![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½_Magazine\/summer05\/D42U6704_Jay_small.jpg\")
\nIn Edgar Allen Beem\u2019s story \u201cZeroing In,\u201d you\u2019ll learn that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students are helping ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ conduct its inventory of greenhouse-gas emissions. While working on the story, Beem told me he liked how ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ leaders established a direction and then let students be \u201cvitally involved in carrying out the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not much has changed over the years. When David Braslau \u201984 came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, his first campus job was to organize a disheveled mass of building plans and blueprints for plant engineer Phil Meldrum. But the grunt work didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n
At the time, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was reeling from a surge in energy costs. And while Braslau didn\u2019t arrive with a passion for conservation, he and other students quickly got religion when the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ fee zoomed from $7,500 in his first year to $9,000 the next. \u201cThere was a lot of pressure on the College to control costs,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd people recognized this was an issue you could do something about.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, a student-faculty group was already pushing energy conservation by the late \u201970s; the initiative drew strong institutional support since, as we all know, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ gets steamed by overpaying for anything. Various conservation efforts included a telephone \u201cCold Line\u201d letting people report energy issues, from leaking sink stoppers in John Bertram to no hot water in Smith South (caused by too-long showers, the College found).<\/p>\n
When the U.S. Department of Energy invited schools and hospitals to apply for conservation grants, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ really got fired up. And if ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had been a different kind of place, Meldrum might have assigned a staff assistant to do the grant groundwork. Instead, he created a squad of student \u201cenergy auditors.\u201d Braslau and others examined buildings, evaluated energy use, and fed the results into a computer program (a student helped adapt the software to the College\u2019s PRIME system). Their grant proposals won funds for a variety of projects, from storm windows and lighting retrofits to the updating of fume hoods in Dana Chemistry.<\/p>\n
One of Braslau\u2019s classmates, Sarah Hammond Creighton \u201984, is an expert on colleges and sustainability. Director of the Tufts University Office of Sustainability and co-author of Degrees that Matter: Climate Change and the University, Creighton suggests that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½\u2019 heritage helps it make smart moves in this arena, whether around conservation in the \u201980s or sustainability today. \u201cÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is not overbuilt,\u201d she says. \u201cÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ focuses on sufficiency \u2014 a key to true sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Braslau\u2019s work didn\u2019t end with graduation. He\u2019s now director of engineering for a subsidiary of Constellation Energy. Doing much the same stuff he did for Meldrum, Braslau focuses on energy-saving projects for federal clients. And he still gets a charge from his work. \u201cPeople here are driven by the feeling that what we do is rewarding,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s Braslau a generation ago or students working on the greenhouse emissions inventory today, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is good at what might be called community sustainability, adds Creighton. \u201cThe walls at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ between students and faculty and staff are just a lot lower than at many schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
H. Jay Burns, Editor jburns@bates.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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