Green Mountain College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

"Sustainability 2020" is the College's new strategic plan. The plan includes campus-wide goals for waste, renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impact analysis, social capital, health, well-being and many other areas. The strategic plan metrics task force and the steering committee began a comprehensive effort in 2013 to promote the strategic plan and explain why the sustainability goals are important. The effort employed many outreach techniques. Members of the task force, and later the steering committee, spoke to faculty assembly, staff assembly, and student senate about the goals many times. Numerous faculty members have also incorporated Sustainability 2020 into their classes. Class involvement has ranged from lectures aimed at raising awareness to analysis of environmental and social data. In 2013 and again in 2014, the leaders held a community conversation to discuss the goals, current progress, and strategies for improvement. The leaders also wrote a 30-page white paper and produced a series of four videos to disseminate to campus in an attempt to appeal to different learning styles (both the paper and videos are available at the link below). Both forms of media try to raise awareness about why the sustainability goals are important and outline the ways the College plans to measure progress toward these goals. The overall purpose of the campaign is to inspire interest in the plan and motivate students, staff, and faculty to help to achieve the goals.

The effectiveness and overall reach of the campaign is measured in a number of different ways. First, the steering committee tracks the number of people who attend the community conversations (which are attended by students, staff and faculty). Each of the two community conversations held so far had over a 100 people present (over 10% of the campus body). Second, at least ten classes have been involved in either describing the sustainability goals, collecting data related to the goals, or analyzing data relevant to the goals. Third, a survey was implemented in the spring of 2014 to estimate the current level of social capital on campus, raise awareness about the goals, and estimate the current level of awareness. Over 30% of the campus body completed the survey. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they "identify with the goal of authentic sustainability and GMC's strategies for working toward that goal." Over 60% of survey respondents responded "A fair amount" or "A lot," indicating early signs of success.

Every year, the College holds an energy conservation challenge between residence halls called Do it in the Dark. This campaign usually takes place in the fall, and for the last two years it has corresponded with Halloween. The challenge is coupled with a massive campaign to educate the campus about the importance of energy conservation and techniques for conserving energy. Campaign techniques include tabling in the student center to educate passing students, staff and faculty, and to challenge them to sign a conservation pledge on a paper cut-out of a light bulb that is then posted publicly on a bulletin board. The night before the competition began, the dining hall placed flameless candles on all the tables and turned off the lights. A series of events and activities managed by various departments also helped to educate the campus. The sustainability office used Facebook and Twitter to post daily standings and suggest energy saving techniques. Finally, the sustainability office produced two outreach videos about the event. The first is an analysis of the event modeled after ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvOP2Qb_WuQ. The second is a brief video advertising the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvoTnS3YSZ0.

Impact from the event is measured by total percentage electricity reduction during the competition week over the previous baseline week and by percentage reduction per residence hall. In 2013, the aggregate reduction of all residence halls totaled 9.79% over baseline. The percentage per residence hall ranged from 21.1% in the winning residence hall to 1.53% in the last place hall. For the full results, visit the url below.

The Student Campus Greening Fund also engages in a campaign every semester to increase awareness about funds available for sustainability projects and to inspire students to develop projects for funding from the Student Campus Greening Fund. This campaign includes speeches to all core curriculum classes, tabling in the student center, and blasts using online media platforms. Every year the fund pays for over $35,000 in projects. In FY 2014, projects included construction of a bike shelter, a boardwalk in to the natural areas, a three bin waste diversion station prototype, flameless candles for the energy conservation challenge, a student run wellbeing initiative, conference registration for students attending sustainability conferences, speaker fees for ecofeminist and permaculture speakers, and many other projects.