Sustainability in Higher Education: Spotlight on Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott College is a small women's liberal arts college situated in Decatur, Georgia. The goal of the college is to educate women to think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times. One of the challenges of our era is how to deal with climate change, and Agnes Scott College, with the leadership of the Office of Sustainability, has been incorporating sustainability into every facet of the college in order to decrease their impact on the environment.In 2007, Dr. Elizabeth Kiss, current president of Agnes Scott, signed the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment in a national effort of higher education institutions to address global warming. As one of the first schools to sign onto this commitment, Agnes Scott pledged to become climate neutral by 2037. The goals set out in the Presidents' Climate Commitment called for an active role in sustainability initiatives, so in 2008, the Office of Sustainability was created to bring about environmental change on the campus through practical sustainability above and beyond the climate commitment.  "We first focused a lot on waste diversion, with the idea that you can't do anything well if you can't recycle," Elizabeth Rowe, the Sustainability Fellow at the Office of Sustainability, said in reference to the beginning efforts of sustainability on campus. Following from waste diversion, one of the first big pushes by the Office of Sustainability was to change campus behavior around sustainability so that there would be support for further building upgrades and sustainable services.The Office of Sustainability is proud of the strength of the waste diversion program at Agnes Scott. A few years ago, the waste diversion rate at Agnes Scott reached 74%, a large advancement from many higher education diversion rates that fluctuate between 20% and 30%, with the school's current waste diversion rate ranging from 50-60%. A large part of the low amount of waste coming from the college is a result of composting and recycling in the dining hall, with no waste actually coming from the dining hall on campus.One of the most recent advancements from the partnership between the Center for Sustainability and the financial offices at Agnes Scott is the Green Revolving Fund.  Started in 2011 as a donor based fund to carry out the college's climate action plan, the Green Revolving Fund has been at the center of financial support for sustainable initiatives on Agnes Scott's campus.  Elizabeth Rowe explained that "the money is used for energy efficiency upgrades, and the savings from that fund come from the projected savings from those projects, which are then put back into the fund for future projects."  Further expanding upon the physical upgrades as a result of the Green Revolving Fund, Elizabeth said that Agnes Scott started with lighting upgrades in buildings, and has expanded to replace old toilets with low water usage toilets in some of the dorm buildings, has bought the solar array on the observatory, and paid for a portion of the geothermal system for the newly renovated Campbell Hall.Agnes Scott is 1 of 70 colleges that has this type of fund for campus environmental initiatives, and it continues to provide momentum to the college's commitment to attaining carbon neutrality by 2037.  Currently, the Green Revolving Fund has the ability to provide $1 million in efficiency upgrades for the college, which is extremely large considering the small size of the school.  Elizabeth Rowe summed up sustainability on the Agnes Scott campus by stating that "we do it [sustainability] on a smaller scale with smaller budgets, with similar results [to larger institutions]."To learn more about sustainability on Agnes Scott College's campus, go to the Office of Sustainability's website, or contact sustainability@agnesscott.edu.Celeste Whitman is an intern at GIPL and a senior at Agnes Scott.