Greenprint Committee
White Paper
Southampton College: Building Green

---First Draft November 21, 2003---

This white paper is a work in progress. It is also an ambitious effort to expand Southampton Graduate Campus’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The Greenprint Committee drafted this document to encourage thoughtful dialogue about the College’s future. Almost all of the goals in this document represent draft recommendations for future policy and action.

College Identity Statement
Southampton Graduate Campus, Long Island University’s small liberal arts and sciences college, is dedicated to creating an environmentally sustainable and humane world through critical thinking, creativity, and global citizenship. The curriculum emphasizes academic excellence, inter-disciplinary, and experience-based learning, and takes full advantage of Long Island’s marine, environmental, literary, and artistic wealth. Our mission is to empower students to care for the world.

Greenprint Vision for the Campus
Ten years from now, Southampton will be a transformed campus; in addition to its outstanding academic programs,

1. Southampton Graduate Campus will be a regional and national leader in environmental sustainability;
2. The campus will prioritize energy and resource efficiency;
3. The campus will promote health and safety;
4. The campus culture will celebrate cultural and environmental diversity.

Greenprint History
Greenprint had its beginnings in the Spring of 1994. Bob DeLuca took a class to Yale University for an environmental conference. On the ferry ride home the students crafted the outlines of their proposal and presented it to the campus later that spring. In the fall 1994, former Provost Tim Bishop brought together local politicians and the campus community to announce the official creation of a campus Greenprint Committee.

Since that time, Greenprint has stewarded the campus recycling program, expanded energy recycling, assisted in bringing a wind turbine to the campus, and advocated for a solar aquatic sewage treatment plant. Last year Greenprint had three major accomplishments: the incorporation of environmental literacy into the College core curriculum, the hiring of a campus environmental coordinator, and groundbreaking for a LEED certified campus library, Long Island University’s first "green" building.

Next Steps: Building a Sustainable Campus
This year, Greenprint has proposed its most ambitious agenda to date: committing Southampton Graduate Campus to becoming a nationally recognized center for sustainability. The key components of this plan are:

1) ensuring that the College’s ambitious $60 million new building plans adhere to green building guidelines;
2) developing a campus-wide audit that measures campus improvements across a range of sustainable indicators; and
3) hosting regional conferences that make the College a recognized center for environmental and sustainable education initiatives.

The years 2005 to 2015 will be the United Nation’s Decade for Sustainable Education . This makes the 2003-2004 academic year a particularly appropriate time for launching this bold initiative.

Elements of a Sustainable Campus

Additional elements should also be reviewed for incorporation into the plan, including campus finance and administration. Campus fundraising has an ethical component: what sources of corporate support are appropriate for the College? The College should consider adopting guidelines that explain the College’s position on such matters. Similarly, the campus should strive to improve its collaborative management structures. Too often information does not reach those who need it. This results in decisions that have unnecessary negative consequences. These issues should also be reviewed as part of the campuses efforts to become a more sustainable community.

Developing a Green Master Plan
Our first step in reconceptualizing the campus is to review the existing master plan. The current master plan had as its primary goal improving the overall efficiency of the campus by breaking the campus up into logical units – residence life, academic life, etc. Included in that plan was a redesign of the campus roadways.

Looking forward, we must recognize that the existing plan is deficient in a number of critical areas:

1. The plan is silent on the campus’ overall energy budget and the need for ensuring the energy efficiency.
2. The plan does not address campus landscaping; the need for more native plantings and creating a stronger sense of place and understanding of place; and specific protocols for minimizing or eliminating the use pesticides and herbicides.
3. The plan is also silent on the need to create a cultural landscape; in addition to functional campus units the campus landscape should speak to creating and/or preserving particular kinds of aesthetics. Different parts of the campus may take on particular themes: modern architecture; traditional New England/East End brick or shingled structures; etc.
4. The plan does not set goals for green building designs, such as meeting LEED standards for energy and environmental design.
5. Green building designs should also include explicit design goals for improving the environmental health qualities of campus buildings; building air quality, access to sunlight (e.g. eliminating rooms and office without exposure to sunlight), and reductions in the use of toxic materials.
6. The plan does not look at campus circulation patterns from an environmental perspective – the need for well-designed walking paths, the need for limiting automobiles on the campus, etc.
7. Finally the master plan should establish goals, both quantitative and qualitative, for monitoring purposes. The College should be monitoring: energy and water consumption; solid waste flows, habitat restoration work, groundwater quality, and campus perceptions of campus quality of life. The last point is important because the process should be able to document that the changes being made are appreciated by the campus community and are translatable into financial and health benefits. Financial indicators would include net reductions in energy costs, improvements in student retention, and improvements in worker productivity (e.g., fewer sick days).

With the College’s new $60 million capital campaign, the master plan must move beyond general aesthetics to the design needs of specific buildings. Design work has already been done on a proposed new recreation center and plans are afoot for a new home for the Parrish Art Museum, a new solar aquatic sewage treatment plant, a new marine science station, a new student center, and new dorms.

The campus should begin to articulate how this new construction will fit within the parameters of the campus’ commitment to environmental quality and sustainability.

Lastly, master plans are not just physical; they are also social. The master plan should explicitly establish planning protocols, ongoing procedures whereby the campus community remains involved in ongoing renovations on the campus. Too often in the past, decisions have been made at University Center without adequate campus input. The College and University need to formalize its procedures for coordination to ensure that the building process is done in a more collaborative fashion.

Figure 1 (page 6) presents one possibility for rethinking the College’s physical layout. This plan was drafted by Prof. Marc Fasanella and has many features that improve upon the existing plan. Our charge is to build upon this work and transform it into a multi-dimensional map for our future.

Monitoring Our Progress
The master plan is not a static document; it must be continually revisited and revised based upon changing campus needs and knowledge. The most effective way for this to happen is to commit to a process of campus monitoring and community engagement.

Governments and regions pioneered the use of sustainable indicators a decade ago, and these are now finding favor on college campuses. Indicators should be a limited range of quantitative measures for which data can be regularly and inexpensively collected. Ideally these numbers would be updated annually, but biannual updates would also be appropriate. Results can be tabulated and distributed to the campus community so that the entire campus is continually educated to the campus’ commitment to improving these measures and (re)invited to participate in ongoing programs like recycling.

One campus that Southampton Graduate Campus should learn more about is Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island’s most significant superfund site. It is also the region’s leading institution for environmental assessment. For the past year Brookhaven National Laboratory has published detailed annual reports reviewing their progress in improving the Laboratory’s overall environmental quality. Brookhaven National Laboratory now meets ISO 14001 standards for environmental performance and is probably the only institution on Long Island so accredited. Brookhaven therefore is an institution that Southampton Graduate Campus should look to for guidance for establishing an ongoing monitoring program.

Target indicators for ongoing monitoring could include the following:

1. Electric Energy Production, through renewable technologies
2. Electric Energy Consumption
	a. Campus Total b. Breakdowns by Buildings
3. Campus consumption of Heating Fuels
4. Paper Products
	a. Campus consumption of recycled paper b. Campus consumption of nonrecycled paper
5. Solid Waste flows
	a. Cubic Yards of Cardboard Boxes b. Cubic Yards of Bottles, Cans, and Plastic c. Cubic Yards of Paper d. Cubic Yards of nonrecyclables
6. Car counts
7. Groundwater quality
8. Campus water consumption
	a. Total water consumption b. "Leaky faucet" counts c. Irrigation d. Lab wastes and disposal
9. Pesticides and herbicides
	a. Pounds applied b. Application procedures c. Storage and disposal protocols
10. Campus Survey
	a. Recycling b. Energy Conservation c. Campus Grounds d. Building Environments (How satisfied are you with ….)
11. Miles of walking trails
12. Native Planting Signage

Sharing Results and Building Regional Capacities
As important as it is for Southampton Graduate Campus to become more aware of its environmental impacts and to strive to minimize those impacts, it is equally important that Southampton Graduate Campus communicate these findings back to the region and create venues for encouraging other institutions, especially educational centers, to develop their own sustainable campus programs. The College can host lectures and workshops on and off campus, as well as more extensive conferences on these themes.

One avenue for pursuing these goals is to construct an environmental education/leadership center with professional environmental educations on staff. This staff can support on campus educational programs as well as off campus grant supported projects. Friends World also provides an excellent vehicle for considering the international dimensions of our programs.

Timeline
Spring 2004:

• College rolls out comprehensive campus-wide recycling campaign.
• College hires Energy Services Company to perform energy retrofits at no upfront cost to the College that will provide long-term energy savings.
• Green Buildings given enthusiastic support at April Campus Master Plan Charrette (this could also occur in Fall 2004 and connect with the new Freshman core).
• LIU signs agreement to have private developer build major new dorm complex; developer agrees to meet LEED silver standards. LIPA agrees to have solar panels on all the new dorms.
• Parrish Art Museum commits to meeting LEED certification standards.

Fall 2004

• LEED Silver-rated Bishop-Burke Library Learning Center opens.
• College adopts Green Master Plan; all new buildings will be LEED silver certified with an emphasis on "healthy buildings."
• College hires design team for its Solar Aquatic Sewage Treatment Plant; team commits to LEED Silver rating.
• Regional Sustainable Education Conference is convened in October to discuss sustainable education, High School through College audience.
• College commits to toxic free building cleaners.

Spring 2005

• College completes its first campus-wide Sustainability Audit.
• College reports recycling rates are up 20%; energy usage is down 5%.
• College begins composting program.
• College commits to 50% of its Xerox paper purchases on recycled paper stock.
• College hosts a professionally run Earth Day festival that attracts regional attention.

Fall 2005

• College opens up a new 1-mile running/nature trail through the campus.
• College incorporates recycled materials into campus signage, building construction, and roadway structures.
• Solar Aquatic Sewage Treatment Plant opens. Governor Pataki hails facility as new model for green wastewater management.

Conclusions
Over its first decade, Greenprint has matured into a vital campus network. Greenprint has helped to promote educational reforms, changes in building designs, and innovative new technologies like wind turbines and greenhouses that treat sewage.

This plan presents Greenprint and Southampton Graduate Campus with a set of new challenges for Greenprint’s second decade.

It is our hope that this plan will soon become Southampton Graduate Campus’s plan for the future.