other such initiatives grew out of the class. Inspired by the experience of “Environmental issues: rice into the future,” a similar class targeted specifically towards campus projects for engineering students was launched in the spring of 2007, entitled “Engineering solutions for sustainable communities.” Together, these two classes provide Rice with a curricular connection between campus operations and environmental education. Both classes now feature teamed instruction with a tenured faculty member and the Director of Sustainability, providing a direct link to the administrative side of campus.

Confronting the climate challenge through the curriculum

By the spring of 2007, the ACUPCC gained momentum in higher education, and preliminary discussions about signing the commitment had begun on the Rice campus. Sensing an opportunity to advance the discussion about the university’s response to climate change, a project team in “Engineering solutions for sustainable communities” undertook an update of Rice’s greenhouse gas emissions, this time using the widely recognized Clean Air – Cool Planet calculator rather than the homegrown methodology created in 1999. Similarly, in “Environmental issues: rice into the future,” a project team developed a unique carbon calculator designed to help on-campus students estimate their carbon footprint by hard-wiring information about the university’s energy purchasing and generation systems into the calculator. Over 200 students used the calculator that semester to learn about their carbon footprint and the categories of actions that comprised their CO₂ emissions. These two projects pushed beyond general climate change education. Together, they provided hard data for a university-level and individual-level inventory of emissions, which set the stage for developing a response. When Rice University President David Leebron signed the ACUPCC in the Fall of 2007, the necessary measurements were already in place, and the primary sources of emissions were understood.

In the Spring 2008 semester, a student project team in “Engineering solutions for sustainable communities” updated the inventory and began a process of identifying a range of solutions to lead the university towards the goal of becoming net climate neutral. They worked with facilities personnel to understand the future growth of the campus, consulted with energy managers to determine potential campus efficiency gains through a series of conservation measures, and studied emerging technologies that might reasonably be applied in the coming decade. They did not focus just on the emissions side; they also began the process of quantifying the sequestration benefit of university-owned carbon sinks, such as forests. This work triggered a dialogue among administrators to better understand the value that these properties offer to the university in light of issues of climate change. Further, the class’s report set the stage for moving forward with the ACUPCC-required climate action plan, and informed the process of updating the university’s master plan.

Outside the classroom but as part of the students’ academic life, the 2007-2008 academic year featured a series of climate change awareness events tied into a themed experience known as the “year of humans, nature, and climate change” at Rice University. Incoming freshmen were provided with a copy of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change as part of the university’s common reading program. Numerous guest speakers visited campus to present research and viewpoints on climate change, and an environmental film series further addressed related topics. In addition, a month-long energy competition between the residential colleges enabled students to actively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, with the winning colleges receiving bonus “green” funds to be spent on sustainability initiatives as well as for a party. During that month, students prevented approximately 85 metric tons of CO₂ from being emitted, while saving between $15,000 and 20,000 in energy (Pool, 2007). This themed year provided a consistent conversation that contributed to and supported the signing of the ACUPCC by Rice.

Lessons from the Rice experience

Several lessons emerge from Rice’s curricular-based approach to the ACUPCC. As discussed, Rice’s environmental story is one that is closely connected to the classroom. Many of Rice’s most significant environmental decisions and actions can be traced either directly or indirectly to student projects in classes that use the campus as a laboratory of learning about sustainability. The first lesson is that this framework of established project-oriented campus-focused environmental classes makes it easier for Rice to respond to environmental issues and sustainability commitments such as the ACUPCC. It is not uncommon for university administrators to suggest project topics for these classes, and this speaks to the history of accomplishment and the trust that has built up over time.

In the absence of this framework of classes, environmental efforts would rest primarily with staff and key administrators, with additional extra-curricular support from students during the academic year. This approach would certainly yield some successes, but makes such efforts more vulnerable to competing workloads and priorities. Experience has shown that a second lesson is that well-directed student projects can help provide the crucial early efforts to move environmental initiatives forward, positioning supportive staff and administrators to act upon an existing body of research and work rather than having to begin from zero. In the context of the ACUPCC, knowing that a recent greenhouse gas inventory had already been prepared for the university by students with oversight from faculty made the short-term obligations of becoming an ACUPCC signatory seem less onerous. The conversation was able to begin with how to manage what had already been measured, rather than how to measure the problem, thanks to the student project.

A third lesson is that many students who become engaged in a campus-oriented environmental project stay engaged beyond the end of the semester. They emerge as campus environmental leaders and trusted partners, and launch new and complementary initiatives. For instance, three students who had taken an environmental projects course worked directly with the Director of Sustainability to launch an EcoReps Program, placing a part-time paid student assistant in each of Rice’s nine residential colleges to focus on issues of utility conservation, recycling, and environmental education. As another example, the student who led the creation of the Rice carbon calculator went on to implement a program to distribute energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs in exchange for incandescent bulbs in student rooms, a small-scale efficiency initiative that nevertheless helps to reduce the university’s carbon footprint and utility expenditures. The successes achieved in the classroom give the students the confidence to pursue future projects, including those related to the ACUPCC. This experience also better prepares them to take leadership roles on environmental issues in their careers and personal lives.

The themed academic experience of the “year of humans, nature, and climate change” offered a cautionary lesson, as uncovered through student focus groups conducted that academic year by a Rice professor, a post-doc fellow, and an undergraduate on the topic of climate change[1]. They discovered in the students they studied a clear desire to respond to environmental issues – especially climate change – through project-oriented learning rather than passive learning. The students indicated a sense of helplessness and feeling overwhelmed when presented with numerous lectures on climate change. Like the faculty a decade ago who created the first environmental projects course at Rice, they wanted to “do something” about it. A related lesson was that the students preferred to learn about solutions, not just problems and causes. These two lessons underscore the benefit of devoting courses to project-oriented environmental learning, especially when dealing with issues of the scale and seriousness of climate change.

Recommendations from Rice

As Rice continues to develop its climate action plan, the university’s project-oriented campus sustainability courses will play a central role in researching, identifying, and implementing greenhouse gas reduction strategies. Acknowledging that every university has its own culture and unique set of circumstances, Rice’s experience with the ACUPCC validates the value of the assignment that Dr David Orr issued in 1990 for the university’s resources flows to become woven into the curriculum, with students engaged to develop real solutions to these problems. Other schools could similarly develop project-oriented courses to tackle campus environmental issues – especially climate change – whether they draw upon students from a single academic program or class or an interdisciplinary combination of courses. Even if schools were to treat the issue of climate change in the classroom solely in a passive manner without related project work, the experience from Rice suggests that discussions of solutions be included along with the science to provide a broader picture and to prevent students from becoming disengaged and fatalistic.

Note

1. Research conducted by Professor Elizabeth Long, Dr Kristen Schilt, and Andrea Dinneen during the 2007-2008 academic year.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Professors Paul Harcombe (retired), Elizabeth Long, Don Ostdieck, and Kyriacos Zygourakis among others for their dedication to project-oriented campus sustainability classes at Rice University.

Richard R. JohnsonFacilities Engineering and Planning, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. He can be contacted at: rrj@rice.edu