Thank you for a successful second meeting discussing water usage on campus.

Some of the highlights:

• Introduction of a ‘water footprint’ as a parallel to the ‘carbon footprint’
• Bottled water is banned at HSPH – how can we make this happen at the other schools?
• Both ‘Flow‘ and ‘Tapped‘ will be shown on campus this semester – stay tuned for more details
• Most effective water savings will likely be through installation of smart irrigation systems

Please see the minutes (updated) here.

The HES presentation on water can be found here.

Additionally, we were joined by Jaclyn Olsen from the Office for Sustainability. Her presentation will be up shortly.

When Wed, October 14, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Where Graduate School of Design, Room 112/Stubbins room, Gund Hall, 46 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA (map)

Description Speaker: Rob Gogan, who oversees recycling, surplus and trash for Harvard Facilities Maintenance Operations. What’s in Harvard’s trash, and where does it go when it leaves the building?

Fall is upon us, and so is the second year of the Harvard Climate Collaborative. After a wonderful year with Spring and Aron, this year’s Collaborative will be facilitated by Karen McKinnon (College ‘10) and Emma Crossen (HDS ‘10). Additionally, the group will be working closely with the Environment Society, led by Julia Africa (GSD ‘11) to add a social aspect to the group.

The primary purpose of the Collaborative for its second year is to facilitate communication between environmental leaders at each school in the University. Each meeting will be based upon an action theme that applies across schools, such as that of our first meeting, Green Orientation programs.

For more information about the functioning of the Collaborative, please see the About page.

Minutes from the first meeting are available here.

Copies of the 2009 HCC Annual Report  have been delivered to the collections development departments at Widener and the Loeb Design Library, where they will be accessible through the HOLLIS catalog.

Congratulations to Julia Africa (GSD ‘11, formerly HSPH), the new head of the Environment Society. In addition to attending to the semi-annual BBQs and email lists that keep ES functioning, Julia will be working hard to ensure that the ES becomes more of an action-oriented group. Ideas generated at HCC meetings or by individual students will be turned into concrete collaborations between schools; Julia will be instrumental in encouraging these efforts and will work closely with our new HCC leadership:

Congratulations to Shannon Simms (GSD ‘10) and Karen McKinnon (College ‘10), the new coordinators of the Harvard Climate Collaborative. The two will coordinate meetings and assist with compiling the Annual Report. Additionally, they will work to create an HCC 2009 – 2010 that fosters greater relationship building between students at different schools in an effort to encourage interschool collaboration and more effective environmental leadership around the University.

Group Discussion: Potential Shape of and Role for HCC 2009 – 2010

“HCC 2009 – 2010: Four Models”

Members present:
Tiffany Curtis (HDS), Dan Chandler (GSAS), Stephen Jensen (GSAS), Craig Altemose (HLS), Allyson Meyers (HKS), Emma Crossen (HDS), Dave Lewis (GSD), Kevin Banahan (HSPH), Peter James (HSPH), Julia Roos (HSPH), Julia Africa (HSPH/GSD), Karen McKinnon (College), Katie Walter (College), Gracie Brown (College), Nicole DeSantis (Extension School), Jake Bowman (Extension School), Garrett Smith (HBS), Jane Baumgartner (HILR), Charlie Allen (HILR), Andrew Costigan (HGSE), Lina Swislocki (HGSE), Shannon Simms (GSD)

Introductions

HCC 2008 – 2009 Annual Report:
Distribution: Please hand-deliver to your dean.  Aron and Spring have emailed out a cover letter template you can use if you’d like.
If you’d like more copies of the report, please email Spring by noon on Friday (May 1).

Extension School Presentation:
Community-based social marketing (Jack Spengler/Leith Sharp)
Discussion of how to recognize “sustainability” – success when the term is no longer necessary because it is simply a part of how everything works
Challenge: Extension School students are busy, splitting time between work and school.
Benefit: Extension School students are often around in the Boston area longer than your average Harvard student
Harvard Extension Environmental Club (HEEC) has an active following of roughly 100 people.

Environmental Health Club (@HSPH) Presentation

HSPH_HCC_presentation
Founded 2007
Dining Services is an ally – Composting program started in 2008 thanks to student effort and supportive staff.
HSPH GHG Reduction Strategy
•    construction standards
•    behavioral change
•    infrastructure upgrades
•    training
•    research of new technologies
•    analysis
Advanced (and energy-efficient) monitoring system for ventilation in the labs
Successful collaboration with HGSE and HMS student group (SEAM)

GSAS Presentation

GSAS_HCC_presentation, GSAS_Student_Housing_HCC_presentation
No central environmental club — ever a challenge
Small emissions relative to other schools.
Trying to work to set up more Green Teams
Work in the Grad Dorms:
-    Environmental Kick-off (at beginning of year)
-    Flower-planting party
-    Environmental Poster Series to raise awareness

4 models (not mutually exclusive):
1. HCC 2.0 or the “Harvard Sustainability THINK TANK.”
2. CURRICULAR CHANGE and a BROADER FOCUS
3. REGIONAL HCC
4. COMMUNICATIONS, continued

Members suggest possible roles for the HCC:
-    Push for administrative and implementation transparency
-    better practice sharing between schools
-    building stronger student relationships
-    building ties outside Harvard and learning from other schools

What has been most useful about the HCC this year?
Administrative speakers are okay, but we can’t and shouldn’t rehash that next year: boring and repetitive.  Student presentations are good, but that content can be covered in the annual report.  Meetings should focus on going more in-depth with specific topics. 
Real benefit of the group: cuts across school lines: possibility to build really strong student-student relationships that can spur collaborative efforts.

How to encourage this student relationship building?
- Group retreat in the fall
-    training on behavior change
-    start with HCC Annual Report ’08 – ’09 (expect attendees to have read it before the  retreat), build  from there
- Create internal HCC working groups to lead discussions
- topically-oriented (depth in favor of breadth at each meeting)

Possibility to generate side groups working on specific projects, implement big ideas (orientation program, J-term interschool charettes, &c.), though the HCC needs to remain focused on the task of knowledge and ideas sharing.  All HCC reps are busy with their own groups, and the HCC can function as a way to develop leadership ideas and possibilities that can be dispersed throughout Harvard via the HCC reps.

The  2009 HCC Annual Report   is now available for perusal.  Please email climatecollaborative@gmail.com with any questions.   

This report contains valuable information about student perceptions and student actions in regards to Harvard University’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions and other collective sustainability goals.  The report is authored by student leaders representing schools from across the University, and is intended for a broad audience of administrators, faculty, staff, and students, as well as those outside of the Harvard community interested in understanding the student perspective on these issues. 

Feel free to disseminate this report amongst your respective student bodies and school administrations.  The information, insights, and resources contained within can be of great utility for those seeking to understand student involvement and concerns.

“HCC 2009 – 2010: Four Models for Next Year’s HCC”

6:50 – 7:05 — Serve dinner, settle in
7:05 – 7:10 — Annual Report – Purpose and Distribution
7:10 – 7:18 — Extension School “current student action” presentation, Q & A
7:18 -7:36 — GSAS “current student action” presentation,Q & A
7:36 – 7:54 — HSPH “current student action” presentation,Q & A

7:54 – 8:20 — Discussion:  The future of the HCC? Four different models for HCC 2009 – 2010

8:20 – 8:28 — HCC leadership update, Wrap-up
8:30 — Adjourn

An important part of the agenda for the upcoming HCC meeting is a discussion we’ll be having about the future of the HCC.  With the year winding down, this year’s final report wrapping up, and the summer coming on, it’s time to think about how to make the HCC more useful for students and for administrators.
 
We started out with the basic goal of facilitating communications between student leaders and between student leaders and administrators.  As you have all seen, there’s been some exciting discussions, ideas shared, and collaborations begun, but there are also clear limitations to what the HCC has been able to do. 
 
We’ll discuss this more fully at the meeting, but we ask each of you to bring thoughts, ideas, and comments on this issue to the meeting, after reading some of the possible models for the HCC proposed by your fellow HCC members listed below.  What have been our limitations?  Where are their opportunities for growth and the best application of our energy and resources?  
 

HCC 2.0 or the “Harvard Sustainability THINK TANK.”  Use the collective power of the HCC to generate BIG IDEAS that can excite non-traditional supporters for the “exciting and empowering” environmentalism that can result in the fundamental and huge changes that will be necessary to get to 30%.  This wouldn’t be about just bringing student leaders together, but about bringing the brightest and most creative students into one room on a regular basis to brainstorm and generate the transformative ideas that we need.   

CURRICULAR CHANGE and a BROADER FOCUS – Craig Altemose points out that all academic campuses are responsible for only 3% of national emissions, so Harvard needs to expand its vision of what it can do for the environmental movement if it really wants to have an impact in the grand scheme of things.  Seeing as we’re in the business of education, curricular change should become the main focus of the HCC, with “every course in every school discuss[ing] sustainability and how the topic of the course will affect and/or be affected by global climatic disruption.”  Furthermore, students should “engage in off-site externships weatherizing low-income homes, designing sustainability plans for local businesses, improving efficiency in government buildings, doing community workshops on energy savings tips, etc.  In short, find ways for the HCC to use its influence both on- and off-campus at the local, state, federal, and even global levels.

REGIONAL HCC – Dave Lewis suggests that we may have “tapped out” talking to each other during our dinner series.  Why not expand the membership to include other schools so that we can learn from our peers at other institutions?  One day conferences, and other forums for sharing knowledge beyond Harvard, as a school such as the FAS might have more income with Williams College, for example, than the HDS. 

COMMUNICATIONS – The HCC needs to maintain its focus on inter-school communications at Harvard.  Rather than trying to tackle too much by expanding outwards or changing the mission, the HCC has perhaps been valuable precisely because it seeks to do only one thing, which is to bring student environmental leaders together and to go from there. 
 

________

These models are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and could all be adjusted to better fit the realities of our membership.  Please take a look and come with your thoughts and any other models that may not even have been discussed yet.  Feel free to get the discussion started on the blog.  We’ll take notes and bring them to the meeting. 
 
Thanks all and see you on Monday at 7.  The current issue of the NY Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html) has some relevant articles that might be worth checking out, as food for thought.

Craig Altemose (HLS), Dave Lewis (GSD), Kevin Banahan (HSPH), and Peter James (HSPH) listen in on the HDS student presentation.

Mark Orlowski of the Sustainable Endowments Institute discusses the environmental importance of making more transparent university investments.

More photos available here.