Middlebury College
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Through our Sustainability Solutions Lab, we run weekly environmentally-themed programming in two first-year dorms. Through this programming, first-year students are able to learn about how the campus energy system functions, how to get involved with sustainability efforts on campus and more.

In the senior capstone course held each semester, Environmental studies majors collaborate with community organizations to help address current environmental issues in our region and beyond.

Numerous classes, senior theses, and special research project have been carried out with regard to the ecological consequences of increased use of forests for energy production and examined how the College's shift to biomass-based energy contributes to Middlebury’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality. Using both published research and their own field investigations at local research sites, students and faculty have explored the ability of the local landscape to supply biomass, and consider the possible unintended ecological consequences of that change in land use. Similar work has been done with respect to the conservation of 2400 acres of college owned land and the enrollment of those lands in the American Carbon Registry to sell carbon credits from this project.

Also through our Sustainability Solutions Lab, students interns are collaborating with a state-wide energy-efficiency organization to complete a study of efficiency in our science building. They will use their findings to create recommendations for improvements.

Students through the Sustainability Office and working with the Psychology Lab have developed a real-time energy monitoring and display system using LED lights in 12 living spaces on campus that visualize real-time energy usage. There are also educational materials and outreach efforts that explain the project and encourage energy reduction.

The Middlebury College Knoll, Global Food and Farm program uses food as a medium to cultivate wellbeing in people, place and the planet. It is managed and developed by a collaborative of a student club, student interns, Office of Sustainability integration,and various other academic and programmatic departments.

Its goal is to have people interact in different ways at the Knoll. It has three main program areas: The Educational Garden, the Outdoor Kitchen and the Serenity Garden. These are used by faculty, staff, students, and the local community for classes, research, and events.

·The Educational Garden serves as a place for students to learn about gardening. Volunteers are welcome to join for open Volunteer Hours led by garden staff. The Knoll also supports paid internships for current students during spring, summer, and fall.

·The Outdoor Kitchen is a medium to cultivate community. It hosts pizza nights and celebrations for campus partners. Interns learn to cook with the wood fired oven and make pizzas with vegetables from the gardens.

·The Serenity Garden is a plot of land on the western slope of The Knoll. This garden is a collaboration with the Scott Center for Spiritual & Religious Life. In 2012, His Holiness the Dalai Lama blessed a large round marble bench. We also constructed a labyrinth to celebrate 15 years of The Knoll in September 2018. Perennial gardens will continue to be cultivated.

Additionally the Environmental Affairs Committee of the Student Government Association has worked closely with Dining Services staff on several initiatives including sourcing local ingredients, reducing the amount of meat consumed and replacing disposable to go containers and cups with reusable alternatives in all the dining halls.

Plant Biology students contributed to the campus tree map and have continued to survey the plants on the roof of Atwater dining hall with the guidance of the College Horticulturist Tim Parsons.

We also have several internships that involve students working with the College Lands Conservation and Management Specialist to maintain an ecological assessment of all college lands, research and apply best conservation proactice3s, and monitor easement provisions.

Students are exploring a range of projects related to spaces and places in Vermont’s forested landscape, ranging from questions of equity and access to recreation spaces, how to best engage women landowners around the most pressing issues facing Vermont’s forests, recreational trail density and usage’s impacts on wildlife habitat and connectivity, to how potential access to carbon markets might shift on-the-ground forest management practices.

Students and faculty members of The Environmental Council are in the process of researching sustainable purchasing standards. Their findings will be used to create recommendations for our three college purchasing consortium.

The current Environmental Studies senior capstone course is focused on improving local public transportation and making the town and college more bike friendly in collaboration with our county's public bus system and town government.

Students are exploring projects focused on transportation through the lenses of access, independence, equity and participation ranging from researching demand-response service provision models for Vermont’s elderly and disabled population, giving a human voice to a variety of documented survey results as part of the storytelling priorities in the state’s latest transportation policy plan, and developing strategies for reducing single occupancy vehicle travel during upcoming road closures for the in-town rail construction, with a particular focus on trips to area schools.

Our Sustainability Solutions Lab has a team dedicated to waste reduction. They host clothing swap events, as well as have started to host Repair Cafes to encourage a culture of reuse.

How Sustainability Solutions Lab Students describe their work:

We’re the SSL’s Living Building Challenge team. Our internship this summer centers on comparing two sustainable building standards: LEED Gold and the Living Building Challenge (LBC). Middlebury college is building a new First Year Residence Hall on Battell Beach to meet the sustainability requirements of LEED Gold. We as interns think that the Living Building Challenge, a more holistic green building certification, better aligns with Middlebury’s integrated goals of environmental stewardship, social justice, and campus health and happiness. We are using the construction of the new dorm as a case study for how the Living Building Challenge might be implemented in future Middlebury buildings.

Middlebury College operates 50 football fields worth of academic, administrative, and residential buildings on campus (2017 Operations Fact Book). When making decisions about how to add new, retire old, or modify existing spaces on campus, the college considers everything from accessibility to zoning (literally a to z!). The page count of campus planning documents is astounding. Just because a lot of planning goes into college decisions doesn’t mean that we never miss the mark (we do), but even with our shortcomings we are a leader among our peers when it comes to environmental considerations.

Thus, when the college decided to build a new first year residence hall to replace Battell (love it or hate it, that’s big shoes to fill!), they knew they would need sustainability guidelines to integrate into the design process. After making headlines in 2008 when the Hillcrest Environmental Center became the first LEED Platinum building in Vermont, Middlebury decided to build on that success and design the new dorm to meet LEED Gold standards.

As all of this was happening, a group of students at the Architecture Table began investigating a different sustainability certification: the Living Building Challenge. Taking a holistic, performance-based approach (a building actually has to be net zero if it says it will), this certification integrates traditional environmental considerations such as water and energy use with social considerations like universal access, sense of place, and occupant health and happiness. When the Architecture Table students saw how harmoniously the Living Building Challenge requirements aligned with the college’s long term goals, they biked over to President Patton’s house the very next morning at sunrise to discuss their findings over a victory banquet of ross bars and tater tots… Just kidding. Over many months, they compiled a thorough report and presented it to President Patton and David Provost, who agreed that adopting the Living Building Challenge as standard building practice merited further study.

So, here we are, the SSL’s Living Building Challenge Team, conducting that very study. The new first year residence hall is too far along in the design process to be fully certified under the Living Building Challenge, but we are working closely with college administrators and project engineers to bring it into compliance where possible, and to understand what exactly it would take to bring future projects into compliance!

Students are actively involved in a number of coordination and planning entities that are focused on sustainability including: Energy 2028 Steering Committee, Master Plan Implementation, Environmental Council. These all require a focus on how the campus operates and how to affect the implementation of various sustainability policies and goals

Students, with support from faculty and staff, recently were successful in their campaign to have the Board of Trustees commit to divesting from fossil fuel investments.

The Socially Responsible Investment student group has a sub-group, the Research and Investment in Social Equity (RISE) fund, that will focuses on investing $150,000 of the College’s endowment in companies that demonstrate strength in sustainability and social responsibility in addition to considering traditional financial indicators.

The Wellness Committee, which consists of faculty, staff, and students, organizes events and learning opportunities for the College community.

At its core, the Knoll’s (campus garden) mission is to explore food as a medium to cultivate well being in people, place, and the planet. During the growing season, student and community volunteers are welcomed to the garden for 10 hours/week of guided time in the garden around all aspects of operating a small, highly productive, educational garden. The Knoll has permanent infrastructure related to well-being, which includes a labyrinth, outdoor classroom/meditation space, the educational gardens, and dedicated growing areas open to the public for cut-your-own flowers.

There are also social and relational aspects around well being, which include, for examples, hosting some 45 events for diverse partners such as a local elementary school classroom to bake homemade flatbread in the pizza oven, campfires for a “Coming Out Stories” hosted by Anderson Freeman Center, a labyrinth walk for the NESCAC Chaplains’ annual gathering, pizza for First@Midd first generation pre-orientation participants, and celebrations to share gratitude for Facilities and other campus staff who are integral to the Knoll’s success. Further, students come to the Knoll as a way to connect with the earth and with one another; this year many students expressly stated that they came to be and work in the garden as way to foster their connection to nature and as a way to process their grief and anxiety around major issues such as climate change and global pandemics.

Further, because Middlebury’s campus is fully operationalized in the summertime, there are many opportunities to help connect wellbeing, sense of place, and agriculture for students and others while in and at the garden.