Colby College
EN-9: Staff Professional Development

Colby's Office of Sustainability offers two LEED Green Associate trainings every year, available to students, faculty and staff. Additionally, the Office of Sustainability offers a Green Office Certification, which allows interested faculty and staff to conduct an environmental sustainability audit in their offices. Even if some offices did not get Green Office Certified, many have begun to make small changes in terms of waste reduction, energy efficiency, and resource use. For example, some offices have compost bins, and others have made efforts to get rid of the Poland Spring water bottle filling stations, which use plastic containers, by replacing it with a water fountain with a Bottle Filling Station built in. In Facilities, the Grounds crew gets trained in organic lawn care with a refresher course every year. The Office of Sustainability also holds a training session for Grounds and Custodial staff about composting and single stream recycling, as these two departments are critical to the success of these programs. Another program on this topic is offered to all faculty and staff through the human resources professional development program.

The College encourages employees to attend conferences to both learn and share new information and innovation in sustainability, especially in the Facilities Department as they implement new policies on the operations side.

Positions whose job descriptions include sustainability are evaluated on this criteria in performance reviews. For example, the sustainability coordinator is charged with the sustainability of the College, thus his or her performance review evaluates how they have made positive change with sustainability initiatives. In Facilities, every job now requires a background in sustainability and sustainability is considered to be a part of everyone's job responsibility, so it is included in their evaluations.