In their efforts to combat the status quo and address global warming, colleges have assumed an important leadership role. They also have become the seedbed of the burgeoning sustainability movement—as they should be. Colleges have always been catalysts for progressive social change. By their very nature, they also are intended to be sustainable; campuses are built to last and are endowed in perpetuity. Colleges seed the future by preparing young people for lives of leadership and service. Our graduates will necessarily confront the implications of global warming and environmental degradation—and seize the compelling opportunities afforded by such challenging developments. As a consequence, colleges have an urgent responsibility to model sustainable behavior on our campuses and in our communities.

But how do we do so? How do colleges weave the premises and practices of sustainability into their cultural fabric? How do we make an institutional commitment to sustainability . . . sustainable? And what exactly is it that we want to sustain and preserve?

The answers vary, of course. Every college has a different mission, heritage, context, and level of resources. On many campuses, student activism has provided the impetus for institutional commitments to energy conservation and environmental stewardship. At Furman, by contrast, sustainability initiatives have been driven by trustees, administrators, and faculty members; only recently have students in large numbers embraced the effort. Such a “top down” process may not be ideal, but it can be inclusive and effective. Over time, “top down” leadership, if carefully crafted, can build momentum that can excite the broad-based engagement of an entire campus community. Dr. Elizabeth MacNabb, director of environmental programs for the Associated Colleges of the South, a consortium of sixteen national liberal arts colleges, explains that “while it’s important for environmental sustainability to bubble up from the bottom . . . it MUST also come down from the top in order for serious change to occur.” Ultimately, of course, we want a campus commitment to sustainability to be embraced and promoted from every direction: bottom up, top down, and everything in between.

Sustainability isn’t a passing fad. Nor is it a single concept or a particular cluster of activities. It doesn’t promise simple solutions or quick fixes. Instead it embodies a holistic value system centered on the pressing need for people and organizations to think conscientiously about the long-term environmental implications of their activities. To be sustainable means taking the long view: behaving in ways that ensure the well-being of the planet and the needs of future generations.

As Furman’s new president in 1994, I spent my first year observing and listening, trying t to understand the campus community’s distinctive texture and values. The word “sustainability” was not mentioned, but there was a small but earnest group of professors, students, and staff members deeply concerned about environmental issues, energy conservation, and high performance buildings. Across the campus community I detected a palpable devotion to the distinctive beauty of the campus and its beckoning sense of place, of connectedness, of belonging. Like the avenue of stately oak trees that grace the green campus, the community displayed the virtues and wisdom of rootedness, a rootedness that had more to do with stability than with stagnation.

By the end of my first year as president, I had realized how important the taproots of beauty and resilience, memory and place, were to the spirit of living and learning at Furman. It was this reverence for the campus as a sacred space and an educational ecosystem that prompted me to promote sustainability as a defining institutional value and a primary strategic goal. I sensed that Furman had the values, the resources, and the will to make environmental stewardship one of its distinguishing strengths. To that end, discussions began to focus on the best ways to preserve and sustain the power of place, and in 1997 the university unveiled a new strategic plan that highlighted sustainability initiatives. Four years later, in 2001, the Board of Trustees unanimously agreed “to strengthen our commitment to the environment by promoting sustainability through educational programs, campus operations/construction practices and public awareness initiatives.”

Such “top down” commitments created a crucial foundation for concerted action across the campus. Trustee endorsements gave immediate credibility to the administration’s efforts to infuse sustainability into the campus culture. When the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment was introduced in 2007, Furman’s trustees endorsed the university’s being one of the charter signatories.

So our challenge was not to convince the president or trustees of the significance of sustainability. It was instead to translate a strong institutional commitment into a widespread institutional culture — to integrate sustainability into every facet of university life, not just campus operations and construction practices but also the curriculum, co-curriculum, and community partnerships.

Weaving Sustainability into the Campus Fabric

The first wave of sustainability programs in higher education was centered on—and usually limited to—an emphasis on more energy-efficient facilities. In 1999, for example, Furman’s trustees declared that all new and renovated construction projects must comply with the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Buildings Rating System. The university recently received the South Carolina Green Building Council’s Award of Excellence for its pioneering work in green building technologies. The Charles Townes Center for Science is a recent example of Furman’s emphasis on sustainable design. Completed in 2008, it incorporates an array of renewable energy components, including a solar/aquatic wastewater treatment system, two hybrid solar concentrators, and a sophisticated chilled-beam cooling system for thermal efficiency. Such high performance facilities are more than classroom buildings; they are ecologies of learning with permeable walls, living laboratories whose systems provide daily testimonials to the significance of energy efficiency and conservation.

Over the past decade, Furman University has intentionally sought to move beyond an emphasis on energy-efficient buildings and make sustainability a pervasive campus value system. This includes thinking more carefully about the food we eat and where it comes from. In 2006 Furman convinced ARAMARK, Inc., the university’s dining services provider, to buy as much of its food as possible from local and/or organic farms. The university has also developed a comprehensive set of “green purchasing guidelines” and is an Energy-Star National Partner.


We have also integrated sustainability issues into the academic program. In the fall of 2007, the faculty acknowledged that sustainability embodies all of the major elements and disciplines, nuances and complexities, of liberal learning. They therefore implemented a new curriculum that requires all students to take at least one course dedicated to “Humans and the Natural Environment.” Moreover, all first-year students enroll in two small group seminars—one in the fall semester, one in the spring—many of which focus on some aspect of environmental sustainability. These and other curricular enhancements ensure that no student will graduate without having confronted issues related to climate change.

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