Smith College
PA-2: Sustainability Planning

The study group on climate change established a set of measurable actions that the college would take to address climate change including these high-level recommendations:
Academic- Create new academic offerings and further infuse climate change and sustainable development concepts across the curriculum, while enhancing experiential and applied learning opportunities for students.
Campus Programming- Expand opportunities for students to learn about climate-action initiatives outside of the classroom and to live more sustainably on campus.
Campus Operations - Aggressively pursue the college’s commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, including a roughly 40 percent reduction in emissions over the next five years and continued research and scholarship focused on the optimal path to net zero.
Investments - Address climate change in the context of Smith’s endowment investments.
Institutional Change- Develop sustainability and climate-change initiatives that model ideal institutional behavior.

Details about the measurable actions that support each of these recommendations can be found at https://www.smith.edu/sites/default/files/media/Documents/Sustainability/SGCC-Report-FINAL.pdf
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The climate action plan was written in 2009, with short term goals to be completed by 2015. The short term goals listed below have largely been completed.
Near-term goals by 2015:
• Establish a major in Environmental Science and Policy (ES&P) with 20-30 majors graduating each year.
• Strengthen the existing Landscapes Studies minor with 15-20 minors graduating each year
• Create a fully funded and operational CEEDS.
- Create an environmental concentration under the auspices of CEEDS
• Provide adequate staffing in ES&P and LSS to support these initiatives
• Expand environmental offerings throughout the curriculum
- Create environmentally-oriented courses in all three academic divisions
• Increase study-away opportunities
- Increase the number of students participating in environmentally oriented study abroad experiences (programs, internships)

Long term goals include:
- Increase demand for Smith graduates by environmental organizations.
- Enhance Smith College's reputation as a place to study the environment.
- Establish Smith College as a national presence in the media, policy and among non-profit and research organizations.

The long term goals will be measured by looking at various metrics including number of successful applicants to environmental graduate programs, number of successful graduating job seekers, number of 5-year alumnae in environmental fields, and number of 5-year alumnae who completed the environmental concentration and articulate clearly the benefits of their integrative education as key to personal fulfillment.

ACTION:
Plan and implement themed, yearlong, campus-wide programs that bring the Smith community together for an in-depth examination of focused aspects of climate change.

These programs will provide a structure that enables multiple academic and administrative departments to connect students to pressing global problems and to foster reciprocal relationships between the college and program guests and presenters. As a diverse women’s college with a global focus, Smith is uniquely poised to examine the social inequities that climate change brings to the world’s most vulnerable groups, including women from communities dependent on local natural resources and those who live in regions threatened by climate change. At engagement sessions, faculty and students were particularly drawn to the theme of women, climate change and social justice, which could serve as a launch-year theme in 2018-19. The SGCC imagines these yearlong programs occurring on a biennial basis. As the programs are planned, all segments of the Smith community, including alumnae, will be encouraged to participate.
Programming could include, for example, a traveling exhibit at the Smith College Museum of Art that complements the theme, Presidential Colloquium speakers, first-year student readings and student-led climate-action workshops.

Expand local collaboration and locally sourced food in Smith College dining.
Develop a new campus landscape master plan that promotes use of the physical campus to demonstrate best practices in ecological management and climate-change adaptation.
Develop an internalized cost of carbon emissions—such as a carbon-proxy price—to help guide major capital budget management and other decision-making processes.
Incorporate sustainability into the work plans of administrative and departmental offices and explore the development of sustainability innovation funds to implement cost- and carbon-saving programs.
Increase funding to improve energy efficiency of campus buildings and implement metering of the largest energy users and most student houses.
Upgrade part of the central heating plant to burn carbon-neutral biofuel.
Pursue a plan to convert the central heating system to a ground-source heat exchange energy system.

Plan for 2019-2020 published on Smith website:
Programmatic improvements

Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Floyd Cheung is chairing a working group charged with analyzing data from the April 2019 Inclusion in Action conference. The group is distilling themes from the data and creating action teams to explore each theme. The action teams will develop recommendations to share with the campus community and with President McCartney.
Dean of the College Susan Etheredge is leading a comprehensive review of the first-year student experience to improve the ways Smith supports incoming students in designing and navigating their curricular and co-curricular paths.
OneCards may now carry preferred names. Students, staff and faculty who do not already have their preferred name on their OneCard are able to obtain replacement cards from ITS. (Note: a legal name change still requires formal documentation.) For further information, please consult these instructions on the ITS site.
Vice President for Information Technology Samantha Earp and Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Floyd Cheung will convene a technology inclusivity working group that will focus on the use of names and pronouns in Banner and Workday, with other systems to be reviewed in a second phase.

New or modified positions

The Counseling Center has hired two additional mental health counselors with the capacity to respond effectively to the needs of a diverse student body: Jamecia Estes, LICSW, staff therapist, and Lil Kraus, MSW, postgraduate counseling fellow.
As of August 1, 2019, the Office for Equity and Inclusion encompasses the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life.
The Office for Equity and Inclusion hires a program and outreach coordinator, Raven Fowlkes-Witten '17, who will also serve as an advocate for undocumented, trans and gender-nonconforming students. The search for an inclusion education trainer/facilitator who will also serve as an advocate for low-income and first-generation students is underway.
The Lazarus Center for Career Development will appoint a staff member specializing in helping international students secure internships and jobs.
Author and organizer Loretta Ross holds a one-year appointment as associate professor and activist in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. Professor Ross and Carrie Baker, professor of the study of women and gender, will host a one-day skill-building conference for students, “Calling In the Calling Out Culture,” to be held February 22, 2020.

New or improved spaces

Facilities Management renovates Martha Wilson House for first-floor accessibility. Scheduled for completion in September 2019.
The Office for Equity and Inclusion is working with Facilities Management to implement gender-inclusive bathroom signage in all non-residential buildings.

Training and development

The college institutes a requirement that all current and newly hired staff and faculty complete online Title IX training. The training program “Not Anymore” covers consent, bystander intervention, sexual assault, dating and domestic violence, stalking, and healthy relationships, and integrates Smith College’s Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct Policy.
Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Floyd Cheung will lead a team of eight professors to teach IDP102: Thinking Through Race in Spring 2020. Students may earn one credit, and staff and faculty members are welcome to audit.
Professor Peggy O’Neil will lead several workshops for faculty and staff who teach to develop critical conversation skills for managing difficult dialogues.


Events

President McCartney will host a number of inclusion-focused speakers as part of her ongoing Presidential Colloquium series. Speakers of note: Cristina Rodríguez, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy ’02, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bryan Stevenson.
The alumnae relations and development offices host “Dining With Diversity,” a series of panel presentations by alumnae followed by dinner conversation with students of color. The series is supported by a Presidential Innovation Challenge Grant.
The 2019 Otelia Cromwell Day celebration focused on the theme “Acknowledging Injustice and Practicing Anti-racism” and featured keynote speaker Deborah Archer '93, a civil rights lawyer, activist and professor. Workshops throughout the afternoon offered opportunities for students, staff and faculty.

Investments: Through the SGCC, Smith committed to provide workshops and funding sources, such as curriculum development grants, to help faculty create new courses and update current offerings, provide funding for faculty research across all disciplines on climate-related challenges, increase the college’s commitment to impact investing from $9.5 to $30 million, explore targeted opportunities for Smith to divest the endowment from fossil fuel holdings in a manner that is consistent with Smith’s tradition of prudent financial management, provide funds to the Smith College Investment Club to manage a separate, and fossil fuel-free innovation portfolio.

Create new academic offerings and further infuse climate change and sustainable development concepts across the curriculum, while enhancing experiential and applied learning opportunities for students.

In 2009 former President Carol Christ signed the President's Climate Commitment, from the ACUPCC, now Second Nature's Carbon Commitment. Through this signing we committed to creating a climate action plan (SCAMP), and setting a carbon neutrality goal of 2030, which we are actively pursuing.