By Clare Hintz

At Northland, sustainability is more than just the buildings. Yes, we have incorporated all kinds of green features into our new buildings. We have solar panels, hot water panels, wind towers, and a geothermal grid. We have free bus service around the neighboring towns for students, and a bike program. We have a composting system, a campus garden, and native landscaping.

But more than all of these features, at Northland, sustainability is about people. As a culture, we have enough technological savvy to change our future, but as a culture, we are also slow to act, and we are in denial that human beings can have the kind of planetary impact that we’re having. Why? This is a question about human nature, and a question with no easy answers. At Northland, we focus on environmental leadership throughout the entire student experience. Students leaving Northland are prepared to tackle that question in the way they live their lives. Students are involved in all levels of our campus experience – from volunteering to enhance our “commons” to capstone projects that help our campus innovate. Students are involved in governance, strategic planning, and vision-setting, from sitting on the Board of Trustees to sharing the leadership of Environmental Council, which is tasked with helping us "walk our talk" and reports directly to the president.

At Northland, sustainability is not just about one or two majors – our environmental mission is incorporated across the curriculum, beyond the usual offerings of environmental studies, environmental science, or natural resource management. So students can take a sustainable business class, learn about environmentally friendly artistic expression, or monitor the quality of Bay City Creek while learning the fundamentals of chemistry. We don’t have a green building or engineering degree, but we do have a May course in renewable energy (this year they will be working on installing solar panels on the president’s house). We have student work-study positions that monitor our renewable energy systems and help educate the campus community about energy conservation.

Does everything work perfectly all the time? No. Being on the cutting edge means taking the risk that we will fall off of it. So when we were installing the new solar hot water tubes on McMillan residence hall, the company installing them went out of business. The project was delayed while we found a new company, renegotiated the work, and figured out the intricacies of the installation. This is a great learning opportunity! Being on the cutting edge means we are always finding our way forward. There isn’t anyone to tell us how to do it (though of course we have colleagues at other schools who are engaged in similar adventures).

We don’t have a large endowment as a school – we got where we are through a community commitment to our mission. This is a crucial point, because this is always a tension in the real world! How do we balance environmental, social, and economic sustainability? Northland students are not the environmental leaders of the future; they are environmental leaders right now. They are directly involved in navigating the complex systems of the campus itself in the pursuit of sustainability.

As an institution of higher learning, we have the task of educating leaders who will address future problems that we can’t even begin to imagine. So the first thing we can say is, we don’t have all the answers! But we do know how to ask questions, and we do know how to engage students in asking questions. And we do know how to engage students to think about real-world problems holistically, which is the best way we know to deal with complexity.