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By Sharon Tregaskis

sleeves rolled to the elbows, Dean Koyanagi pulls off his tie as he steps inside the cavernous High Volt Lab, a barnlike structure at the edge of campus. Outside, an architecture student welds the steel framework for a 720-squarefoot photovoltaic array; nearby, the screech of a circular saw fills the air. This is the construction site of Cornell's entry in the Solar Decathlon, a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored competition to design and build an affordable energy-efficient home. Three days ago, Koyanagi '90, BS HE '01, an informal mentor to many of these students, took a job as the University's first sustainability coordinator. He hopes to find a place on campus to permanently install the structure after the October competition in Washington, D.C.

It's been a busy week for Koyanagi. He sat in on a two-hour discussion among students, faculty, community members, city officials, and Vice President for Student and Academic Services Susan Murphy '73, PhD '94, to hash through the tense aftermath of the construction of a West Campus parking lot on the site known as Redbud Woods. He hosted a late-night planning session on his front porch with undergraduates creating a campus network for environmentally minded students. And this morning, he consulted with a team developing a Cornell-based version of Freecycle.org, the online grass-roots recycling network, so that faculty and staff discarding University-owned computers or office furniture can connect with colleagues across campus who need them.

Koyanagi takes a similar matchmaking approach to his new job. "My vision for sustainability is to get all of the different groups to work together so they're more effective," says Koyanagi, who initiated the Tompkins Renewable Energy Education Alliance, a coalition of Cornell and Ithaca College, Cooperative Extension, and Sustainable Tompkins representatives formed in May 2005, in the wake of the University's abandoned effort to build a wind farm. "There seem to be 10,000 little interests and projects going on, and few of them are working together--or even aware of each other's efforts."

Last year, the University's sustainability staff consisted of a half-time intern, Garrett Meigs '04. Koyanagi has a full-time position and a broader mandate: to produce an official report card on the University's efforts and develop a proposal for long-term staffing. The appointment emerged in part from promises administrators made to clear protestors from Redbud Woods and in part from a document the thirty-eight-year-old former consultant and technology manager wrote while earning a master's in environmental education at Lesley University's Audubon Expedition Institute this May. "The State of Sustainability" assessed Cornell's course offerings and curriculum, transportation, facilities, and dining, and the University's role in local and regional efforts. "Cornellians have much to celebrate in terms of sustainability efforts on campus," Koyanagi concluded. "But there is also much work to be done.Most of the efforts described above emerged from voluntary, grass-roots initiatives-- spontaneous efforts from groups and individuals without central direction or coordination-- and many have become more official as they have grown and proven to be successful. Yet, without central support and coordination, many of these initiatives have remained ad hoc and fallen short of achieving their full potential."

"Sustainability" officially entered Cornell parlance in 1997, with a student-initiated statement signed by President Hunter Rawlings. "Cornell University recognizes that to ensure the longterm viability of this planet, all elements of society must embrace the responsibility of building sustainable futures," the document declared, invoking a definition of the word--"to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"--set forth in 1987 by the U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development.

So far, efforts to reduce the University's ecological impact have been as diverse as Cornell itself. Student-led initiatives have ranged from the climate-change activism of Kyoto Now! to a treefree paper campaign spearheaded by the Society for Natural Resource Conservation. The $60 million Lake Source Cooling project, completed in 2000, realized an 86 percent reduction in energy consumption for air-conditioning on campus and at Ithaca High School. Recycling and composting now divert 50 percent of the University's solid waste from landfills. The Johnson School's new Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise investigates strategies for bringing green business solutions to the world's poorest people, and in 2004 faculty in the Engineering college proposed an interdisciplinary Center for Sustainable Development. Across campus, other faculty are engaged in long-term research projects in sustainable agriculture, biodegradable plastics, fuel cells, and solar energy. A new website, Cornell Sustainable Campus (www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/) outlines the ongoing efforts.

But integrated, cross-campus efforts have been erratic, and a comprehensive strategy remains inchoate. As on most college campuses, the sustainability debate at Cornell rages over both the methods by which it is pursued and the pace at which change should come. "Right now, I think Cornell is doing well on a fragmented basis," says University trustee Kevin McGovern '70, an advisory board member of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. "It really is just starting to realize how large a role it can play in sustainability in the world."

The issue seemed to move to the front burner in October 2004, when then-President Jeffrey Lehman '77 declared that "sustainability in the age of development" was to be one of three themes of his sesquicentennial vision for Cornell."For a variety of reasons, the current mode of life on Earth cannot be sustained indefinitely," Lehman declared. The proclamation amounted to an official seal of approval for the cause and led eco-minded members of the Cornell community to believe that the University would step up its efforts. "From the time Jeff Lehman made his initial sustainability speech--when it was set as a priority of the University-- until he stepped down, there was an added energy and vigor to some of the things that had been going on for years," says Steve Beyers, MME '85, co-chair of the University's Green Building Oversight Committee. "It gave people hope that there would be more momentum, and maybe faster progress."

Although Lehman is gone, Provost Biddy Martin insists that his vision for sustainability remains integral to Cornell's future. "We have all the reason in the world to continue to consider it a priority," she says. Executive Vice President Stephen Golding, who appointed Koyanagi, says that official policies or vision statements are not as important as what he calls a "culture of sustainability," the creation of which remains an ongoing project of the University. "That's more effective than to simply mandate, because then you're creating a whole new set of management problems. Leadership is demonstrated by action, and actions are obviously in the eye of the beholder. All we can do is go out each day and think about this question, which is what we've committed to do as a byproduct of the Redbud Woods agreement, but it really is building on the work that President Lehman started."

cornell senior executive chef Delmar Crim doesn't have to be convinced about the importance of instilling a culture of sustainability. Campus dining, with its links to student lifestyle and historically high waste production, is a prime testing ground for new initiatives. Crim's efforts focus on waste reduction, composting, and local food purchases. Eight of the thirty-one dining venues send a combination of pre- and post-consumer waste to the Farm Services compost facility, and during summer and autumn, 15 to 20 percent of the ingredients served on campus are locally produced. After a study last spring found that diners at all-you-careto- eat venues left an average of four ounces of edible food on each plate, Crim partnered with the student-run Sustainable Enterprise Association to make plans for a scale at the dish return to weigh food scraps, providing students with instant feedback on how much they waste.

Crim also encourages the University to purchase energyefficient appliances--and urges his staff to use them appropriately. "It's the team that effects changes with the utilities," says Crim, pointing toward the kitchen. "Right now there are probably ten ovens turned on with nothing in them." But ultimately, building the culture Golding desires will take more than individual initiative, he says. "It would be nice to have a mandate from the top down."

Even without a mandate, Bob Stundtner, project director for the new 250,000-square-foot Life Sciences Technology Building (LSTB), says that the Division of Facilities Services is already committed to greening the campus. "We do an awful lot to help the University be a responsible member of the community around issues related to the environment and sustainability," says Stundtner, who also led the Johnson School's renovation of Sage Hall.He expects the LSTB to achieve a silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, but the process hasn't been without its critics. Project managers initially thought LEED rating would be too costly for a science-intensive building--laboratories typically consume four to five times the energy of conventional offices. After pressure from faculty and students, they changed their minds. "We took up their challenge and realized we're putting so much into energy conservation, we decided to look at the other things it would take to pursue LEED," says Stundtner, who figures LEED alterations to original plans for the $150 million project will cost about $400,000, on par with the national average of a 3 percent premium for silverrated buildings. Stundtner hopes to recover the difference through a New York State Energy Research and Development grant.

Still, controversy persists. Faculty have criticized the use of offthe- shelf growth chamber technology in the LSTB when highefficiency alternatives developed by their colleagues have been successfully adopted elsewhere on campus. "There's a lot of hyperventilation and overstatement over these issues," says Stundtner, who explains that the Cornell-developed technology didn't meet the new building's research requirements."My prediction is that the University will sharpen its stance regarding sustainability, but I'm pretty confident there will be instances where members of the community will say we haven't gone far enough."

Case in point: Alice Cook House and Carl Becker House on West Campus, the first green-certified residence halls in New York State.While the buildings are energy efficient and were built with recycled materials, forest-friendly lumber, and even a "green" living roof (essentially a rooftop garden that reduces storm-water runoff and moderates temperature), critics are quick to point out where the project fell short. First, they say, while going to the effort of filing a LEED application is laudable, green certification is still the lowest rating available from the U.S. Green Building Council. Further, Cornell garnered points for innovation by incorporating the energy reduction benefits of Lake Source Cooling in its application, but failed to mention the elimination of two acres of wooded grounds to make way for a 176-space parking lot associated with the West Campus Residential Initiative. Even the much-ballyhooed green roof has been a target. "There's a lot of snake oil in the green infrastructure community," says plant ecologist Tom Whitlow, a member of Cornell's Urban Horticulture Institute. "Cornell's green roofs are too small to really do much of anything.We'd get a bigger bang for the buck by working on surface hydrology and increasing building insulation."

On the academic side, the Provost's Task Force on Sustainability, appointed by Biddy Martin, conducted a survey of the faculty last spring, inventorying current academic and research efforts related to the topic. The committee plans to hold two summits with faculty in the fall 2005 semester to collect additional input; by December, Martin should have their formal recommendations. Already, administrators have earmarked funds in the upcoming capital campaign to support such initiatives. "We have great strengths at Cornell in certain areas that people immediately associate with sustainability," says Martin, reeling off a list that includes ecology, environmental science, natural resources, and economics, along with research in CALS and Engineering on alternate fuel sources. "In addition there are people working in ethics and public life, humanities, and other social sciences areas on questions of sustainability, which they define very broadly as having not only environmental and economic implications but also cultural implications."

Kathryn Gleason '79, co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sustainable Transportation, also takes an expansive approach to sustainability. Her group--formed in compliance with the Redbud Woods agreement--is charged with participating in the development of the University's master plan. "This committee, looking at the transportation system and its complexity, touches on all aspects of sustainability--environmental, financial, social," says Gleason, who heads the Department of Landscape Architecture. While attendance at meetings will be closed, Gleason plans to post her committee's deliberations online (http://media.cce. cornell.edu/hosts/estn/) to enhance community participation. "Many of the debates on campus come from deeply rooted attachments to what individuals feel Cornell is.We're looking at what people respond to about sustainability on campus, as a full range of intellectual and emotional responses to the place."

to compare Cornell's progress in sustainability with that of other schools, you need only look across town. At Ithaca College, Provost Peter Bardaglio has made institutional sustainability his personal mission, with a three-pronged approach that integrates curriculum, operations, and outreach. The highest-profile component of the effort will be a $14 million facility to house IC's business school, planned to meet the requirements for the top-rated platinum LEED certification. "One of the challenges and rewards of being in higher education is the requirement to think long-term," says Bardaglio. "When we put up a building, it's not the same thing as a commercial developer putting up a shopping mall. As institutions devoted to learning, we should take into account the long-term view and make the distinction between initial cost and life-cycle cost."

Other institutions have tackled sustainability with big-name hires and expensive initiatives. In April, Dartmouth appointed simplicity movement guru Jim Merkel, author of the 2003 book Radical Simplicity, to coordinate its sustainability efforts.Merkel hopes to establish a zero-waste dining hall--everything will be consumed, reused, or composted--and talks about sharply reducing the "ecological footprint" of campus facilities. But the pacesetter in campus sustainability may well be Harvard, where the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) boasts a thirteen-member staff and an $800,000 annual budget. This year, HGCI launched a $3 million loan program for new construction and major renovations to cover the cost difference between conventional building supplies and their high-efficiency counterparts. "Harvard is as wealthy as it is because it spends its money to make money," says HGCI director Leith Sharp. "Almost 90 percent of our funds are secured through agreements that more than return the cost of each program."

Despite recent efforts, Cornell's long-term commitment to sustainability has been widely questioned by the Ithaca community, where there is much skepticism about the University's interest in balancing environmental concerns with its own development. In the late 1990s, Cornell backed down from plans to build an incinerator at the Vet college after a public outcry, instead agreeing to a series of community meetings that yielded an alternative, and by all accounts equally affordable and effective, waste management plan. Despite a massive campaign to promote the benefits of Lake Source Cooling, scores of Ithaca area critics fought the project bitterly--and hard feelings remain, as Cornell discovered when it announced plans to reduce lake water temperature monitoring in 2004.

This spring, as opposition to the West Campus parking lot flared, administrators quickly abandoned a proposed wind farm on Mt. Pleasant after neighbors voiced concerns. Lanny Joyce '81, a manager on Cornell's utilities and energy management staff and the head of Cornell's Kyoto Task Force, says the two projects had little in common--the parking lot had gone through a full legal approval process, while the wind farm was merely being explored with a feasibility assessment. Furthermore, neighbors weren't the only critics of the wind project--University researchers in crop and soil science, plant breeding, and astronomy feared the towers might affect their work. "The strong negative response from basically every direction made us decide to use our money to reduce our impacts in other ways," says Joyce. "The time wasn't right."

Another sustainability squabble arose in late August, when Ithaca city officials learned of ongoing discussions to develop housing on a University-owned parcel on West Hill, about a fifteen- minute drive from campus and outside city jurisdiction. The idea met such hostility that University officials have reconsidered. "We talk about transportation demands or density and intermunicipal planning," says Mayor Carolyn Peterson, who suggests focusing development within the city to reduce sprawl and capitalize on existing infrastructure. "Cornell has such a huge impact on the local municipalities--they need to be at the table not only discussing their plans but involved in discussions of sustainability within the region."

As development continues and officially sanctioned examinations of sustainability proliferate on campus, such debates will only intensify. As they should, says Koyanagi. So long as sustainability embodies the value of self-assessment and aspires to improve opportunities for future generations, the goal will remain a moving target. "All long-term strategic plans aim at something that's going to be changing over time," he says. "You're moving toward a vision and reassessing constantly what's changed in the world, what's needed, but always within that strategic plan." Even so, he echoes the call for a more clearly articulated vision from the administration. "It's hard to have a strategic plan if you don't create a mission statement and goals and clearly state that it's something everyone will work toward."

CAM contributing editor SHARON TREGASKIS '95 writes frequently about environmental issues and lives--as does Cornell sustainability coordinator Dean Koyanagi--in a small vegetarian co-op in Ithaca's University Hill neighborhood.

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