characteristics of environmentalism - calvin college · affidavit of researcher bias...

Environmentalism at Calvin College: Qualitative Analysis Spring 2007

Characteristics of Environmentalism at Calvin College: A Qualitative Analysis

Spring 2007

Department of Sociology and Social Work Calvin College

Grand Rapids, MI

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Sociology/ Social Work 320 Social Research Methods Class

Lauren Vander Plas

Audrey Kelly Anna Taglialatela

Pa Thao Megan Miller

Rachel Venema, Course Instructor, MSW Jenn Olthoff, Student Research Assistant

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge and thank the following individuals:

Fellow Sociology/Social Work 320 class members

whose study explores quantitative measures of environmental attitudes and behaviors:

Katelyn Van Noord

Renee LaCoss Heather Pasma David Tweedie Ashley Bultje

Members of the Calvin College community who offered their support and advice during the course of this research, including:

Dr. Janel Curry Dr. Ken Piers

Dr. Beryl Hugen

All those who participated in this study; their thoughtful insights proved invaluable throughout the course of this research.

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Table of Contents Problem Statement ………………………………………………………………………..7

Literature Review …………………………………………………………………………9

Methodology …………………………………………………………………………….13

Findings

I. Environmental Concern and Christian Worldview ………………...…17

II. Calvin College’s Relationship to Environmental Well-being ...……...…20

III. Calvin College and Environmental Harm....…………………….…….....23

IV. Current Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors …...……….....27

V. Changes in Calvin’s Community………..……….…………………...….29

VI. Other Issues concerning Environmentalism…………………....…….….30

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………........33

Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………37

Appendices

I. Survey Instrument ……..………………………..………………….......41

II. Blank Coding Sheet ………….………………………………………...45

III. Content Analysis Coding Results………..……………………………..51

IV. Contact E-mail………………………………………………………….59

V. Interview Transcripts ………………………………...………………...63

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Problem Statement Introduction In this study, researchers explore complex issues of environmental consciousness and behavior within the student, faculty, and staff population of a Calvin College, Christian liberal arts school in the Midwest region of the United States. This study contextualizes the current state of the Calvin College community’s relationship to the natural environment by exploring issues of human behavior, philosophical attitudes, and specific improvements in behaviors over the past ten years. Researchers consider the connection between attitudes and behaviors and the need for more information on its precise relationship. Affidavit of Researcher Bias Environmentalism exists within a multi-layered set of assumptions about the world. Ideally, researchers might come from Mars to study human orientations towards nature, but even aliens probably have a framework for understanding the world. In light of subjectivity, the best researchers lay out their biases. The research team consists of five female students in the Sociology and Social Work department at Calvin College. They come from an intellectual and spiritual tradition that (at least ideologically) encourages careful tending, or “stewardship” of the natural environment. Within this perspective, they specifically portray human-made environmental imbalance and harm as negative consequences of incorrect actions towards nature. Humans and the Natural Environment Many people disagree about the fundamental nature of human relationships with the environment—whether humans exist to alter nature, to tend it, to worship it, or to ignore it. All, however, acknowledge that humans can and do alter the world around them. Many people acknowledge that human activities can enhance and help both the natural environment and the human population that exists within it. Humans can create aesthetic beauty, functionality, and order, and can help to “stabilize” the sometimes-precarious state of nature. Unfortunately, current research indicates that much of the world’s human population fails to carry out these environmentally responsible ideals in its behaviors. Humans pollute the earth, water, and air, overuse or misuse natural resources, overdevelop land, deplete water sources, mismanage agriculture, create ecosystem imbalances by over-hunting or over-harvesting plants and animals, and generally live outside of “harmony” with nature (Skinner et al, 1999). Skinner et al report that “it is increasingly apparent that people have become a major factor—a global factor—in environmental change. […] In many parts of the world, environmental deterioration is epidemic” (1999, p. 465). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations- related research panel, states that human activities very likely contribute significantly to global warming patterns, and that “discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns” (IPPC 2007, p. 5).

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Calvin College Calvin College, a four-year undergraduate liberal arts institution in Grand Rapids, Michigan, exists as a constituent school of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC/CRCNA) denomination. As of spring 2007, Calvin College’s undergraduate enrollment stands at approximately 4,300 (Calvin College 2007). Calvin College’s intellectual tradition professes philosophies such as earth-keeping and environmental stewardship (“Statement on Sustainability” Calvin College Environmental Stewardship Committee). Researchers regard Calvin College as a prime candidate for a study regarding environmental attitudes and behaviors because of its Christian affiliation and its majority population of white North American students. Despite its rich resources of ideological and intellectual wealth, researchers know little about the relationship between this environmental philosophy and the concrete beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the Calvin College community. Out of a broader (predominantly North American) cultural framework, Calvin College community members directly and indirectly impact the environment with their actions. Statistically, with its member population of mainly North American students of European descent, Calvin College’s “ecological footprint” ranks relatively high (“Ecological Footprint Analysis,” Redefining Progress). Without statistical data, researchers may only speculate about the environmental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the Calvin College community. In 1998, a Social Sciences Research class undertook an analysis of the student body population. This data provides a comparison point for researchers. All communities, especially intellectual institutions, change over time, and researchers recognize the need to study Calvin College in order to understand and evaluate changes within the past decade. As part of this study, researchers explore specific areas of change within the past decade. Purpose of this research This study will enable researchers to probe the overall relationship between environmental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within the Calvin College student body, faculty and staff. Researchers conduct interviews in order to examine the many dimensions of environmentalism within this academic institution. Using social science research methodology, they attempt to draw conclusions about the relationship between environmental philosophies, concern, and behaviors. This research will aid administrators, professors, and advocacy groups at Calvin College to understand the complexities of environmental concern and activity. It will serve as a resource for environmental intervention programs, administrative policy, future scholarship regarding environmentalism, and overall awareness within the Calvin College community.

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Literature Review Introduction Researchers identify a variety of factors that influence environmental concern, especially as they relate to behavior towards the environment. An overview of this research reveals many variables that might produce valuable results within the Calvin College population, including religious values, political orientation, age, and gender. While a considerable research base exists for studying contributing factors toward environmental attitudes and behaviors, gaps exist and some findings contradict each other. In an effort to better define the factors that affect awareness and concern for the environment, researchers consider variables within the Calvin College community. In order to understand the context of environmental behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs, researchers undertake an analysis of past research regarding relevant variables. Gender, Age, Social Class, and Political Ideology Gender consistently ranks as one of the highest correlates with environmental attitudes and behaviors, and it remains one of the most often researched variables. Flynn, Mertz & Slovic (1994), Riechard & McGarrity (1994), Van Liere & Dunlap (1980), and Bordon & Francis (1978) all consistently report that females exhibit higher perceptions of risk than males. According to one study of over 450 students using a Wilcoxon Pairwise Test, men display a greater degree of knowledge regarding the environment, but also a more negative attitude toward it. At the same time, female students reveal more environmental concern in their everyday actions (through activities such as recycling) than their male counterparts (Kuitunen, Tikka & Tynys 2000). This study confirms an earlier study by Gifford, Hay & Boros (1982-83) that reports males as more knowledgeable about the environment than their female counterparts. Regarding political ideologies, the landmark study of Tognacci et al. (1972) finds that Democrats and Liberals (measured both by self-identification and a number of liberalism-conservatism scales) score significantly higher than Republicans and Conservatives on measures of environmental concern. And while several other past studies confirm these findings (Constantini & Hanf 1972; Dillman & Christenson 1972; Dunlap & Gale 1974), equally many conflict (Munton & Brady 1970; Buttel 1972; Dillman & Christenson 1972). Upon his own study and analysis of previous findings, Dunlap (1975) argues, along with each of the aforementioned studies, that “relatively few studies have examined political ideology” (449), and in light of the already ambiguous findings, the real development of political ideologies over the last 30 years, and the relatively few findings to show for it, this area of research still needs exploration. Buttel & Flinn (1976) examine other possible factors behind public environmental concern, awareness of environmental problems, and support for environmental reform. Their findings primarily show that economic growth negatively correlates with both environmental reform support and environmental concern awareness, and stronger concern for environmental issues within middle class American citizens than their working class counterparts. A study two years later by the same authors finds no relationship between income and awareness of problems or support for reform, no clear

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“white-collar / blue-collar” differences, citing age, education, and location of residence as the best predictors of environmental attitudes. Regarding age as a possible variable, Riechard and Peterson’s (1998) aforementioned study of 10-17 year old students concludes that “a relationship between perception-of-risk scores and grade level is nearly nonexistent”. Yet a certain level of discrepancy exists between findings, meriting further research, as Kuitunen, Tikka & Tynys (2000) report that age correlates with higher degrees of environmental action. Religious Beliefs and Cultural Values Religious perspectives consistently correlate with environmental attitudes and behaviors, although which specific aspects of religious faith hold influence remains unclear (Guth et al. 1993). Nevertheless, this particular connection continues to remain one of the primary variables within public consciousness, due to “such a level of generality that it cannot be either falsified or verified,” claiming Judeo-Christian heritage responsibility for the current ecological crisis because of the injunction of Genesis 1 that humans exercise “dominion” over the earth (Greeley 1993, page 19). A 1993 study examines how religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices influence environmental attitudes among religious activists from varying denominations and perspectives, using an extensive 265 item instrument to obtain numerous measures of “religion” (Guth et al. 1993). Expressing the inadequacy to well define “religion,” and thus a difficulty in determining its real effect upon environmental attitudes and ensuing action, this questionnaire includes denominational affiliation, church attendance, both ritual and private practices, spiritual experiences, and specific beliefs. And while the authors cite past broad definitions of “religious faith” as unclear, the new research only draws such wide sweeping conclusions as “specific denominational settings, the character of the local church, the direction of pastoral leadership, and media preferences do influence respondents’ attitudes on the environment” (p. 381). Eckberg and Blocker’s (1989) random sample of people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, found four environmental concern factors correlated with four religion variables: being Jewish or Christian, being conservative Protestant, believing that religion is important, and believing in the literal interpretation of the Bible. And yet, several questions remain. If fundamentalist Christians tend to hold to politically and morally conservative views, might they not dismiss environmental concern as part of a liberal political agenda that they reject? (Greeley 1993). The specific ways in which religious faith influences environmental attitudes and beliefs would still benefit from further research. Kilbourne et al (2001) examines the cultural and societal values that impact environmental concern. The study looks at the “Dominant Social Paradigm” among college students in England, Denmark and the United States. The dominant social paradigm includes technological optimism, a consumer mindset, individual freedoms and private property. The study finds environmental concern negatively correlates with the DSP in technological, economical, and political ideologies.

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Environmental Education Sherburn’s 2004 study examines student majors in relation to environmental concern. This study compares to others prior, revealing that those with biological or environmental majors demonstrate a higher concern for the environment than business, economic and other majors. Sherburn notes that no major distinction exists between business-related majors and other majors such as psychology, sociology, etc., but that a significant difference does exist between environmental-related majors and all others. Similar studies such as Hodgkinson & Innes (2001), and Tikka et al (2000) find similar results in which environmental attitudes relate to a student’s choice of majors with those in biology and environment having significantly higher levels of environmental concern than those in computers, statistics, or commerce majors. From this information, one infers those with more environmental knowledge, such as those in biology or environmental studies courses care more about the environment, however in studies such as Bright & Tarrants (2002) and Hsu (2004), an increase in students’ knowledge of environmental concerns do not always translate into a concern toward the environment after exposure to environmental education. Environmental Programs and Policies A growing group of research and interest in environmental sustainability and particular education on this topic recently immerge. Books such as The Sustainability Curriculum: the Challenge for Higher Education and Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability : Problematics, Promise, and Practice challenge colleges and universities to develop programs to teach sustainability as well as model sustainability as institutions. Colleges and universities increasingly create programs such as recycling systems to make their campus more sustainable. A study at a university in the southeast United States finds that more recycling cans in the classrooms of academic buildings correlates with higher rates of recycling among the student body (Ludwig et al 1998). Attitudes and Behaviors Within the world of social sciences, attitudes and behaviors connect to each other in different ways, but the precise relationship remains unclear to researchers. Each side of the debate contains valid points and ideas. However due to the many other outside variables, researchers find it difficult to conclude that attitudes and behaviors correlate. Eagly and Chaiken (1993) write that at best, only a moderate relationship exists between attitudes and behaviors. Other studies show a more concrete connection between a person’s attitude and the effect it has on behaviors. In their study, Schultz & Oskamp (1996) investigate the intentions of a person and how that affects a person’s behaviors. They find that “behavioral intentions are determined by a person’s attitudes… and by the person’s perceptions of social pressure to perform or not perform the behavior”. Eagly and Chiaken (1993) agree that attitudes and behaviors weakly correlate, however, as a result of many outside determinants; researchers experience difficulty when trying to demonstrate a direct relationship.

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This study examines environmental attitudes and concerns in relation to the behavioral outputs at Calvin College. In this regard, the literature seems more promising. Tikka, Kuitunen, and Tynys (2000) conclude in their study that someone “who had a positive attitude toward the environment also tended to have several activities related to nature and the environment” (p. 4). Schultz & Oskamp (1996) observe a connection between concern for the environment and student recycling. Cleary the information surrounding the effects of attitudes on behaviors requires more study and research. Although some empirical data demonstrates a relationship between the two, many researchers are dissatisfied and call for more evidence. Conclusion In light of the current literature, the study of Calvin College students and faculty’s environmental attitudes and behaviors presents an opportunity to contribute valuable analysis to today’s research. This study explores these topics and provides opportunity to compare and interpret the results with existing research.

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Methodology Introduction In the qualitative branch of this study, researchers utilize semi-structured interviews to gather information regarding the Calvin College community’s relationship to the environment. Sampling Researchers selected the various informants using judgmental sampling. In this non-probability sample, researchers selected key informants based on their connections with the environmental movement at Calvin College, or based on a broad spectrum of positions within Calvin College. The informants include several science department faculty members, leaders within environmental groups, administrators, and staff directors on Calvin’s campus. Respondents include seven faculty members, four staff members, and one student for a total of twelve informants. The study sample consists of nine males and three females. The informants’ years at Calvin range from 4 to 38 years. The length of the interviews with the 12 respondents ranges from 15 to 55 minutes with an average of 39 minutes per interview. In the research planning stage, student researchers formulated interview questions under the guidance of the class instructor. These include questions regarding 1) general background information of the respondents, 2) general attitudes towards the environment within the Calvin College community, 3) the relationship between Christian worldview taught at Calvin and environmental stewardship, 4) how the Calvin College community responds to environmental issues, and 5) how beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors towards the environment have changed in the last decade. Table 1 (below) lists questions and probes for interviewers to ask during the interview.

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Table 1: Interview Questions:

1. Just to get some background information, what is your position at Calvin? 2. How long have you been at Calvin? 3. What do you see as the general attitudes towards the environment in the Calvin

community? Probes for question 3:

• What about for students? • And for faculty and staff?

4. In your opinion, how does or how should environmental concern fit into the

Christian worldview taught at Calvin? Probes for question 4:

• Do you see this perspective being taught at Calvin? • What has formed your perspective?

5. Can you explain and describe some of the significant changes in beliefs,

attitudes and behaviors in the Calvin community over the last decade? Probes for question 5:

• In the student body? • Has Calvin implemented programs concerning environmental policy or

issues?

6. How has Calvin responded to environmental issues? Probes for question 6:

• How is Calvin contributing to the well-being of the environment? • Which of these contributions has been the most useful? • In what way has Calvin damaged or harmed the environment? • What is the most problematic area?

The interviewers follow this standardized survey instrument during the interviews with the 12 informants, and added non-standardized probe questions when appropriate to obtain more complete responses. At the beginning of each interview, researchers read a standardized introduction in order to define the purpose of the interview and to better explain the study. Following the six question interview, interviewers asked respondents to answer various questions from the Environmental Attitudes and Behavior Questionnaire. A corresponding student research team used this questionnaire to measure environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors within the Calvin College community. Researchers ask these questions in order to help the research team to better interpret the findings from the corresponding survey. A group of ten students conducted the interviews, with one or two students in each interview. Researchers recorded the entirety of each interview using a tape recording device and later transcribed each interview.

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Data Analysis Following the transcription process of each interview, researchers developed a coding system in order to properly analyze the transcriptions. The team used a concept called the Grounded Theory Method (GTM), which commonly defines theories generated from the transcriptions. The Grounded Theory Method, introduced by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, is “an inductive approache to research in which theories are generated solely from an examination of data rather than being derived deductively” (Babbie, 2007, p.380). This theory follows four key stages which defines the process and complexities of coding. The following is a list of the four stages outlined by Strauss and Glaser (Babbie, 2007, p.380).

1. “Comparing incidents applicable to each category.” Repeated statements

are compared throughout the entirety of the transcriptions and are matched with the various categories outlined in the research questions.

2. “Integrating categories and their properties.” Various relationships are defined among the different categories.

3. “Delimiting the theory.” This segment of the stage defines patters of the relationships among the categories and once the concepts become clear, the researcher is able to pick out concepts/relationships relevant and irrelevant to the inquiry.

4. “Writing theory.” Lastly, the researcher defines relationships and puts the findings into words to help others better understand the concepts discovered.

The qualitative data analysis of coding, within the Ground Theory Method, helps define the relationships/concepts within the transcribed data. Coding is an important tool in the analysis of qualitative research since it “classifies and/or categorizes individual pieces of data” (Babbie, 2007, p.386). This coupled with the GTM allows for retrieval of important materials. The coding process aims to discover patterns within the data which point to a theoretical understanding of the social life (Babbie, 2007, p.384). The method of data analysis includes axial coding. The concept of axial coding aims to “identify the core concepts of the study and involves a regrouping of data, in which the researcher uses the open code categories and looks for more analytical concepts” (Babbie, 2007, p.386). In short, according to Anselm and Strauss, axial coding is “a reanalysis of the results of open coding aimed at identifying the important, general concepts” (Babbie, 2007, p.386).

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Table 2: Research Questions

Question 1: How do informants perceive the relationship between the curricular content taught at Calvin College and Christian worldview? Question 2: According to informants, how does the Calvin College community contribute to the well being of the environment? Question 3: How do informants perceive that the Calvin College community damages or harms the environment? Question 4: Overall, how do informants perceive the state of the Calvin College community’s current relationship to the environment, with regard to beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? Question 5: What do informants identify as significant changes in the Calvin College community’s relationship to the environment over the last decade? Question 6: What other interesting or significant findings appear within interviews with regard to environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in the Calvin College community?

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Findings: Part I The Relationship between Environmental Concern and Christian Worldview Question 1: How do informants perceive the relationship between the curricular content taught at Calvin College and Christian worldview? This study asks informants to respond to questions of environmental concern and Christian worldview in regards to Calvin College as an academic institution, and Calvin College as a broader community. Informants also discuss their personal perspective about environmental actions, beliefs, and attitudes.

Calvin College’s Christian Worldview As a Christian liberal arts college, Calvin College emphasizes a reformed Christian worldview in its teaching.

“[The reformed Christian concept of] creation, fall, redemption is part of [Calvin’s curriculum].”

Environmental concern and faith perspective within Calvin College’s curriculum

Calvin College emphasizes stewardship of the earth in its overall curriculum. Informants identify course materials in a variety of classes as sources of environmental knowledge-building. Others specifically state that biology or environmental courses teach this perspective. All students learn about environmental care through mandatory courses such as “Developing a Christian Mind.”

“There was also a new course offered in the Biology Department called Global Health and Sustainability; it was offered last fall for the first time. So I do see some things shifting toward more environmental concerns in our curriculum.” “Calvin has been teaching more of the Christian worldview in regard to the environment. Before it sort of has been in the background, but now, I think people are more forward about it. I think it’s more clearly laid out as part of the curriculum.” “It seems likes a lot of emphasis [on environmental issues is] being put in the Christian worldview now than it was before. The new core curriculum, and also the interim class that all students have to take.”

The Calvin College Community’s Approach toward Environmental Concern and

Christian Worldview Findings suggest that faculty and staff agree that Christians hold a responsibility to take care of the environment. The Christian worldview and calling mandate environmental sensitivity.

“What I like about Calvinism is it’s more earthy, and I think the orthodox version of what we are trying to teach is like if there’s an afterlife that’s

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on earth, earth is where It’s at. This whole idea of Christ being the beginning of the new creation, the realization of shalom on the earth—that entails all sorts of the small facets of people’s interactions with each other, with all of creation and it all working together.” “John Calvin says somewhere to be human is to be that single point in the entire universe where God’s goodness can receive a corresponding echo of gratitude so that to be human is to be that point out of all things God has made, turtles, tarantulas, tulips, snow, whatever, out of all the things he’s made human beings have the capacity to say thanks and to enjoy.” “[T]he Christian calling according to Calvin is try[ing] to bring God as much delight in you as you possibly can” [by understanding the book of Genesis where God, upon creation of the first human beings, asked them to enjoy creation first before using it].

Key words

Informants often mention the word “stewardship” in terms of care for the environment.

“I think that God wants us to be a steward of the Earth, so that’s all it is—stewardship.” “God put us in charge of his creation, as caretakers, and I think that we’re sort of mandated to be responsible stewards of his creation and I think that we are responsible for the resources that have been given to us.” “I think Calvin recognizes [environmental stewardship] in terms of our theology and our view of a Christian life so I think that it embraces earth keeping,”

Concerned populations in the Calvin College community

Out of the twelve informants, ten mention student activism groups such as the Environmental Stewardship Coalition (ESC) as a positive influence on the overall attitudes and behaviors in the Calvin College community.

“[T]here’s people on the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, you know, students are a lot of those who are interested in it.” “There are some pockets of concern, you know, very high levels of interest among some groups, you know the ESC among the students is one group.” “I think there is maybe a minority group within the student body, those kinds of students who are involved in the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, for example, who provide leadership in these areas.”

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Informants identify populations within the faculty, such as the science department and faculty involved in the Environmental Stewardship Committee, which show a special interest in environmental issues.

“I think, in the Science division here at Calvin, we’ve been addressing these issues, and a lot of faculty are interested in the issues. We don’t always agree on the nature of the problem, and we don’t exactly agree on how to address the problems necessarily, but there is a substantial amount of interest and discussion going on.” “You have faculty members who are involved in CEAP, the whole CEAP program, doing a lot of stuff being very concerned, local food initiatives and environmental awareness and pollution concern and runoff and the woodlot.” “One committee is made up faculty and staff called the Environmental Stewardship Committee.” “I know [the Environmental Stewardship] committee [was] working very hard to publicize more what environmental decisions we are making. So what are we doing with the gardens around here? Like making the choice to do natural planting instead of exotic plants and trying to cut down on the amount of fertilizers we used. Things like that, I think those, they’re kind of behind the screen things that I think we can talk to people about why we’re making these choices.”

Informant perspective

Researchers identify no one specific factor as responsible for forming the informants’ perspective on the environment. Informants listed different factors that had formed their perspective. Two of the 12 informants attribute their childhood as forming their perspective. Another two of the 12 informants state that caring for the next generation informs their perspective.

“I think my beliefs are that I have two kids, so personally I would like for the world to be good place to be when they grow up.”

Love of the outdoors also contributes to two of the informants’ perspectives. The other informants listed the notion of created order, being professors or being Calvin College alumni, their area of study, their Christian faith, the students with whom they come in contact, and authors like Wendell Berry as contributors in forming their perspectives.

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Findings: Part II

Calvin College’s Relationship to Environmental Well-being Question 2: According to informants, how does the Calvin College community contribute to the well being of the environment? Informants quickly identify many ways that Calvin contributes to the well-being of the environment, from theological, to pedagogical, to practical; throughout the interviews they give various examples of Calvin’s contribution to the natural environment.

Bunker Interpretive Center/LEED certified Buildings Informants frequently mention the Bunker Interpretive Center or LEED certified buildings as an example of Calvin’s relationship to environmental well-being. The Bunker Center, a Gold-standard certified building under the United States government building project, exists as one of two of Calvin’s LEED certified buildings. Informants perceive the Bunker Interpretive Center as a token of Calvin College’s commitment to environmental well-being.

“I think that the [Bunker] Interpretive Center is a very symbolic environmental place of campus, and then the eco-system preserve.” “You have the Bunker Interpretive Center being built but with a visible sacrimentality to it that we think you ought to pay some attention to the preservation of resources.”

Calvin College’s Ecosystem Preserve

In connection with the Bunker Interpretive Center, six informants mention the ecosystem preserve as one of Calvin College’s positive impacts on the environment.

“[Calvin College set aside] 90 acres [of its campus] that’s an environmental preserve where students are actually going out and testing the water, you know testing for the balance of these ecosystems.” “We bought the preserve when we bought the rest of the land we’ve developed it around it but there’s a pretty firm boundary around the ecopreserve that’s not going to get penetrated. […] I see the college having a very strong commitment to that. [T]he ecosystem preserve […] could be this little island of green in suburbia.”

Educating Students

The second frequent response to Calvin’s contribution to environmental well-being regards the education of students. Informants say that Calvin College contributes to the natural environment by exposing students to environmental issues through classes and programs. They say that Calvin attempts to incorporate environmental principles into classes and programs in order to educate students to make choices in the future that also contribute to the environment.

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“I think [teaching students about environmental issues] is the most significant contribution Calvin is making to the environment. If you think about it, there are 4000 students right now and 4000 people will go into the world and try to change things in whatever ways they can. I think there’s definitely potential for that.” “The reason why a lot of [students] or at least me are interested in the first place is because they learned it in class.” “[Name] who teaching in the philosophy [department …] has adopted a very personal sense of how eating style is important, he has become a vegan […] [Name] approaches it not from a personal compulsion but also talks about the bigger issues of food. [Name] is doing an English 101 class about food and having students talk about the all the different impacts of food.”

Wind Turbines

In 2007, Calvin received funding to implement wind turbines on its campus. The Governor of Michigan came to campus to hear a presentation about this new renewable energy source. Informants see this project as an exciting new opportunity for Calvin to continue contributing to the well-being of the environment.

“[Windmill projects on Calvin’s campus will] help people understand this is a feasible way to create or utilize an alternative energy source aside from buying your electricity from Consumers Power [company].”

Recycling

Informants frequently mention recycling as an important issue, and many perceive a high rate of desire among various groups (i.e. ESC) and individuals in the community to use and better implement recycling programs. Various informants identify the policy of recycling and the implementation of recycling within the community as a significant change within the past ten years. They report that individuals within the community became more aware of the importance of recycling.

“I think we have become aware that recycling is a very good thing. We still have to get better at it, but we eventually need to get to the stage where we get rid of the idea of waste in our society, that we don’t think of stuff as waste or trash anymore, we think of it as feedstock for the next step, either biological recycling, or technical recycling, as an instrument for something.” “[We] get a call from the faculty if there's not a recycling box in their office or classroom.”

Other Contributions

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Informants mention other contributions of Calvin towards environmental well-being such as woodlot preservation, marketing recycled products, moderating the temperature of building, a cardboard bailer, research and writing, partnerships with environmental programs such as Au Sable Institute, Alumni in their fields, reading groups, living environmentally conscious lives, watersheds and appropriate drainage, solar power, and theology.

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Findings: Part III

Calvin College’s Relationship to Environmental Harm Question 3: How do informants perceive that the Calvin College community damages or harms the environment? Informants discuss the ways that Calvin College harms the environment, both knowingly and inadvertently. Interestingly, four respondents express uncertainty of how or if Calvin harms the environment. They respond in ways such as “I don’t see Calvin harming the environment” or “In general we are doing a lot more good than damage.” However, in each case, the informant went on to give examples of Calvin College’s harmful environmental impact.

Energy Use The most frequent response to Calvin’s harm of the environment focuses on energy use. Energy use includes use of fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Informants mention poor insulation and building design in regards to the amount of energy wasted in the buildings around Calvin.

“We use a lot of energy in our building operations. All of our buildings were built in a time when climate change wasn’t an issue and economically there was no pressure to insulate your building. It was cheaper to just burn the extra fuel it takes to keep it warm so now the roof of this building is just one brick thick so like the heat is just leaving everything.” “We have very cheap energy and in that since I think energy is undervalued and under priced. […] I would argue there should be an appropriate taxation so that we can make the right choices…the cost of the energy should be such that it affects more directly the choices we make.”

Transportation

In addition to the comments about energy use, informants also speak about the harm of driving cars. Informants show concern about the number of cars daily driven to campus. One informant spoke of driving cars as the “one car one person thing.”

“Every time we drive our cars to Calvin we damage the environment. […] If we could cut down the number of cars that come to Calvin every day by ten percent, that’s so much less Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, less bad stuff that goes into the air.” “We’re a society that drives with one person in the car, and I would like to see us continue to find ways to reduce the number of cars that come to campus to save energy to save natural resources. It improves air quality and all of that.”

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“I think one of our goals actually is to [increase the percentage of the student population that lives on campus]. If we have more people on campus, they wouldn’t have to drive.”

Failure to Recycle

Although many informants identify recycling as an area of improvement within the Calvin College community, others report poor compliance within certain populations, such as the student body.

“[T]here are a lot other students who just say if “I see a recycle bin, I’ll recycle. If I don’t, I won’t.” “I don’t see a lot of increase in the amount of recycling that gets done by the student body. […] But if you go into the dorms and you look through the trash….there is a lot of stuff in the trash that could have been recycled. And every floor in the dorm has recycle bins. So I don’t think the sensitivity is very great there.” “It is difficult to get students to recycle stuff; sometimes they’ve grown up in a place that doesn’t recycle, I’ve always lived in states that recycle, so for me to […] throw a can in the trash just feels wrong to me. I watch our students and one of the things ESC is doing is we are going to introduce some new recycling containers and make sure there is always a trash container next to the recycling because if the recycling stream gets contaminated you can’t do it.”

Chemical Pollutants

Seven informants speak of the harm of fertilizers and harmful chemicals used at Calvin and by people within the Calvin community. Manicured lawns contribute to the use of fertilizers and chemicals which pollute groundwater.

“We fertilize our lawn with some pretty nasty stuff and there is stuff thrown in the ponds that’s not good.” “We use quite a lot of chemicals on our grass, but I think they are becoming conscious that chemical use on lawns and so forth is not necessarily a good thing, and you have to try to minimize this behavior.” “So there is some fertilizer getting into that water which can [cause] other environment[al] issues like algae blooms and fish get killed, stuff like that. So there’s been little damagers like that.”

Informants also mention chemicals in personal products which damage the environment.

“When we wash dishes, that’s putting a lot of chemicals down into the drain.”

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“If everybody used half as much of shampoo as we normally do, you would make a significant impact on the burden of these kinds of pollutants that go into our water systems.”

Deforestation

Informants perceive that the Calvin College community harms the natural environment by cutting down trees in connection with new building projects.

“Certainly whenever we do a big building, like the Fieldhouse complex, it’s going to take down a lot of trees. That can damage the environment.” “[T]here is a real concern about the environment, even the trees, even when they’re cutting down trees, how hard they struggle with the new buildings that they are putting up and the process they have to go through.”

Food and agriculture

Issues around food also raise important environmental concern and Calvin’s approach toward these issues appears problematic to several informants. Some respondents question the sustainability of resources in relation to food. Not buying food locally can contribute to consumption of fossil fuels as food comes from all over the world.

“Food is a social thing, it’s a physical thing, it’s a community activity and sometimes you look at all those different aspects and people change their opinions. What is it that makes you more comfortable, eating less meat or being vegetarian or being a vegan, there’s always an intellectual component. There’s always an act of choice. In our society it’s becomes sometimes a very important act of choice because you can’t just walk into McDonalds and get a soy burger.” “[Our food distributor] buys food from anywhere in the world that happens to be cheapest so I think that’s probably pretty bad fossil fuel-wise and promoting urban sprawl indirectly.” “[I]n the broader scene we have got our food stores and our other store like Wal-Mart and we have our Home Depot and they get their goods from all over the world so if you look at what supplies many of our daily needs and or wants and goods if they come from all over the world, what effect will that have environmentally? […] so to think that Wal-Mart is the largest food supplier in the world it also means they have the biggest buying power of any food organization so they can get any of their goods from anywhere in the world at very cheap prices.”

One informant has a more optimistic perspective on Calvin College’s food consumption.

“[Dining services] have been very positive in trying to […] buy more locally when it’s possible. Because there are limits to that when most of

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the people are here, its pretty hard to buy locally when we are not growing things like that, but nevertheless there are some serious attempts by the food service to make students aware of where food is coming from… we should have a goal to increase that.”

Other harmful impacts

Other harmful actions include a general neglect or ignorance, large numbers of people, water consumption, and the location of buildings, parking lots, and urban sprawl.

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Findings: Part IV

Current Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors Question 4: Overall, how do informants perceive the state of the Calvin College community’s current relationship to the environment, with regard to beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? Informants address current environmental beliefs, attitudes and behaviors within the student body, faculty and staff, as well as difference between these different groups.

Variation in student interest in the environment Informants consistently point out a wide variation in student interest in environmentalism. Within this variation, specific minority groups of students take environmental concern more seriously than others. These “pockets of concern” cover both the theoretical and specific material implications of environmental stewardship. Informants differentiate this minority student group with a larger majority of people who may care somewhat about the wellbeing of the environment but take no serious action to change their behaviors. They also mention another majority group, whose members care very little about the environment and whose behaviors follow this ideological apathy.

“I think that there is a group of students that have a high sensitivity to it. I think that there is a group of students that think it’s silliness, and I think there is a group of students in between that kind of think it is something that we should be concerned about but don’t spend a lot of time and energy on.” “I think that there is a passionate population of students, then I think there are students who care if their friends care, and then I think there are students who just don’t care, because they’re just not attuned.” “[T]here are some students who know a lot about the environment and are trying to get others to do things different and to make a difference in their own backyards or their own homes.” “[T]here are just pockets of concern. I’m sad to say it’s not a hallmark of the institution; but I’m afraid it isn’t.”

Environmental Stewardship Coalition (student club)

Informants often mention students involved with an environmental advocacy club, the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, as an important component of this “caring minority.”

“There are some pockets of concern, you know, very high levels of interest among some groups, you know the ESC among the students is one group […] [T]hey are a group of students I consider to be environmentally conscious, environmentally sensitive.”

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The relationship between students’ attitudes and behaviors Informants identify a disconnection between attitudes and beliefs toward environmental issues and practicing environmentally responsible lives.

“Earth-keeping affects how you live, […but it’s not very popular, because] who wants to hear about changing their lifestyle?” “I think on the one hand students if you ask them—are you concerned about creation care—generally they would be. If you asked them—would they really want to change their lifestyle to really be active in creation care—I would suspect the answer would be moderate. So ultimately in some ways creation care is going to entail some changes in lifestyle.” “I think there are a fair number of students who are at least sympathetic to those kinds of things. […] [B]ut it doesn’t quite click and they don’t quite recycle or take their bike or whatever it might be.” “[A]mong students there is a really vocal minority with people involved in the ESC, those are the ones that might be active on issues but […] it’s not that small of a minority. […] [T]here are a lot of people who are sympathetic to those ideas and are conscious about environmental implications in their lives. Whether or not it plays out in whether they drive to school or take the bus, you know…”

Comparisons between faculty and students

Many informants state that faculty tends toward more awareness than students.

“I think faculty tends to be more, at least initially idealistic than more the students and the staff. I think their sensitivity is certainly higher than the general public and the staff. We have some staff that really get into it.”

Some informants report very little demarcation between student body and faculty attitudes and behaviors. Rather, certain segments display a great deal of concern in each group.

“I don’t know that I could […] make the demarcation between students, faculty and staff as I would make it among certain unique groups in each. What binds the [professors] of the faculty together with the groups of students on the Environmental Protection Council is far greater than what binds [professors] with fellow faculty members who have less concern about it.” “I’m sure that there are equal proportions of students that say it doesn’t make any sense, lots of students that say it’s a great thing and we should do more of it. I’d say that’s true of faculty and staff.”

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Findings: Part V

Changes in Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors in Calvin’s Community Question 5: What do informants identify as significant changes in the Calvin College community’s relationship to the environment over the last decade? Informants identify the presence or absence of change in environmental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within the Calvin community in the past ten years as well as the distinct changes and the sources of these changes.

Increased Awareness/Concern in the Calvin community over the past 10 years Informants attribute an increase in awareness and concern as responsible for behavior and policy changes among Calvin’s community in the past decade.

“I definitely would say that it’s improved. We’ve improved with our introduction of different products.” “Calvin has made progress towards subsidizing the buses which is good. There have been new courses, introduction to environmental sustainability and food and health and how it all fits together.”

Similar Awareness/Concern in the Calvin community over the past 10 years

Four informants state that the awareness and concern stayed the same or varied in degrees of awareness and concern over time. No informants state that the environmental awareness or behavior has decreased in the past ten years.

“I don’t think that the general proportion of the population has changed a lot, I think there is always a group of students that sees environmental issues as their real point of focus and passion and I don’t think that percentage has changed a lot in the last 10 years.”

Some Changes in behavior over the past 10 years

Only three informants speak of changes in behavior over the last 10 years but none specify in which group the changes took place. However, in some instances a few informants state that among the faculty/staff group in the Calvin community, faculty/staff appear more apt to such changes and make the extra effort as opposed to the students on campus:

“I know there are a number of faculty who have signed on to the green electricity who will pay extra so that the electricity comes not from corporate plants but from other renewable resources.” “I would guess that there is probably a greater desire overall by the faculty and staff to recycle than the students. […] When we look at the trash, the stuff coming out of the faculty and staff buildings is more recycled than what we get out of the dorms.”

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Findings: Part VI

Other Issues Concerning Environmentalism in the Calvin College Community Question 6: What other interesting or significant findings appear within interviews with regard to environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in the Calvin College community?

Monetary Cost Researchers note that economic cost appears as a common theme, one which the study did not specifically solicit. Informants explain that the high cost of environmentally sustainable building projects and eco-friendly activities prevents real change within the Calvin College community. They convey the belief that the community confesses care for the natural environment, yet their beliefs conflicts with the high cost of environmentally responsible buildings and projects.

“[W]e still operate within this paradigm that saving money is good, and spending more money than we have to is bad.” “Reasonable cost means that the goal it not to raise tuition to pay for these things. So when someone says that we can put solar collectors on every building and we can do something that is environmentally good; then that’s fine. But it means that each of these buildings will probably cost five percent more. Well, five percent doesn’t sound like much, but when you take 40 million and say five percent of that, were talking about two million dollars. So we try to do environmentally what we can.” “I don’t think I hear people say, ‘Oh stewardship, no that’s not something that we need to do.’ Everybody is in agreement there. […]Stewardship is great, and environmental stuff is great, as long as it doesn’t cost us extra money. So people will recycle and go a little bit, and maybe it’s not so convenient, but that’s ok. But if you ask me to spend more money, eh that’s where people will bow out.”

Others see long-term fiscal paybacks in environmentally friendly buildings and policies.

“I think we can show a pay back over a period of time. So um, your question is a good one and that is if it shows a payback should we do it? Or if it doesn’t show a payback should we do it anyway simply because it is good for the environment? Most everything we do we are looking at what kind of payback there is.”

Various informants mention the concept of saving money versus being environmentally sustainable; most reply Calvin needs a balance and as stewards of the environment, Calvin College should not “default ourselves to the most inexpensive choice because it’s not the best in terms of stewardship.”

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“Unfortunately, that kind of [environmentally friendly] construction still is quite a bit more expensive than conventional construction, so I think you do have to have this will to say ‘we are going to apply the financial resources to make this part of the construction possible.’”

Competition between land development and land preservation

Two informants comment specifically on what they call a “competition” between development and preservation. Different members of the Calvin community continue to debate and discuss this issue in relation to the woodlot and Fieldhouse.

“The question that’s been posed with the coming of our president here in the last 10 years, [Name] as contrasted with the previous president is one who has wanted to develop this campus and develop means putting up buildings. Now this has put before this community this question, this piece of turf that the Lord has entrusted to us, is it for conservation or is it for development? And truth to tell we’ve never really settled that and hence we have all these discussions now, most immediately with regard to the new field house. Should we cut a tree down? Should we not cut a tree down?” “There’s always a competition between what we build versus what’s naturally there.”

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Discussion Significant Findings Overall Calvin College’s faculty, staff, and students display generally sensitive attitudes towards the environment. These attitudes and beliefs may result from an instilled Christian worldview developed in their cultural upbringing or from Calvin College’s influences. Consistent with previous literature, the study shows a relationship between environmental concern and Christian worldview. The Christian worldview as described by many informants involves the responsibility as stewards of the earth through the practice of creation care. However, United States culture makes good stewardship difficult to carry out. As one respondent says, “we are almost obligated to use private transportation, and most of us opt to use cars for that, because walking is either not possible because there aren’t always sidewalks, or it’s too far, we’re too far away from our destination.” Our study, congruent with other research finds that concerns and actions do not always line up. The curricular implications of this finding may somewhat discredit a focus on environmental education which aims for a greater understanding of environmental impacts, if in fact students who know and concern themselves with environmentalism do not actively carry out their concern in environmentally conscience lifestyles. Lack of action is often a result of lack of awareness. Sometimes people do not know how to contribute or where to focus their efforts. According to informants, environmental awareness increased on Calvin’s campus in the past decade. “Pockets of concern” such as the Environmental Stewardship Coalition made improvements to Calvin’s education and action towards the environment. Sensitivity and concern for the environment increases in faculty and staff compared to students. Calvin faculty and staff, among others seem more in tune with concerns although they also develop pockets of concern. Those who teach about environmental issues in the science division help raise student’s awareness about sustainability, food, health and how it all fits together. The finding of teachers and students in the science division being more environmentally sensitive is consistent with Sherburn’s (2004) research. Environmental problems at Calvin still need further attention. Decreasing the number of students who drive individually to school as well as decreasing the amount of energy we use will benefit the environment. Also, supporting local food growers instead of buying internationally as much as possible would contribute positively to the environment. Programs to implement these projects are already underway with student and faculty groups pushing for local food initiatives and higher parking permits with free public busing. Improvements at Calvin in the past decade provide examples and encouragement for the future. Calvin recently put in new motion lighting systems in some buildings to preserve energy. The LEED certified Bunker Center serves an important model for good creation care and serves as a significant step towards improving the environment. Continued and increased investigation of Calvin’s environmental impact allows Calvin to move forward

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into the future in the tension of understanding our role as caretakers in a society that is quick to develop. Although Calvin College has made some improvements, many of the plans and requirements to make Calvin environmentally friendly are very costly. Limitations The fact that the present study utilizes such a small sample size (n=12) makes it necessary to use caution in interpreting results, although interviewers completed as many interviews as possible with the time restraint given. Additional limitations include the lack of variety of location/atmosphere in which interviews were conducted. This might limit the validity of answers compared to answers received in a separate location outside of Calvin. Despite these limitations, interviewers offered comfort and convenience to the respondents to the best of their ability, honoring their participation by allowing the respondents their location of choice. This convenience increases respondents’ rate of participation. Hand selecting respondents leads to potential limitations. The interviewers based their selection on their judgments of who would be most beneficial to interview. The selection was not random. Many respondents hold valuable knowledge and awareness of numerous environmental issues. Selecting respondents with a significant employee record of more than three years experience at Calvin allowed for more extensive information about faculty, students, and staff’s relationship to the environment. The research contains possible bias concerning the attitudes of selected faculty and staff. Since the majority of the respondents were faculty and staff (N=11), interview feedback from students is limited. Some faculty and staff members do not have experience in the classroom interacting with students first hand therefore their opinions may not accurately represent the situation . However the many respondents possess experience in and outside the classrooms in the front line of student interactions. Further research The “pockets of concern” such as the Environmental Stewardship Coalition could provide helpful information to increasing environmental concern at Calvin College. The research finds a higher level of concern in these specific students, faculty and staff. The current study could not pinpoint where these concerns originated. Further studies may include specifying the direction of influence on these people such as does family background, work environment, Christian worldview, cultural background or general demographics have any impact on environmental concern? A case study of the “pockets of concern” in order to determine the origins of environmental concern would provide further programmatic implications. With an understanding of the origins of concern, programs which address these different influences can attract more students, faculty and staff into the “pockets of concern.” For example, if concern comes from natural science courses, Calvin could propose a required natural science course for each student with the purpose of increasing awareness.

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The study failed to define two frequently used words in our study which may possess various meanings. Many people at Calvin said that “stewardship” of the earth was a Christian calling. Further research may see to understand each person’s opinion of what stewardship means practically. Informants also used the words “sensitivity” to explain their relationship to the environment. Further research should provide a specific definition for both stewardship and sensitivity to the environment or explore these responses more extensively. A broader range of demographics is necessary in further research. Further research including a bigger sample size and number of minority groups at Calvin College would provide a further understanding of what influences environmental concern and how to promote more environmental concern. Also comparing different college campuses would provide an understanding of how different educational approaches such as a liberal arts education impacts environmental concern.

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Appendix 1: Survey Instrument

This appendix contains a blank data collection instrument consisting of standardized open-ended interview questions.

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Standardized Introduction Thank you for your willingness to participate in our study. Your insight will help us assess the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the Calvin community in regards to the environment. In addition to these interviews, we are conducting surveys of the student body, faculty and staff as a comparative study with data from 1998. We are interested in your perspective on the current state of environmental attitudes and behavior of the Calvin community during your time at Calvin as well as changes that have occurred over the past 10 years. Your help will give us a clearer understanding of where Calvin stands in terms of environmental concern and practices To remind you, your name or other identifying information will not be included in the study and this information will be used for research purposes only. I will be tape recording this interview for transcription, and taking notes as we go along. Let’s begin! Interview Questions 1. To get some background information, what is your position at Calvin? 2. How long have you been at Calvin? 3. What do you see as the general attitudes towards the environment in the Calvin community?

a. What about for students? b. And for Faculty and Staff?

4. In your opinion, how does or how should environmental concern fit into the Christian worldview taught at Calvin?

c. Do you see this perspective being taught at Calvin? d. What has formed your perspective?

5. Can you explain and describe some of the significant changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in the Calvin community over the last decade?

a. In the student body? b. In the faculty and staff? c. Are there any policies that have changed? d. Has Calvin implemented programs concerning environmental policy or

issues? 6. How has Calvin responded to environmental issues?

e. How is Calvin contributing to the well being of the environment? Which of these contributions has been most useful?

f. In what ways has Calvin damaged or harmed the environment? What is our most problematic area?

7. Is there anything else you would like to add? Standardized Conclusion All right, that’s all the questions that I have. Thank you for your willingness to participate. We will send you an email in the next few weeks to let you know of different ways we will be sharing our results. 43


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Appendix 2: Blank Coding Sheet

This appendix contains the coding sheet that researchers used to do content analysis of interview transcripts.

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Calvin Community’s relationship to the environment The Relationship between Environmental Concern and Christian Worldview Worldview

1 Humans as caretakers/servants 2 Humans as stewards/stewardship 3 Environmental sensitivity 4 Responsibility to next generation 5 Creation, Fall, Redemption Paradigm/Reformed Thought 6 Christian calling/responsibility/mandate 7 Enjoy/Pleasure/Delight in Creation 8 Over-spiritualization/Escapist 9 Shalom/Redeemed World 10 Knowing Jesus

How is perspective taught

11 Mentoring 12 Community 13 Addressing current issues 14 Curriculum 15 DCM/CFR 16 Variety of courses 17 Biology/Environmental classes 18 Streetfest 19 ESC

What formed your perspective 20 Outdoors 21 Passion for creation 22 Created order 23 Caring for next generation 24 Childhood 25 Professors/Being Calvin alumni 26 Students 27 Authors such as Wendell Berry 28 Christian faith 29 Area of Study

Calvin College’s Environmental Impact Contribution to the environment How is Calvin contributing to the environment

30 Woodlot Preservation 31 Marketing recycled products 32 Being conscious/ Measuring impact/Exercising caution 33 Temperature of Building 34 Florescent lights 35 Cardboard bailer 36 Research/Writing 37 Partnership with Au Sable 38 Alumni in their fields 39 Reading groups 40 Environmentally conscience lives 41 LEED buildings/Bunker 42 Watersheds/Drainage 43 Wind Turbines 44 Solar power

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45 Theology 46 Educating students 47 Educating public-Bunker/January Series 48 Ecosystem preserve 49 Compensating for loss

Most contributing to environmental well-being:

50 Cardboard bailer 51 Educating students to change the world

Harm to the Environment How has Calvin been harmful:

52 Not harmful 53 Negligent/Ignorant of harm 54 Fertilizers/Harmful chemicals 55 Cutting down trees (woodlot) 56 Driving Cars 57 Competition between development and natural world 58 Large population 59 Fieldhouse 60 Water consumption 61 Energy use/Bad insulation/fossil fuels 62 Location of buildings 63 Parking lots 64 Urban Sprawl

Most problematic:

65 Lack of sensitivity 66 Growth 67 Wellness center 68 Food issues 69 Transportation 70 Land Use 71 Energy Use 72 Woodlot

Current Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors within the Calvin Community Overall Attitudes/ Beliefs

75 Calvin is sensitive to the environment 76 Calvin has done some things 77 Calvin has done some things, but still needs to do more 78 Calvin is neglectful of the environment

Students’ relationship to the environment Students’ Attitudes/Beliefs (80-82) Pockets of student interest/action (79, 83) Majority student concern, but little action (concern/behavior don't line up) (84, 85) Majority student apathetic or uneducated Faculty's Attitudes/Beliefs

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(97-99) Pockets of faculty interest/action (96, 100) Majority faculty concern, but little action (concern/behavior don't line up) (101, 102) Majority faculty apathetic or uneducated

86 Environmental Stewardship Coalition (ESC) ESC continued

87 Among students, care increases with age and time at Calvin 88 Students Peers affect each other’s concern 89 cultural behaviors (upbringing) 91 Education/ lack of education 92 People know, but don’t do anything (unwilling to change lifestyles) 93 People don't know, so they don't do anything (Unconscious harm to env.) 95 people don’t recognize the impact of their lifestyle on the env. (far away)

103 Faculty within the science division 104 Faculty involved with the Environmental Stewardship Committee

Comparisons: faculty vs. students

105 Faculty are more concerned with the environment than students 107 Faculty/staff/student distribution of concern is similar

Reasons for more care in faculty than students

112 Environmental concern is a way of life in Grand Rapids. 113 Faculty is future-oriented

Changes in Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors within the Calvin Community

114 Non-science faculty are beginning to be more concerned Awareness/concern change in Calvin community over the past 10 years

115 Increase of awareness/ concern 116 Same amount of awareness/ concern 117 Decrease of awareness/ concern 118 Varying degrees of awareness/concern over time (waxes/wanes)

Behavior change

120 No change in behaviors a. Students b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

121 Some change in behaviors a. Students b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

122 A lot of change in behaviors a. Students b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

123 Varying degrees of change in behavior over time (wax/wane) Reasons for change

124 Cultural issues: environmentalism is integrated into conversation 125 Well-known people are spokespeople for the environmental mvmt.

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126 Among students, care increases with age and time at Calvin 127 Students’ Peers effect each other’s concern 128 More education about environmental issues within Calvin

What affects environmental attitudes and behaviors? Cultural factors/ scarcity Cost Convenience/ Inconvenience of environmental stewardship Areas of concern in the Calvin community CEAP Carpooling Public transportation Recycling Sustainability Document Scarcity (oil, water, etc) affects the way we use resources Bikes/ Bike racks Local Food Trash/waste Building construction (we need to do more LEED buildings) Local food Pollution Runoff Woodlot/ land development Recycling Transportation Climate change Engineering Department projects Classes about environmental issues Money spent proves our commitment to the environment

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Appendix 3: Content Analysis Coding Results

This appendix contains the results of the researchers’ content analysis. It lists frequencies of each code.

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General Calvin Community’s relationship to the environment The Relationship between Environmental Concern and Christian Worldview Frequency

1 Humans as caretakers/servants 6 2 Humans as stewards/stewardship 3 3 Environmental sensitivity 3 4 Responsibility to next generation 2 5 Creation, Fall, Redemption Paradigm/Reformed Thought 2 6 Christian calling/responsibility/mandate 5 7 Enjoy/Pleasure/Delight in Creation 8 Over-spiritualization/Escapist 1 9 Shalom/Redeemed World 1 10 Knowing Jesus 1

How is perspective taught?

11 Mentoring 1 12 Community 1 13 Addressing current issues 2 14 Curriculum 15 DCM/CFR 2 16 Variety of courses 6 17 Biology/Environmental classes 4 18 Streetfest 1 19 ESC 10

What formed your perspective? 20 Outdoors 2 21 Passion for creation 22 Created order 1 23 Caring for next generation 2 24 Childhood 2 25 Professors/Being Calvin alumni 1 26 Students 1 27 Authors such as Wendell Berry 1 28 Christian faith 1 29 Area of Study 1

Calvin College’s Environmental Impact Contribution to the environment How is Calvin contributing to the environment

30 Woodlot Preservation 1 31 Marketing recycled products 3 32 Being conscious/ Measuring impact/Exercising caution 3 33 Temperature of Building 3 34 Florescent lights 3 35 Cardboard bailer 1 36 Research/Writing 1 37 Partnership with Au Sable 1 38 Alumni in their fields 1 39 Reading groups 1

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40 Environmentally conscience lives 1 41 LEED buildings/Bunker 10 42 Watersheds/Drainage 2 43 Wind Turbines 5 44 Solar power 0 45 Theology 1 46 Educating students 6 47 Educating public-Bunker/January Series 5 48 Ecosystem preserve 6 49 Compensating for loss 3

Most contributing to environmental well-being:

50 Cardboard bailer 3 51 Educating students to change the world 1

Harm to the Environment How has Calvin been harmful?:

52 Not harmful 4 53 Negligent/Ignorant of harm 1 54 Fertilizers/Harmful chemicals 7 55 Cutting down trees (woodlot) 4 56 Driving Cars 5 57 Competition between development and natural world 2 58 Large population 1 59 Fieldhouse 5 60 Water consumption 3 61 Energy use/Bad insulation/fossil fuels 8 62 Location of buildings 2 63 Parking lots 1 64 Urban Sprawl 1

Most problematic:

65 Lack of sensitivity 1 66 Growth 1 67 Wellness center 2 68 Food issues 4 69 Transportation 0 70 Land Use 2 71 Energy Use 1 72 Woodlot 0

Current Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors within the Calvin Community Overall Attitudes/ Beliefs

75 Calvin is sensitive to the environment 5 76 Calvin has done some things 3 77 Calvin has done some things, but still needs to do more 2 78 Calvin is neglectful of the environment 1

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Students’ relationship to the environment Students’ Attitudes/Beliefs (80-82) Pockets of student interest/action 8 (79, 83) Majority student concern, but little action (concern/behavior don't line up) 8 (84, 85) Majority student apathetic or uneducated 8 Faculty's Attitudes/Beliefs (97-99) Pockets of faculty interest/action 3 (96, 100) Majority faculty concern, but little action (concern/behavior don't line up) 4 (101, 102) Majority faculty apathetic or uneducated 1

86 Environmental Stewardship Coalition (ESC) 10 87 Among students, care increases with age and time at Calvin 2 88 Students Peers affect each other’s concern 1 89 cultural behaviors (upbringing) 5 91 Education/ lack of education 3 92 People know, but don’t do anything (unwilling to change lifestyles) 2 93 People don't know, so they don't do anything (Unconscious harm to env.) 3 95 people don’t recognize the impact of their lifestyle on the env. (far away) 1

103 Faculty within the science division 1 104 Faculty involved with the Environmental Stewardship Committee 7

Comparisons: faculty vs. students

105 Faculty are more concerned with the environment than students 4 107 Faculty/staff/student distribution of concern is similar 3

Reasons for more care in faculty than students

112 Environmental concern is a way of life in Grand Rapids. 1 113 Faculty is future-oriented 0

Changes in Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors within the Calvin Community

114 Non-science faculty are beginning to be more concerned 2 Awareness/concern change in Calvin community over the past 10 years

115 Increase of awareness/ concern 6 116 Same amount of awareness/ concern 2

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117 Decrease of awareness/ concern 0 118 Varying degrees of awareness/concern over time (waxes/wanes) 2

Behavior change

120 No change in behaviors 1 a. Students 1 b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

121 Some change in behaviors 3 a. Students b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

122 A lot of change in behaviors a. Students b. Faculty c. Broader Calvin community d. U.S. culture

123 Varying degrees of change in behavior over time (wax/wane) 1

Reasons for change

124 Cultural issues: environmentalism is integrated into conversation 2 125 Well-known people are spokespeople for the env. mvmt. 2 126 Among students, care increases with age and time at Calvin 0 127 Students’ Peers effect each other’s concern 1 128 More education about environmental issues within Calvin 1

What affects environmental attitudes and behaviors? Cultural factors/ scarcity Cost 5 Convenience/ Inconvenience of environmental stewardship 1 Areas of concern in the calvin community CEAP 2 Carpooling 3 Public transportation 5 Recycling 7 Sustainability Document 2 Scarcity (oil, water, etc) affects the way we use resources 3 Bikes/ Bike racks 3 Local Food 0 Trash/waste 2 Building construction (we need to do more LEED buildings) 3 Local food 2 Pollution 2 Runoff 1 Woodlot/ land development 2

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Recycling 1 Transportation 3 Climate change 6 Engineering Department projects 1 Classes about environmental issues 1 Money spent proves our commitment to the environment 1

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Appendix 4: Contact E-mail

This appendix contains the transcript of an e-mail that researchers sent to potential interviewees.

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Dear [Name], My name is [Name], and I am a part of the Social Research class at Calvin. This spring semester, my fellow students and I will be conducting a research project evaluating the environmental attitudes and behavior of Calvin College students, faculty, and staff. A part of this project will include a campus-wide survey, identical to one administered in 1998. In addition to this survey, we hope to collect some qualitative information through key informant interviews. We are interested in your perspective on the current state of environmental attitudes and behavior of the Calvin community (including students, faculty, staff, committees, and administration) during your time at Calvin as well as changes over the past 10 years. Your personal information (such as name and position) will not be included in the study and the information will be used for research purposes only. Would you be willing to speak with me sometime in the next month? The interview will take about one hour. In the next week I will be in contact with you about a potential interview time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me or the course instructor, Rachel Venema. Your contribution would be greatly valued and much appreciated. Sincerely, [Name] [email protected] (XXX) XXX-XXXX Under the guidance of: Rachel Venema Social Work Teaching Staff [email protected] 616-526-6173

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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Appendix 5: Interview Transcripts

This appendix contains transcripts of informants’ responses to open-ended interview questions.

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A: What is the relationship between environmental concern and Christian worldview? 1: Well, I think that God put us in charge of his creation, as caretakers, and I think that

we are sort of mandated to be responsible stewards of his creation and I think that we are responsible for the resources that have been given to us and I think that there has to be a balance between resources because it’s not just, you know, the environment, resources is also the economics of the whole thing. So in other words, what I’m saying is that it’s gonna cost us tons of money to do something that is environmentally sensitive but not that dangerous then we have to judge that to see what is the right balance.

2: Oh I am strongly in favor of the environment and I think that we all have a

responsibility to be sure that the next generation succeeds. So I think it’s in our core. I think it should be rooted in everything that we do.

3: Well, way from the beginning, even when I was here in 1978 there was the book called

Earth Keepers, you know that when you’ve been given creation to care for that it’s not just subdue, but it’s nurture, cultivate, sustainability, all those things. So, I think it’s very squarely in the creation, fall, redemption, restoration paradigm.

4: Well, let me give you a little more background. I started my academic career at

[College] in agriculture program, so my personal professional training has been in biology and agriculture and so that’s one of the reason I resonate with this. Personally it is an issue for me and the language Calvin uses which I think it the right language to use is the language of creation care and that it’s our responsibility. And when I taught my students at [College] I said part of your responsibility if you’re going to be in production agriculture is you’re a steward of the soil, the earth, the water, if you’re in finance you’re a steward of money. If you’re in healthcare and social work, you’re a steward of people. Part of our calling, we are called to take care of creation and it’s a very direct connection between production agriculture and biology but it’s not less direct if you’re going to be in social work, you feel a sense of direction and calling to take care of people, so for me it’s a natural extension and expression of our Christian calling and perspective. It always has been but that’s because of what I’ve done professionally and where I’ve been. It’s been a challenge, students who have been in the natural science are sometimes more sensitive to this than students who are in the social sciences because they work with people and see individual but I think we live in a society that offers convenience at a very high value and environmental sensitively and awareness sometimes comes at the cost of convenience, you know riding the bus instead of taking your car, the bus isn’t as convenient as the car. Again I don’t mean to be uncharitable but a lot of times in my conversations with students, they say it would be much more convenient for me, and I say we’re not here for your convenience you know, that value of convenience and immediate gratification and instantaneous response doesn’t always fit well with the longer term sense of stewardship and environmental care and creation, sustainability and recycling you

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know low impact you know you have to make some intentional choice if you’re going to eat low on the food chain or use less carbon admission like riding your bike to work or walking instead of taking your car. Carpooling and adjusting your schedule rather than driving by yourself, all those kinds of things fly in the face of the lifestyle of convenience. Now I’m not trying to be uncharitable but there is a contrast there and you think an 18 to 22 year-old, life is fast, things need to be quick. You need results rapidly and there is a tension there so I think it’s still important for us. [People who are] working on the ESC [are] working on this statement of sustainability and a broad range of topic—How should a college or community act sustainably, you know what should we do as an institution to show leadership? We should worry about water conservation not because there is a water shortage in west Michigan because the lakes are there but if you come from Arizona or California, or Colorado or Nebraska, water conservation is important and so you need to learn those skills for water conservation and when how you can conserve energy. Even though they may not be locally pressing issues there are some significant broad and global issues and you know you talk to someone like [Name] who […] is an organic chemist, he’s doing the spring semester a study on sustainability in the institution and [Name] is very concerned about petroleum based fuels and the impact of what happens when we run out of oil. We don’t like to think about that. We fuss a little when gas is 3 dollars a gallon but we’re still pulling our cars out, so it’s a very, it’s very interesting because it’s very difficult of an institution to mandate the behavior. It’s kind of like saying if you’re a very good person you won’t eat so much meat. Well how do you say to people well you have to be a vegetarian, you know, you have to engage them intellectually, you have to engage them emotionally, and that’s a personal choice and a lot of the actions that come from being sustainable and environmentally aware are really actions and behaviors that persons make and institutions could make them but sometimes they’re difficult for institutions to make. On the other hand I think Calvin is trying really hard to do some good thing in its environment, you know the wind turbine project, the solar panel at bunker, building the bunker, as we’re building the Fieldhouse we’re talking about sustainable construction and energy sustainability and lower environmental impact, yeah we’re going to have to cut down a few trees in the wood lot but we’re working like crazy to preserve in and we’re putting in more trees somewhere else on campus and so but to straighten all those things together and say oh there’s a place that is environmentally aware, you know.

5: Ok, let me begin by saying that John Calvin says somewhere is to be human is to be

that single point in the entire universe where God’s goodness can receive a corresponding echo of gratitude so that to be human is to be that point out of all thing things God has made, turtles, tarantulas, tulips, snow, whatever, out of all the things he’s made human beings have the capacity to say thanks and to enjoy. And in so doing we can bring him pleasure; we can become echoes of gratitude to him. So the Christian calling according to Calvin is try to bring God as much delight in you as you possibly can. Now flowing out of that and that unique creation of human beings there comes a command to human beings and it’s anchored in the biblical book of Genesis where God says to human beings the first day full day they got on earth it’s a Sabbath so that when they wake up for the first day he says take a day off and enjoy;

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thus, don’t use first but enjoy. So I think to be human is to really understand that the concept of enjoyment of the world that God has made, he you see that bush out there, well whatever, you might want to take a look at that, but it’s enjoyment. Now he accompanies that with a word and that word is be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and we have used the word in our translations the word as subdue it—let me tell you that the Hebrew word there is "abuda" it can be translated as subdue, dominate or have dominate over but I also want to tell you about its root, its cognate "havav" is servant so when God says, “have dominion over the earth” he’s saying I think act in a stewardly way of the earth, in other words use this and enjoy it for your optimal delight and pleasure but really for my optimal delight and pleasure. So it’s the notion of how can you please yourself as a servant of the trees, the turtles, the tarantulas, you know wood and stuff and in such a way that it becomes all that it’s meant to be to bless and to encourage you and also to bring you delight so it doesn’t mean that you never cut down a tree to make a new field house but what it does mean is that you’re not cavalier in your use of stuff. So that flows out of the way human beings are created and then the commands and promises that he gives—enjoy them and Sabbath and then more specifically flowing out of that with a Calvinist ethic, has always, I mean, John Calvin in his institutes book 3 chapter 6-10 says how ought we to use it, the earthly life and its benefits, and he says first of all use as though not using, use as though not using, and what he means by that is don’t become so tied to it that it dominates you or you dominate it. In other words you are a pilgrim here on planet earth, thus don’t become so transfixed by whatever, money stuff, what it’s Jesus words—God clothed the lilies of the field. Ok, so use as though not using, his second quote is use all things with their intended use, now by that he says ok lets take for example a radish, he didn’t say that but I’m using a radish or a carrot. Well on one level there intended use is that you consume it but you can also use radishes for carrots and cut them in little jagged edges so that it become a matter of conviviality when you eat, so Calvin’s talking here not just about utilitarian uses of stuff, to feed your gullet and clothe your body but also to bring delight to you, and he would maintain that using things in line with their intended use is that you look for multiple ways in which they can both honor the creator and bless you. Ok, so you get fed properly, in nothing too much but you also enjoy the food so a good bottle of wine is not whatever. His third, the third part of his ethic is use them in such a way as always to remember that you are stewards of them and one day you are going to have to give an account. So what those 3 things have done deep in the Calvinist ethic and psyche is to say is it okay to have a car, of course it’s okay to have a car, and what is a car for, well a car is a means to get from here to get to Kalamazoo or from here to get to Cadillac. Can you accomplish it as well in a Chevrolet as in a Cadillac so Calvinist tended toward Chevrolets and not toward Cadillac? Now I’m here to tell you that more recently there’s been a massive denial of that or neglect of that even among Calvinist even in western Michigan who have gotten the idea that the more money you got the more you can spend, but that at heart is what the Calvin tradition is all about and personally I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it and it doesn’t say on the one hand get by with as little as you possibly can but it doesn’t tend toward excess or defect as what Calvin calls neither one nor the other and they all say just remember that one day we will give an account, but I think I’ve said enough on that. But it has

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all kinds of bearing on how we use air, how we use gasoline and how consume thing and how we dress and more than you wanted to know this afternoon.

6: Well, I think that God wants us to be a steward of the Earth, so that’s all it is—

stewardship. So we just try to do what we can…you know…and I would imagine some people would say to take down all the buildings and make it more natural. On the other hand, I think that everything that Calvin stands for…the goal when this property was purchased is to be the center of Calvin College. It’s a touchy thing, but a healthy thing. But you know when this campus was built originally it was built in the day and age when this location was the suburbs. This is a suburban campus, and I think you can see that what we have planned for East Campus is tighter; more buildings in less space. And we’re doing that with a reason and it is because we want to maintain as much of the open land as possible. Now, someone would say that this is more beautiful, and that’s true too. However, what we do on the East Campus is that we would have more interior space like interior atriums.

7: My Christian world view? Well what really bugs me about Christianity is when it’s

over spiritualized, talking about escaping the earth and going to heaven or something. I don’t think that’s biblical and it’s not anything except some weird manifestation Greek philosophy in Gnosticism in modern religion and that’s one of the reasons why we are so scared of environmental stuff. And what I like about Calvinism is it’s more earthy and I think the orthodox version of what we are trying to teach is like if there’s an after life that’s on earth, earth is where its at. This whole idea of Christ being the beginning of the new creation, the realization of shalom on the earth that entails all sorts of the small facets of people’s interactions with each other with all of creation and it all working together so us systematically believing it, so I think it’s absolutely integral to me. Christianity should care for people so to me that’s care for the poor and care for the environment how it all works together, so cant do it without it.

7: Well ideally they do it but doesn’t really play out that way. There are other things that work with priorities of the school and different people from different disciplines and priorities about physical stewardship versus environmental stewardship, so if you’re a [unclear] you’re going to be looking more at the numbers but since I am a biology major and I like plants I am really ticked off that your going to replace the woodlot with steel, so…

8: I would go as far as to say that in some ways, I would even argue that there should be

sustainability across the curriculum. I think the issues are so important, so it’s not just a matter of say, certain science courses, I think it’s important for political science courses and economic courses, religion courses as well, a whole number of areas to deal with these issues. Even in literature there are very important literature sources that go through these same issues in fact a former in the religion department, I would argue you need to address the issues of sustainability across the curriculum

9: I think it’s a big part of it and God calls us to take care of creation. We’re not called to

rule over creation, we’re not supposed to exploit it anyway we want to. But we need to take care of it.

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10: Well, that’s a big question. A lot of it has to do with a deeper understanding of who

Jesus is. Jesus was there when the world was created. So we think of Jesus as the Savior, who died on the cross, but I think you need to expand that and realize that Jesus was the creator; he created at the beginning. And so if we see the creator on the cross, it sends a different message than just a sacrifice. So I think that a lot of it has to do with really getting to know, what I think is, a fuller Jesus, and to realize that he came back just to save people from their sins. We saw it percolated down to that, but that he came back to win everything, to restore all the relationships, so seeing him as creator, and also seeing his sacrifice as given for the whole cosmos. So I think starting there, then stewardship comes as so natural because we want to be like Christ. Christ gave us his whole life for the creation, so if we want to be like that, then we ought to be able to give things up and start committing to that instead of money for the welfare of creation. So I think Jesus is really central, and there’s been some criticism against Christian Environmentalists that they lose touch with who Jesus is and the importance of Jesus, and I really don’t agree with that. We need to embrace Jesus more fully, but make sure that it’s an accurate portrayal of Jesus and not just the Jesus that we sort of make up in our minds. This cute little, well… I’ve never thought about it, but so often Jesus is this little personal savior to fall back on all the time, and that’s all he is, and he’s so much bigger and so much more wonderful than that. And I know that too many of us and myself, and I need to challenge myself to embrace that bigness. But I do, I think it starts with Jesus. Did that answer the question?

11: I think it is fundamental to what’s being taught at Calvin just because of the emphasis

in reformed thought on the creation. And so I think that it resonates with the tradition. 12: Well for me, it’s very much tied up with the whole notion of creation. We live in a

world that we believe was made by God—that was made good by God. It was made for human use, but also for human caretaking. And then the whole creation, fall, redemption theme that is very strong here at Calvin, that almost every student here is taught, I think that’s relevant not just for our personal salvation, but it’s very relevant for how we relate to the creation. And the principle of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the Cross and his resurrection enables us to have a restored relationship not just with God, but with creation and with our fellow humans. In principle, all those relationships are to be healed in a redeemed world. So I see creation care as just an integral part of a Christian response.

B: Do you see this perspective being taught here at Calvin? 2: Oh absolutely. I do. Not only in the academic side of things but in a lot of the groups

that are on campus that are mentored by faculty and staff – you know, our social justice committee and those are very positive toward the environment. And what we do as a whole, as a community.

3: The creation, about earth keeping? Well, I think again, here again I see more faculty

members who are involved with current issues being teaching those current issues.

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So I could see in political science if you check syllabi 10 years ago and you check syllabi today, there would be more about sustainability, earth keeping, global warming, perhaps legislative records, certainly the biologists, there’s a keen interest, probably I’m quite sure the geologists have keen interest about how, you know, just the hurricane, look at how the hurricane changed land mass and what was that from and how would you make it more sustainable. So, I think there’s just a number of current issues that find their way into the curriculum. And then of course, I’m not completely familiar with the DCM course, but you know, that creation, fall, redemption is part of that whole discussion. I’m quite sure there are DCM’s on this particular topic, but just the whole idea of what’s our role as, as people who are concerned about the creation. I can’t believe that it’s not thought about directly, and Neil Plantinga’s book certainly talks about it and students read that.

4: It happens in some places, [Name] who teaching in the philosophy a couple of years

ago my son and my daughter were both the same philosophy class, [Name] was a freshman and [Name] was a senior and they were both in the same philosophy class, and [Name] has adopted a very personal sense of how eating style is important, he has become a vegan so for awhile there my kids we’re considering it and talking about it but [Name] approaches it not from a personal compulsion but also talks about the bigger issues of food. [Name] is doing an English 101 class about food and having students talk about the all the different impacts of food. Food is a social thing, it’s a physical thing, it’s a community activity and sometimes you look at all those different aspects and people change their opinions what is it that makes you more comfortable eating less meat or being vegetarian or being a vegan, there’s always an intellectual component, there’s always an act of choice. In our society it becomes sometimes a very important act of choice because you can’t just walk into McDonalds and get a soy burger you know.

7: Oh it’s definitely being taught in the classes I have had. I have had a lot of classes

with [Name] who is very articulate in describing why it’s important, like why the environment is central to what we should be all about. So I have had a lot of classes where it really is taught, but they are mostly biology and environmental studies classes but it’s usually there.

8: It is being taught by a number of faculty I think in the chemistry department, physics

department, geography, geology. They do pick up those things so it is good that the number of them touch on it, but the questions are so broad it needs to be picked up from more than one dimension. So some of the issues as we are becoming aware are also political issue—how do you address that in a political sense and I would argue for many Christians when you think politically—what are the top issues for Christians when it comes to political issues? One abortion, secondly evolution, intelligent design and if you think about it most Christians those two issues doesn’t necessarily affect how they live; whereas issues of earth keeping affect how you live and in my cynical moments that’s one possible reason why it’s not high, because who wants to hear about changing their lifestyle? Whereas politically many Christians will address those because it doesn’t affect them so why is it then when it comes to political action

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and there is a growing movement of evangelicals who are concerned making this political case, but at the same time in the paper last week Reverend Dobson he wrote a letter wanting to get rid of one of the members who has been strong on climate change. So he is saying it’s not an issue of evangelicals because he doesn’t want to be in the issue. Well that disturbs me, but that shows you that that difficulty and in my thinking one of the reasons why, if you ask Christians, they will think it is important if you ask them point blank—Should we be concerned—they do—nevertheless, in terms of having leadership really working at that—they don’t—and I am saying—why don’t they—when it seems to me every Christian should be an earth keeper of this earth. If you want to use the word environmentalist you can go ahead; it has a negative connotation, but I think every Christian should be one.

8: So it’s just as observation. So if you think about the last 30 years, a lot of evangelicals who have become much more politically active on two major issues, what are the two more important issues? And my conclusion is yeah it doesn’t really affect how they live, and even on the topic of world hunger and the environment, I spoke to a lot of adults at churches and it’s not necessarily a topic a lot of them want to hear because it looks to the future and it makes comments about the future and we can’t continue to live ignoring that.

I: So again there is a difference between having that attitude and actually putting that into practice.

8: But yeah at the basis of that you have to introduce that in education because if you’re not aware of it, so I think education is a continual responsibility and challenge for even the college better to address that.

I: All across the board, so you talked about it being applied all across everything, what has form instead of that you mentioned only in some areas of Calvin, so…

8: Well in some ways if you look at CEAP, there are a couple of groups. CEAP is one of them that’s trying to address this issues so every semester they are trying to meet the fact that you are looking at different courses that are incorporating that aspect in their courses and then giving posters. Every semester we have a poster presentation of some kind of environmental assessment so I think that is a very important part in trying to encourage it and not only in the Calvin campus but also of our broader neighborhood. Taster creek water shed, I don’t know if you have heard of that, but there is a whole water shed moving up, saying ok we are part of that water shed. Water sheds are very important. Ecologically and environmentally what can we do to improve that water shed and that’s one aspect of that and that comes out of CEAP as well and I think that’s very healthy and in addition a lot of courses are deliberately dealing with these issues, especially some of the core issues. I have taught biology many years but many of my colleagues do that I think we deliberately talk about environmental issues as a part of our ecosystems so that’s one way to tie that in. I think we could have perhaps more of that emphasis and that requires that individual concern to try and address those issues and to what extent in Political Science do they address these issues? I don’t know, but I would suspect it’s not a major topic of this course. I don’t want to take on that one, but it should be a very important part of this course

I: So CEAP has formed…

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8: Correct. CEAP has formed and there is also the ESC. There are two groups. There is a faculty committee and a student committee. It’s a broader committee and they try and address those issues and out of that among other things—one that’s the group that works with student senate that tries to increase recycling and I think that it’s very visible but to some extent that requires education. But how consistent are we if you live in the dorms? You yourself can see how much students pay attention to that even though the bins are there. To try and do that sorting to recycle, I suspect probably less than a third of what goes in the waste basket could have been recycled. So how do you change those attitudes? There is also some extent pure pressure community values that become accepted, say this is a problem for us let’s all do that, so there are some of those areas I think in the last couple of… center like with the wellness center there has been a lot of discussion of trying to preserve the woodlot and I was involved with some of the early discussions of that because it dealt with trying to save things and a number of biology students and faculty were concerned but even there I am concerned that we focus our attention on preserving a woodlot when we are destroying an awful lot of woodlots to build more roads to satisfy our need to drive cars to where we want to go. We need to be consistent. We can’t just say, well I have really worked on this, therefore I have done my thing and at the same time we continue to drive around in individual vehicles, so that’s a part of it, a deeper picture.

9: I think there are some classes here, well, as a student here a Calvin, I remember there

was some talk about it in classes. Especially as a biology student, I heard a lot about that, you know, what’s our role in creation and how can we take care of the environment. I think Calvin is doing a good job of teaching this perspective. I only saw it from the biology point of view. I don’t know what it’s like in other majors. It would be interesting to see what other departments thought about it, you know in these other classes, if it is being taught and how it is being taught.

10: Um…I learned it at Calvin. Yeah, so yeah it’s taught. Yeah, I think it’s taught at

Calvin. But again, I think we’re up against a lot of cultural influence. So there’s lots of competing messages, and I think that it’s a message that is out there, but there are other competing messages that are being taught as well.

10: I think that there’s a general message in evangelical Christianity to just really focus

on your personal relationship with Jesus, I hear that a lot and I see it in the songs that we sing in my church. You know, and everything else is of secondary importance. It’s all about me and Jesus. That kind of thing, I think that’s a very strong message and a very competing message against trying to realize that part of this great big picture that God is concerned with all, and yes he is concerned about individuals, but individuals within the context of community. So in context of creation and so we miss out on so much of the big picture when we just focus on me and Jesus. So I think that’s one competing message. I think another competing message is the notion that the spiritual is way more important than the physical. “How’s your spiritual life, how’s your spiritual walk?” When do you hear someone say “Hw is it going with your physical life?” Maybe they will if they know you’ve been sick, but in terms of, you know, “Are you keeping up your body, are you staying healthy, are you able to

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stay away from foods you know aren’t good for you, and how are doing with that recycling that I know you’re trying to do? Are you doing good with recycling?” Nobody asks you those questions because those, it seems, are less important. But it’s the spiritual, “Have you been reading your Bible every day, are you praying?” And the message is that as long as those things are in place, “Alright, it’s ok.” And I think that’s a strong competing message that we get too; the spiritual is more important than the physical. And that goes a long ways; you can trace church history, this dualism, where the physical is less important or bad, and the spiritual being more important or good. And I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon. But I think that those are two, within the church, that are competing voices […] but it’s integrated; we’re not, I’m not a spiritual person or a physical person. It’s not like, “Ok now I’m going to be spiritual or now I’m going to be physical.” I’m me. And it’s got all of that stuff pulled together, I’ve got my brain, my mind, my hands, my legs; it’s all together. I cringe when I hear that separation try to pry out, and one becomes more important than the other. And so, it’s really sort of… it’s being too long of an answer, so I’ll finish with this little story because it really illustrates what I’m talking about. I was at a chapel soon after I came to Calvin, and it was a wonderful chapel where there was a lot of emotion and wonderful praise songs with students raising their hands and everything. Afterward I stayed a little bit longer talking to a couple students, and when I left there were these trash cans out front, and it was in the spring and it was nice and warm, but they were overflowing with empty water bottles that people were just putting into the trash. So I’m thinking, there was this nice service where people were really enthused spiritually and that did not translate into anything. Now I’m using recycling as a metric here, and that might not be entirely fair. If there had been recycle bins out there, probably most people would have put them in there, but I think it’s evidence of spiritual-physical separation, and I think it’s a strong competing voice.

12: I think quite a lot, yes. I think consistently the faculty people that I know and have

heard speak on these issues hold to those kinds of worldviews. Whether they always articulate them in their classes will be a different thing. But I think there is pretty near unanimity on the importance of creation care on the Christian life.

C: How do you see the Christian worldview as being taught in your division? 3: Well, one of the first things that students do when they come to Calvin is do

StreetFest, and there are a number of the StreetFest assignments that just talk and actually do earth keeping. I think that the student organizations that have influence in the Student Life division. I was just at a leadership journey, a discussion, and heard about the kinds of things that students are doing around that was shared with other students, so there’s cross-conversation. Then, the Service-Learning center as a whole is interested in justice issues, and justice issues and creation issues often dovetail. The parking conversations around sustainability with the environment, you know, less parking, less emissions, you know, less dependency on oil – those are the global things that are affected on a local level by the park – riding the bus. So the Student Life division is in charge of sort of

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the whole bus rider tickets and so [they] administrate that. So while that’s not teaching in a classroom directly, it’s providing the opportunities for students to live out. I always think of the Student Life division as the laboratory for the conversations in the classroom. So there’s, if you have a conversation in a classroom about environmental issues then you often have an opportunity to then develop it through a student org., or through a presentation or something like that. So we function in a very seamless way, I would call it ideas extension, ideas extension. You know, of course in the health services you’ve got basic things like how to deal with medical waste, that’s an environmental issue. And, our internships are across the board, internships that go through Career Services into environmentally sensitive places. I know that Residence Life has done programming through their programming calendar on…sustainability and earth keeping. Of course, in student activities, even with the films that we show, and you know I think even the, bringing the Psalters here, is part of a group of Ken Heffner’s. And I think there’s constantly this weaving because it’s part of our mission and fabric really, so you pick it up in all sorts of ways. I think that what you see is that it’s echo, echo, echo, echo, echo. Right?

D: What has formed this perspective of yours? 1: Well, I’ve always really loved the outdoors, landscaping, and the environment as a

whole. It’s always been sort of a passion of mine. But at the same time I really like architecture, and it’s kind of about defining the beauty. Everyone has a different idea of beauty, which is kind of an interesting concept. For example, to the biologists on campus, dead branches on trees are beautiful because they see it as a habitat for woodpeckers and other things like that. To others, it’s not beautiful. It looks bad. To me, it’s ok in some places and in others, it’s not. And where it can pose a hazard, it’s got to come down. Some people think turf, landscaping, just the grass, nicely mowed grass is beautiful. Other people think we should just go back to prairie and not let it be cut. I don’t know. I have a strange question. It’s probably something I shouldn’t be talking about, but it seems to me that thorns and thistles came in with sin in the world, and it seems to me that God created order, so I kind of like to see some order and structure in my landscaping versus just wildflowers, but now, not very many people would agree with me or not a lot of people. I like some turf, so you get into all sorts of arguments about fertilizing and that going into our ground and then it going into our water system. Wasting water to irrigate, you have all those kind of questions. Our water heater doesn’t come from the water supply; our water here on campus comes from the wells, underground. And so then what ends up happening is that we end up watering the grass and that water just goes back down into the earth. So we aren’t using Lake Michigan water, and pumping it to feed the grass. But now I don’t have a problem with certain types of fertilizers and pesticides, so the grass can look presentable. So those are kind of, again that’s where I say, you could go really extreme, like go natural, or you can put some sense of structure and order into it, which is where I think we should be.

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2: I think my beliefs are that I have two kids, so personally I would like for the world to be a good place to be when they grow up and I’ve always kind of felt that. Professionally, sometimes we do have challenges. When you start talking doing large functions and trying to sort out silverware from plates and do the paper and the plastic and the plastic from the paper. It’s a daunting task, and it’s just unrealistic at times.

2: Right, it’s just more logistics. And if you can imagine trying to feed 4000 people and separating the plastics from the paper and to try to get it to be picked up is a daunting task for us and is just unrealistic unfortunately.

I: What do you think would be something that would solve that problem or maybe make it better? Any thoughts?

2: You know I think if I would have the answer to that, we’d be doing it. I really do. We have made some changes in some of the packaging. Like I said, we stopped using foam and we now use paper products. I guess there’s an argument there. You got to cut a tree down to get paper and that’s not friendly either and that hurts my heart, but I don’t know if it’s better or worse, but we’ve tried to use paper when we can and plastic – obviously with silverware that’s the only option. Also, with our large groups, there’s a worship symposium that we do on campus and one of the things that we’ve tried to do is purchase reusable bags and we give them to the participants kind of as a thank-you gift and they take that home with them versus throwing it away. And it’s just a cloth, nylon open-close lunchbags that have the Calvin emblem on it. So we’ve done that and we’ve also went to a, what’s called a bio box. It’s a box that’s produced from paper and cardboard. It’s extremely bio-degradable and it’s supposed to speed up the process to biodegrade faster than normal paper. So we are using those whenever we can.

7: When I was little my parents would take me outside and I would go fishing and hiking

so that probably did it and […] I would come to campus and catch fish out of the athletic field ponds and that got me going. Then I wasn’t sure if I was going to be Biology major. Au Sable institute of environmental studies, it’s like a Christian Biology, I don’t know what you want to call it, field station where you take college classes so I did that and that got me hooked on environmental things.

7: Yeah that really [sparked my interest] I think, and then I spent a semester in Belize and that was really focused on environmental stuff as well, and sustainable development and how people and environment and God all fits together so all that stuff.

7: [It spanned throughout my life but there were] dead periods between being 10yrs and 20yrs where there wasn’t a whole lot going on but other than that year, a lot of biology classes did that here too.

9: Well, as a student coming through, I saw how things would teach that way and so since

I’ve been on staff, Calvin has been very good at keeping us informed about what things are being taught. It seems like a lot of emphasis being put in the Christian overview now than it was before. The new core curriculum, and also the [Developing a Christian Mind] interim class that all students have to take and the staff are informed about. Especially with new faculty and staff go through a series of mini workshops just to learn about what Calvin is all about and what the Christian background is and that sort of things.

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9: Calvin has been teaching more of the Christian worldview in regard to the environment. Before it sort of has been in the background but now, I think people are more forward about it. I think it’s more clearly laid out as part of the curriculum.

10: Professors […] here at Calvin have started it, eh probably […] but here at Calvin

definitely with the professors. And then when I left Calvin, I wasn’t around Christian Reformed people, I wasn’t around Reformed people very much, and I was around more secular people who were very passionate about creation care, they were called environmentalists. But talking about their motivation, they just had a deep sense that it was the right thing to do; they didn’t have a good solid backing and foundation, so when I got away from there, you take it in and say “Yeah sure, the life view […] care for the creation,” yeah we hear it all the time. But then you realize there’s something special about it, and it gives you strength behind what you do. So in a strange way, getting away from here helped to formalize a lot of that too, and it helped to appreciate it more. And then since coming back here and being around colleagues where you’re talking about these things a lot and doing some readings; there have been some important authors. So it’s been a process of talking to people and trying out ideas on people, and on students. Oh, I’ve learned a lot from students; […] I hate to tell how much I’ve learned from students. No really, I find them full of fresh ideas and full of inspiring motivation. Those are some of my sources, would you like me to list some authors? I think that Wendell Berry has been a huge influence; he’s a Christian poet, essayist, novelist in Kentucky. Steve Bowman Krenity, who’s a professor at Hope; Walter Brudemen, he’s a theologian who I’ve learned a lot from. Those would be three people.

11: Probably my Christian faith, but also my area of study. E: How has Calvin responded to environmental issues and contributing to the well-

being of the environment? 1: I guess my comment would be is basically what I said about the LEED program and

for Calvin to be as certified as possible. On the new wellness center and the new Fieldhouse that we’re building, we have just spent a huge amount of time trying to preserve the woodlot and the landscape so that it’s not killing as many trees. We’ve done marketing things with various groups to try and promote new recycled products. So I think Calvin is always looking for ways to respond to issues concerning the environment and preserving it.

2: Well, I think that we are always conscious of what we do. One of the things I talked

about was the bailer, and that’s something that we’ve done. I know that there’s been a conscious effort, and this may be more monetary but the temperature of the buildings. We’re burning less energy and that’s better for the environment. I know that we’ve talked about the switching over, getting less of the incandescent lights and more of the florescent light bulbs that burn less energy. So, I don’t know if I’m answering your question.

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I: Yeah, definitely. That’s great. Are there any, in your opinion, of these contributions that have been the most useful?

2: I would have a hard time measuring that. I think the bailer obviously is a big thing for us. I don’t know if I can answer that.

3: Well, I think that our faculty writes well about it, so they’ve been leaders in writing

about environmentalism. We have a connection to the AuSable Institute, Calvin supports that. The director is on the Board of Trustees so there’s a very close link there. Cal DeWitt was a Calvin, I think he’s a Calvin graduate…you know I thought he got outstanding alumni? But he was the former person. Vern Ehlers, who’s a scientist and he’s a big environmentalist, and he’s you know, [inaudible word]. So I think Calvin contributes in that way by providing public intellectuals to the government. I think our, I think Calvin has contributed by all the alumni that serve in various places, doing research, writing, and advocacy. So our own alumni do. I think that our, our students continue to do that with their work for environmental stewardship. I know there are faculty reading groups that have occurred like on new urbanism and other kinds of sustainability topics. So that, I think, you know, there are a number of students who try to live an environmentally keep-able life. There’s quite a few at Calvin.

4: Well I think that every time we undertake a project, we try to determine what the

impact, for example mitigate the impact on the environment; we try to be sensitive to what happens when we build things here. When we built Prince and DeVos […] initially all [the] parking lot, it used to be all scrub brush and field and the water the city the judicial plant said all the water would go south into Burton Street into the storm sewers, the storm sewers on Burton and operating at capacity and they said we just can’t handle things. […] So we built a very intentional man-made wetlands to mitigate the impact of the runoff you know salt, and oil, and naturally, biologically treat it through a series of ponds rather than dump it into the storm sewers, and that was an interesting project, some of the CEAP students measured the water, the rate of flow and all of that. But that was very intentional instruction to reduce the impact, a few years ago we did something on the west parking lot, we did it because the water was draining south, we changed the draining and we did some work on the 2 ponds down there by the baseball fields with the Fieldhouse because it’s a big building with a lot of roof you get a lot of runoff and we were talking about using the woodlot behind there to catch the water and then slowly drain it out and then it will go down into a catch basin and then down again through those ponds up into reed lake where as it doesn’t get stuck in the sewer. So you know we think a lot about this in construction project, but you don’t always see those. We got a civil engineer for the new project, he’s a Calvin grad from a few years ago, very environmentally sensitive and [unclear] is always thinking how we can reduce this impact, so yeah we think about them but there are not necessarily things that pop in front of people on a regular basis one might not know, you know.

6: I don’t know that anyone of them…you know when you have a big problem you work

on it in a lot of little ways. I mean a big solution would be, when you think about

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it…like hydrogen fluid for gas…but those things are just not possible. I think the Bunker Interpretive Center has been one of the most interesting things because [they have] got an energy grant […] there is a computer in the building that registers the amount of energy that is being saved. You can actually check that out on Calvin’s website. There are some things that you can be done that demonstrate a massive change and there are demonstrated projects that show what could be done, like the wind towers built by the engineering students. But the point is the Bunker Interpretive Center provides more, on a day like today, it’ll provide more than a 100 percent of the energy use for that building. In fact, on these days prior to air conditioning, I would say it provided 300 to 400 percent of energy, and the rest goes to a grid for the rest of our campus. So if we were to have solar collectors on all our buildings we would save a lot on energy.

7: I think teaching students is probably the most foundational because I don’t think there

would be as many students to push along these issues because a lot of these kinds of issues are being pushed by ESC here by other students who have interests in seeing this environmental stuff play out, and the reason why a lot of them or at least me are interested in the first place is because they learned it in class. So for that the more presence in class and in events that Calvin does I think that’s the most beneficial, but then they have a responsibility to play out their actions later

8: Overall I think when it comes to the question of earth keeping because I think in a lot

of perspectives it is an important mandate. I think Calvin recognizes it in terms of our theology and our view of a Christian life, so I think that it embraces earth keeping. Is it enough? Well that of course would be more specific but it does embrace it but that’s an important part of who we are and so we make the next step to make it a very intense goal. I think Calvin is open to that so I guess in that sense Calvin thinks earth keeping is a very important goal.

8: The bunker center has lead certification but the building itself was designed, the

building materials itself are made out of recycled materials etc. So it’s trying to be built with materials along with ongoing concern for the environment.

8: Well I think yeah it was successful and to employ more of those principles in other buildings--the wellness center—I think some of these will be incorporated but not all because of the cost, which is unfortunate because that would be a very good model as well, because then you have a much larger structure that’s doing that and a lot of people go into it so that itself would send a statement of this is what we are committed to

I: Sounds like you have a lot of great ideas 8: In fact just two weeks ago was here to basically draw attention to one of the

engineering courses that are going to build a wind generator and if that works well their plan is that they would build a bigger one for education, but also as a demonstration model, she had seen it in the paper. It may have been recorded in Chimes; the smaller one will give them enough data to see if there is enough wind to justify a bigger one.

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8: It’s interesting it’s got a one year probation from the city because the neighbors don’t like that thought of it. They think it will make too much noise so we have that education part as well. So yeah, they would tolerate traffic on the road that would be much louder than that would be, but that’s something that’s acceptable. But even if a wind generator makes little noise it’s not acceptable but highway traffic that’s just a half mile away ok we can’t do anything about that. So it’s interesting how our values influence those kinds of decision, so I am just trying to give you an introduction to some of the problematic.

9: That’s a good question. I think I don’t really know. Currently I know this building

well, environmental issues…ok. There’s like the climate issue that we pretty talk that one to death, and there’s still discussion about that but think we are taking a stand that there is a problem with the climate with global warming. In classes we talk about it and I think we are trying to do what we can do to lessen the impact or at least study it, like 2-3 years there was a January Series about it and that was very interesting. So I think that issue we see that it is an issue and a problem and we are trying to learn more about and see what we can do.

I: Which of these contributions has been most useful? 9: I think this is the most significant contribution Calvin is making to the environment. If

you think about it, there are 4000 students right now and 4000 people will go into the world and try to change things in whatever ways they can. I think there’s definitely potential for that.

10: I think that some of these questions are fairly loaded. Um…Calvin has responded

cautiously, and now when I say Calvin, I mean the administration. And right now, there are some students with environmental concerns with the Wellness Center, and they’re trying to get their voices heard. A couple years ago there was a petition when this plan was starting that 1600 students signed, almost half the students at Calvin. The students now feel that a lot of the concerns raised on the petition were not incorporated into the design of that building, and they’re trying to raise them again, and they’re feeling like they aren’t being heard. So there are some issues that I think the administration has not been as receptive as they could be. I think in general, there are other environmental issues that they proceed into cautiously, but they have proceeded. I do use that word. Like with the Wellness Center, there have been some extra costs added because there have been concerns about environmental issues. But at times I feel like if we don’t have people pushing hard, nothing is going to happen about those concerns, and I think that’s fair. I think the administration would probably say the same thing. They’re not leading us into this and the Sustainability Policy, there was a little bit of resistance by the administration, but the policy was maintained. There are things in the stay that the administration didn’t like, so there’s a group of us faculty and students working on the statement, but we would like it in place, but to get it through the administration is more difficult. So it’s not the administration saying, “We need a statement on Sustainability, or we need a group now,” it’s a whole bunch of other voices trying to convince the administration to do these things. So they’re not inconvincible, but they’re also not going to be out front leading. And I think that’s fair. I think that they would agree.

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11: I don’t know how much they are. In comparison to what would be the question. I

would hope that they are by educating students who would go live lifestyles that have low impact on the environment. One way they do that is to subsidize the bus, to get students used to riding the bus so that if they live someplace else, that’s not such a foreign idea. And the nature preserve, and bringing grade school kids and everybody on campus. And maybe trying different things like wind power and more demonstration projects.

12: Well, sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to detect, I think, because we continue to

construct new buildings and to build parking lots around them and all of that places a burden on the natural environment that it normally would not have. On the other hand, we have the ecosystem preserve that I think is a great symbol and an educational device for our students. We have, I think, taken a lot of pains to manage the water run-off from our parking lots. I know we’ve put a lot of money down to the ponds down along Lake Drive there, so that we didn’t get water run-off that was high in nitrogen or phosphate from our lawns. We put a lot of tiling in there, wet tile in order to try to filter the water before it gets to the watershed. So I do think that the college has made investments to try to take care of the environment. I think that we could do with more natural areas on this campus. We have a great looking campus. If you love lawns, we have a beautiful campus, but if you go compare our campus with Aquinas’s campus, Aquinas has many more natural areas—less lawn and more trees, more not really decorative trees, but sort of trees that just grew there—and they’ve retained that, and that’s beautiful too. So I think that if I were planning our campus, I’d say “Well, all these green areas that we have, that we have to mow and fertilize and keep putting weed killer on, do we really need them all?” Can’t we just say, can we make a progression back to a natural area? So I think there are ways we can improve. But we are also doing things.

F: How has Calvin been harmful to the environment? 1: Well, I guess that’s based on your point of view. I’m not really sure how to answer

that question. I mean some people would say that the use of fertilizers can be damaging to the environment and I just don’t necessarily agree with that.

2: Well, I don’t know, I don’t know if they’ve purposely harmed the environment… I

can’t think of a way. There’s always damage and harm that’s going on everyday. I think of our, you know when we wash dishes, that’s putting a lot of chemicals down into the – that’s not good.

I: But it’s not necessarily a conscious harm? 2: No, but you just take a look around and see what we do. They fertilize the lawn.

That’s not supposed to be good. The wash-off from the fertilizer is not supposed to be good. And I think that there has been a conscious effort. I think, you know, when I’ve been in committees and we talk about things, there is a real concern about the environment, even the trees, even when they’re cutting down trees, how hard they struggles with the new buildings that they are putting up and the process they have to

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go through. When they cut down a tree, they like to plant at least a whole bunch more trees to replace the one. So they do take that very seriously. They really care.

3: Well, to the extent that we all drive cars, but that’s not an institutional thing, that’s

more of a…I don’t see Calvin harming the environment. You know, unless you were environmentally perfect. You know to the extent that we have oil and fossil fuel, or those kinds of things. But, to where we can minimize ordinary functioning, I think we do. I feel like the eco-system preserve is a very restrictive, like we’ve said let’s cross-country ski in there, and no. You know, and so I think that, so on balance I’m sure that if I talked to folks they could point them out but I don’t see them, I see us pretty much responding in a pro-environmental movement to the extent that we saw that [inaudible word] or even not [inaudible word] like with the price to save the woodlot.

4: I think that it’s hard for me to say that there is some concern that there is a

competition, and I’ll use the words that [Name] uses there’s a competition between the natural environment and the built environment, we’ve had many conversation. Even last week when some of us met in [Name’s] office and with [Name] and [Name] about the impact on the woodlot because we’re going to start transplanting some trees over spring break and then we’re going to cut some trees down and some students are going to be just terribly upset that the trees get cut down, but the 2 weeks before that we’re going to more 150 or something like that. And there’s always a competition between what we build versus what’s naturally there and depending and I feel from both sides of this. As a biologist you know I have a [unclear] for the natural environment, also as someone responsible to fit this puzzle together, 45 years ago they put the Fieldhouse in the wrong spot (laughing). It’s no excuse but could it have been 30 yards farther south, we wouldn’t have this problem, so we have that type of issue and so there is a lot of concern about trying as we place new building and do project not to do any more harm. The conversation we’re having about the woodlot is how can we get enough trees in here that birds and wildlife can more through safety that we don’t cut off the transit path. So we do talk to the biologist and some of the construction here in the past has done some of that so we’re trying to be really sensitive about not doing more of that.

5: Now, here my response is more out of ignorance than out of an acute level of

knowledge about it. I am just ignorant of what Calvin has done if much. My suspicion is born out of the fact that we haven’t done or not more recently publicized what we have done. We got a couple windmills we’re going to put up, but man I don’t know much, but for all I know, the engineers and the chemistry department and the biology department and biologists are talking about this and are training young people. I’m just not familiar with it, I don’t know.

6: Well, whenever you have a lot of people using the same space we damage it by more

people….more cars coming here everyday….fossil fuels, carbon emissions, etc. But I suppose one could say that maybe more distance education or online classes could be more efficient energy wise. How we damage the environment? I think it’s been a

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small way, I think we’ve had a great impact, I don’t know that I would say we’ve really damaged it, certainly not irreparable. Well, certainly whenever we do a big building, like the Fieldhouse complex, it’s going to take down a lot of trees, that can damage the environment, but you have to measure that against the impact it can have on people’s bodies…recreation, physical activity. So someone has to figure out a compensating effect of how we expect this to be a good thing. So, I can’t say some particular ways in which we have damaged…oh, there is another concept here of where we manicure lawns. I mean, there are fertilizers that are used for that; it takes water. We don’t have a problem with water here in West Michigan; we’ve got the Great Lakes. Naturalization would be better; wildflowers and natural ponds instead of using water all the time and fertilizers, but on the other hand, there is photosynthesis and cleansing the air by the means of the grass. So I don’t know how quite to say it…there are not environmental disasters. And certainly our goal is to preserve things like our 70 acre ecosystem reserve. Many developers would have had that area in a heartbeat, but we want to maintain that area.

7: Yeah, there is the field house issue, we get our food from some […] sources that buy

food from anywhere in the world that happens to be cheapest so I think that’s probably pretty bad fossil fuel wise and promoting urban sprawl indirectly. Gosh we fertilize our lawn with some pretty nasty stuff and there is stuff thrown in the ponds that’s not good. We use a lot of energy in our building operations; all of our buildings were built in a time when climate change wasn’t an issue and economically there was no pressure to insulate your building. It was cheaper to just burn the extra fuel it takes to keep it warm, so now the roof of this building is just one brick thick so like the heat is just leaving everything

9: Well, let me think. I suppose there’s little damages like last Fall I was in a class where

we were testing water, and so we were testing the athletics’ field pond, the woodlot pond, and the president’s pond. We were just looking to see what impact the fertilizers have. Because we use some fertilizer, I don’t know how much. So there is some fertilizer getting into that water which can other environment issue like algae blooms and fish get killed, stuff like that. So there’s been little damagers like that. And the fact that we’re here, we used to just be an open field. Of course if we’re not here, there’ll probably be hundreds of condos or shopping malls or whatever. And so in general we are doing a lot more good than damage. The fact that we set aside 90 acres here as a preserve, I think that’s a big impact.

10: Oh, well let’s see, every time we drive our cars to Calvin we damage the

environment. We damage the environment in the location of buildings; Kalsbeek Huizenga is built in a beautiful woods and there was no concern. Well, they made that concern, but that dorm was just plopped right down into a place that seems to me was just not very wise. So where we build our buildings and the energy we use damages the environment, so it’s an ongoing thing. Locating buildings and what we’ve done to the creation has certainly inflicted some damage. We have done some good like with the preserve and stuff like that, but we certainly have detracted as well. But I certainly think transportation and coming back to buildings, those are two areas,

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and energy use, and that goes with the buildings. If we could have, and I’m dreaming, if we could cut down the number of cars that come to Calvin every day by 10%, that’s so much less Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, less bad stuff that goes into the air. And then in turn, if we could plant more trees because trees soak up the Carbon; they’re the opposite end. We could offset that, and there are some people here thinking about protecting the Calvin Carbon neutral, so the pluses equal the minuses. Those are some of the issues about energy usage, and our transportation is huge, but then do we have good needs for soaking up the Carbon that we’re putting into the air, and ideally as a planet we would live in a Carbon neutral way so that we’re not putting more into the atmosphere. So there’s lots of room for improvement. There’s good things happening, but, and this is certainly not an attempt to settle back and say, “Oh, we’re really going to be careful,” but so much room for improvement. And that’s true for my own life too, and it’s a challenge, and I’m not saying, “There is people out there who need to improve.” No, no, it’s something we all need to work on.

11: I just think, you know, we drive to campus, we use lots of chemicals on the lawn, we

move earth around. 12: Well, I think whenever you have to build a parking lot, that is harmful. So if we could

minimize our parking spaces somehow and encourage people to travel to the campus, to use public transit or walking or bicycling or whatever, but minimize the private vehicle parking on this campus, I think we would reduce the amount of parking. I think whenever you pave things over, you exact a cost. It means you have to clear something out and then put this… what I call sort of an unnatural surface on the space. That places a burden on it. Unfortunately, when you build a new building, our zoning requirements are such that, depending on the use of the building and how many are going to occupy it, you have to provide a certain number of parking spaces. So I imagine, with the new wellness center coming up, that there will be some requirements about additional parking. I’m not sure; I haven’t really heard. But it would be disappointing to me if they had to build more parking spaces.

G: From an administrative point of view, what about more of a general Calvin

community do you see specific ways that the general community has contributed?

4: Well, I personally, I would like to see us reduce the number of cars that come to

campus, I think the number of cars that have been driven to campus in the past few years is somewhat reduced and right now we’re working with the student senate and student esc to get some more data to try to make some decision about how we can further reduce the number of cars that come to campus. You know this one car one person thing (laughing), I’m fortunate that I have a neighbor who lives right around the corner from me who’s a psychology professor and we carpool together. I just put gas in my car and I thought I haven’t put gas in this car for months and you know it works out that most days that we can ride together in the morning and then ride together again at night. But I see an awful lot of people where it’s just one person and

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that I guess and people have reasons for that, but I think it goes back to the situation about the fact that we have become accustom, we’re a society that drives with one person in the car, and I would like to see us continue to find ways to reduce the number of cars that come to campus to save energy to save natural resource. It improves air quality and all of that. I think that’s probably the big thing the others of course people are concerned about the built environment versus to natural environment. You look at the campus now it’s really dense on this side of campus on this side of the beltline on the other side we have made some real significant efforts to preserve the nature preserve and I think that’s a positive thing. We bought the preserve when we bought the rest of the land we’ve developed it around it, but there’s a pretty firm boundary around the ecopreserve that’s not going to get penetrated every time we think—Oh we need to put this there or that—I see the college having a very strong commitment to that. That’s going to be an increasing isolated patch of green in the city, you know. I go to Chicago once in a while, actually my dad grew up in Chicago and I was down there this weekend and you know, you’re flying out of the airport and you see all these patches of green, it’s the forest preserves and you know you see another. And Grand Rapids is not quite there yet but that the ecosystem preserve, if we’re not very careful about maintaining that, the college is committed to doing that, it could be this little island of green in suburbia. You look at pictures of the place 20, 30, 50 years ago it wasn’t like it is now. No I was a student here 35 years ago and the beltline was a 2 lane road you could drive miles on the beltline and there’s businesses all over the place. That’s a bit of social context, that’s not Calvin, but what do we do when, we are really intentional about preserving the quality of the campus.

H: What is our most problematic area? 1: Well, I would say that our most problematic area would be sensitivity. We need to do

a better job of marketing to students and staff as to what they can do to be more resourceful. And also better communication between all as to how to solve some of the issues.

2: I think just growth, getting bigger and more things. But it’s a double-edge sword.

You’ve got to get big to survive and if Calvin wants to survive, they’ve got to do these things. Like the wellness center and those types of things. I hate to see, you know, my father was a developer. To him, putting a road in wasn’t a problem but to me, I was seeing it as those trees. And it’s just progress. I guess that would be my – you know I hate to see land getting used for a parking lot or a building and so that stuff.

I: Does Calvin – you said that if they cut down trees they try to plant a bunch more. Like what do they try and do to compensate. Like if they would put in a parking lot or those new buildings, are they doing anything else to try and conserve other areas?

2: Oh yeah, they’ve set aside like the land across the belt line they’ve set aside. And so I think they are.

I: There has been a lot of discussion about the new Fieldhouse and expanding it, and a lot of those trees over by the dorms and behind the Fieldhouse are going to be

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destroyed. Is Calvin taking any action to put in place to make up for what is going to be destroyed?

2: Oh yeah, I know there’s been talk about when they do some of that process, they are going to plant other trees on campus to make up for the loss. I’m not directly involved in those conversations but I know that there is concern of that. And they take it serious. It’s not easy for anyone. But they’ve actually designed the buildings to be the least invasive.

7: Don’t know if I could pick one because I think about it a lot, I mean there is food

issues and transportation. I mean our parking prices are so cheap we are actually paying students to drive to school instead of taking another way because it’s the cheapest way. We probably shouldn’t be doing that so there is transportation, food, and energy use, and then there is the way we actually treat the land we are on as far as, I’m not saying we should turn commons lawn into a forest but a lot of the area that’s by default lawn could be wild so I don’t know those four or five things probably.

8: I would say our most problematic is the energy use and it’s one we could contribute

the most with; it’s the question of transportation and then also the question—Are we going to sustain our resources? But I should mention that there has been a real serious attempt to increase local food supply, they have been very positive in trying to participate in that to buy more locally when it’s possible because there are limits to that when most of the people are here its pretty hard to buy locally when we are not growing things like that, but never the less there are some serious attempts by the food service to make students aware of where food is coming from, so that is something that has really changed in the last year of two that has been really encouraging and I expect that to grow. And we should have a goal to increase that, recognizing there are some limits to that we still have to feed over 2,000 students you have to feed them, as well as faculty and staff, that’s encouraging so I do think that is a problematic area. But also transportation—how do we get from there to there? Do we simply assume, we have very cheap fees for having your car on campus—Is that good? Can we develop different types of thinking? I guess I would argue a different kind of thinking when students come here they should have some kind of a way in which they can have a scavenger hunt where they look at down town by taking the bus there, in other words, to know they can go downtown by taking the bus because I would say 95% of students who come here have never been on a student bus the service learning takes the bus, so I think one way is to have a program to really learn how to use that. So I think we could do a lot more by discouraging the use of the individual cars as transport and saying ok, there are alternate ways and even though we don’t have a lot of the best bus trans here, it is better than nothing and it actually can take you there, you just have to pay attention to time if you want to go downtown any student can go down there quite easily or somewhere else in the city and it opens up a whole different world, because not having to take a car or using someone else’s car to get down there, I would say that is probably in terms of environmental impact it is a very significant area that we could do and approach this and educate our students that there are other ways

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9: Well, there’s the PE woodlot. That could be a problem but than again, you have to

weight the decisions too and what is more important right now. Is it more important to have a building where students can learn about talking care of themselves and the environment? I mean we talk about that kind of things in this building too. But maybe part of the woodlot needs to be given away to that.

10: As a community? It must be energy use, that’s probably the big one. Our

dependency on fossil fuels, I think, and the amount of money we spend on energy. I don’t know what it is, but if you look at the annual budget, you know, the amount of money spent on heating, I’m sure it’s astronomical. So, I think it’s energy use, and part of it goes back to the way we make our buildings, and the way we take care of them, and the way, and yes maybe it’s the great integrator because the way we get ourselves to school as well is energy use. So yeah, when I think about it, that’s a pretty safe response. Energy use because it influences so many aspects of our lives.

11: Probably the whole issue of transportation. When you think of the amount of CO2

that goes into the atmosphere just from all the cars that drive here and back. If somehow we could develop a better transportation system in the city that would help people be able to use the bus, it would be good.

I: Could you elaborate a little more on what you envision for that movement? 11: Even the idea of a bus coming onto campus rather than just on Burton, but coming in

on the loop or, you know, we just bought the apartments which are further away from the city, where you have to drive here. So if there could be more movement in tying Calvin into the city rather than the suburbs, and be part of that transportation system, it would be better.

I: Is there anything that you would like to be added? 2: Well, I don’t know if there’s anything I would add or say. I think that one of the things

that we do as dining services is that we try to support the students and we are very flexible and we try to as much as possible to be as environmentally friendly as we can. And we talked about cookouts and those types of things and the changes that have come have come from students and from staff and from us just wanting to do the best that we can do. And it’s tough because sometimes it’s not seen that way. So I’m kind of in a tough position.

3: The one thing that I think there should be continuing civil discussion on is at what cost,

right, on both sides of that. So, environmentalism, at what cost? And you always have purists and pragmatists. And I don’t like to see when the government puts into the National Wild Park, whatever that Secretary of the Interior is, someone who doesn’t value; you know national parks and land. You know, [be]cause then I think that’s a scam. On the other hand I think, there’s, you always have to kind of make a decision on the best good. So I just sort of hope that there would be civil dialogue on this particular question, because you can get a little righteous on the environmental

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side and you can get way too cavalier on the non environmental side. So, I think that there needs to be a good civil conversation.

10: Like in general over the whole talk. Maybe I would add that, and it gets back to

something I was saying earlier, a lot of times people will, and our college, will do environmentally friendly things as long as it fits within a certain budget. So they would see certain environmental issues as sort of subsumed within our economics, and it’s economics that are most important, and it’s those that motivate us. And I think it’s so important for us to realize that any economic system exists within a broader creation. And it’s the environment that surrounds all of us, and we operate within the broader creation. So really, I think that we think about a lot of these things in a reverse order, that any economic system depends on the amount of resource space within which it’s found. So to say we’re environmentally friendly as long as it’s cost effective is really backwards. Absolutely backwards. Maybe that’s a good place to end it. I think we need to see more clearly our dependence on a healthy creation, and that human beings aren’t going to be able to thrive, let alone robins and squirrels and other creatures, they aren’t going to be able to thrive if without a healthy environment. We can’t just sort of excise ourselves out, and our food isn’t always going to come from the store if there’s not good soil and good rain and good farmers to raise that food. We’re way more dependent and way more connected, way more part of the creation than we think of ourselves as. And I could keep going but I’m going to stop.

12: Well, on the issue of water use, if you want to think about water use, here’s

something to think about. A lot of water gets used taking baths and showers. And that’s where we use hot water generally, too. Hot water is a resource, I think we should become very conscious of, because it takes a lot of energy to heat water, and given the way we do heat water, in big tanks, where we keep it hot all day long [unclear], it’s a considerable energy drain. So one way to think about water conservation would be to say, hey, do I need to take a twenty-minute shower, or could I do with ten? Or could I do with five? Now, I know different people have different requirements for taking showers. And I don’t want to pass a law about it at all, but just become aware of it. Myself, I used to take a shower every day. I don’t anymore. I take a shower about every other day, and then I just dry bathe in the morning on the alternate days, so I’m reasonably clean and inoffensive to my neighbors. But I don’t necessarily take a shower every day. In the summer it tends to be more every day, but in the winter, usually every other day, sometimes every third day I take a shower. My wife says “What are you doing?” and I say, “Well, I’m trying to live what I believe. I’m trying not to use more resources than I need to. I do stupid things like diluting shampoo. So I buy a bottle of shampoo, I pour half of it into another bottle, and then I mix it with water, each one. Well, my shampoo bottles last about a whole year. But I don’t have much hair. Now, people say “That’s absolutely crazy!” And I would say, yes, but on the other hand, if everybody used half as much of shampoo as we normally do, you would make a significant impact on the burden of these kinds of pollutants that go into our water systems. So I think, over the years, conservation of a certain sort has become subconscious for me. I’ve been thinking about it so long, and

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also realizing that if you talk these things, you have to try to live them in some way, and to make a consistent story between what you say and what you do is a very helpful thing, and it’s not easy to [unclear]. So I think the easy thing to do is the convenient thing to do, which is do what everybody else does. So, I’ll stop there.

J: What do you see as the general attitudes towards the environment within the Calvin College community? 1: Well, I think there is probably a greater sense of sensitivity to the environment than I

think the general public has, and although I came out of industry, and although environmentalism was important, I think Calvin puts a lot more emphasis on it than they do.

2: From the dining services perspective, we are continually challenged by the students

and the faculty and the guests that come on campus to challenge us to do a good job. I mean, they really are, I sense a strong urgency I guess for the environment. What we do, just by the nature of our business is sometimes unfriendly, so to speak, large cookouts and those types of things. You know. We have made some changes. We try not to use foam, we use paper. We try to do as much as we can in those types of areas. I think there is a strong sense of caring amongst the students and the staff.

3: I would say, from my perspective, and I’ll share that perspective, is shaped by my

cabinet work in terms of building buildings. So, while I’m not directly involved in all of them, I have access to the conversations around all of them. So my views are shaped by that. My views are shaped by food service connections. I’m on the board of creative dining and [we] are interested in food. I am involved in building that involves students, so, the campus commons, the Knollcrest East renovations and the residence hall renovation. And because of student organizations, I have a touch of where students are interested: Environmental Stewardship Coalition, etc. So my perception is that back in 1999, I think that the discussion around environmentalism was much lower, almost, very, I would say nonexistent. I don’t remember the conversations. But then, I think because Frank Gorman has been very interested in doing LEED buildings that generally culture is more attune. Al Gore, thing that he did, and that NAFTA, I read the New York Times so, you know, I like to follow where we are on treaties, different kinds of environmental treaties. I’ve traveled to Costa Rica, and you know, was you know interested in rain forest and that sort of thing. So, just generally, culturally Frank Gorman’s influence when in comes to LEED buildings. Then, when we were building the Wellness Center our concerns for woodlot, the fair trade, discussions around food, the organically grown food conversations, the poster sessions that students have done, the engineering students who have done kind of green work, then the conversations around the campus commons in terms of what green kinds of things will we do there. So I would say that if on a scale of 1 to 10 it was a 2 to 3 when I came, I’d say it’s like at a 7 or 8. I think we’re all, you know, even the whole car, the Prius, you know the conversation on it there on environmentalism is become the norm and not this, expert. You know like, it used to be like it was kind of a specialty thing, environmentalism, you know

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there were some people who were familiar but I think because of culture, primarily cars, weather, ozone, temperature change, all that, it has become part of our daily conversations.

4: I would say there are pockets of concern, there are pockets of concern among the

faculty where faculty are more consistently aware of say recycling, sorting recyclables with trash, or consumption use of paper versus doing things electronically. There are some pockets of concern, you know, very high levels of interest among some groups, you know the ESC among the students is one group, SJC to some degree but their focus is not always on environmental issues but they tend to deal with other kinds of issue, but they are a group of students I consider to be environmentally conscious, environmentally sensitive. I am not sure, I also serve on the ESC committee for the college which is a faculty, staff, and student committee which says general oversight for the environmental issues of the institution. My sense is and I’ll use recycling as a barometer, is that our students have varying degrees of interest. It is difficult to get students to recycle stuff, sometimes they’ve grown up in a place that doesn’t recycle, I’ve always lived in states that recycle so for me to go to say Chicago and throw a can in the trash just feels wrong to me. Ok, it just feels wrong because I’ve always lived in a place where the soda can has a nickel or a dime attached to it and for as long as I can remember we’ve always recycled at our house it just something. We lived in New York and they had a very active recycling, you know, they would weigh the trash bags and if your trash bag weighed over 30 pounds, they wouldn’t take it. There was a tipping fee, we had a landfill that was filling us. That was a big issue in New York and so we recycled as much as we could, all the time. My family and I have always lived with that awareness, I watch our students and one of the things ESC is doing is we are going to introduce some new recycling containers and make sure there is always a trash container next to the recycling because if the recycling stream gets contaminated you can’t do it that’s why I say there are pockets of interest, students on ESC are very interested. They are very concerned, they are very aware, we’re working on the transportation the subsidized busing, the alternative transportation and carpooling and I’ve had some good conversation about that but when we offered the carpooling option the student body this fall, no one was interested and I’m thinking when you can get a prime parking space right next to Spoelhof center or right here in the FAC lot by just driving with 2 people in your car and it won’t cost you anything no one was interested. Maybe it was poor marketing but I think there was more talk than there is real action and real commitment. I don’t know if that’s changed in the last 6 or 7 years but compared to some other campuses that have very significant ground swells of support, I don’t know that that’s always here it raises occasionally and it’s often a small group. A few years ago there was a big issue about using recycled paper so CIT set up a printer downstairs and you could use recycled paper. After awhile though, no one was using it anymore, it sort of went out of fashion, so you know it’s an interesting idea. On the other hand that you have faculty members who are involved in CEAP, the whole CEAP program, doing a lot of stuff being very concerned, local food initiatives and environmental awareness and pollution concern and runoff and the woodlot, but there

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are just pockets of concern. I’m sad to say it’s not a hallmark of the institution, but I’m afraid it isn’t.

5: It is in some respect kind of a broad question, I don’t know that I [unclear] what would

cause me to say that in a general pervasive way that if I were to give any general adjectives to typify Calvin people, there’s a large degree of benign neglect of the environment. I don’t think it’s malice, I just don’t think that we’ve been pressured to think very much about it. Still, we have tended to assume that when it comes to resources there’s plenty to go around and hence the urgency to approach with what should the Calvinist ethic, mainly leanness, simplicity, sparseness, which are really aspects of the Calvinist ethic and use these with frugality, and to use them with what Calvin calls a sense of stewardship, as people will eventually have to give an account and to use them as Calvin would say “with moderation,” in nothing too much nor too little, I just don’t think we’ve had to treat that very much because there’s plenty of gasoline to go around, there’s plenty of paper to go around and there’s plenty of wood and there’s… and it’s not so much malice. We just haven’t had to face that very much. So that would be my 1st thing. I think there’s an increasing awareness that we live in a fragile planet and so that pushing us toward it but I don’t think we all are that consciously aware of the biblical implications of how we are called upon to live our life together. I’m stammering but those would be just a couple of general observations.

I: Do you see a difference in between student and faculty and staff and how those two groups would see their attitudes towards the environment?

5: I don’t know that I could, that would make the demarcation between students, faculty and staff as I would make it among certain unique groups in each, what binds the [environmentally conscious members] of the faculty together with the groups of students on the environmental protection council is far greater than what binds [Name] with fellow faculty members who have less concern about it. So I don’t know if it’s one versus the other but depending on what they’re rallying for.

6: Well, there is a great desire to do as much as we can with reasonable cost. Reasonable

cost means that the goal is not to raise tuition to pay for these things. So when someone says that we can put solar collectors on every building and we can do something that is environmentally that’s good. That’s fine, but it means that each of these building will probably cost 5 percent more. Well, 5 percent doesn’t sound like much, but when you take 40 million and say 5 percent of that, were talking about 2 million dollars. So we try to do environmentally what we can do. We used to say that we wanted to be LEED rated. That stands for Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design. And that’s a rating system by the U.S. Green Building Council. And you can look those up on the website. It’s a point green system for new constructural buildings in order to make them sustainable. Just to register those buildings with the U.S. Green Building Council amounts to another agency that we have to please because…so it takes a lot of man power, effort and it’s costly. There is a lot of effort to do get that rating. So Calvin has established a concept of some sustainability guidelines to which support the entire campus, but the goal is to become sustainable by intent; not by actual LEED rating. So we did two building by LEED

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ratings. The Bunker Interpretive Center is a gold rated building and the downtown art studios is certified rated, which is the lowest, but still an acceptable rating. But the cost for doing it on larger buildings is just extraordinary. 60-70,000 for the Fieldhouse complex and that doesn’t sound like much, but that just means we have to get another 60 to 70,000 dollar donation from somebody. So we don’t go that far.

I: (probe) So when you say “we” are you talking about the faculty and staff? 6. Well, I’m talking about the college administration, the board of trustees, the college

itself. I don’t know about all the faculty and staff, but as with anything, I’m sure that there are equal proportions of students that say it doesn’t make any sense, lots of students that say it’s a great thing and we should do more of it. I’d say that’s true of faculty and staff. A common mantra of people today, you know, that the Green Building is kind of in. And that’s another thing. We have to be real careful that this is not a “faddish” thing because that is a real large cost for something that may go out of style. But I don’t think it will because it’s appropriate and necessary.

7: Oh I plan on being honest, it’s just complicated because there are a lot of different things, the faculty is probably a little bit more in tune with the environment than the students but amongst the faculty there is a broad spectrum, from the president all the way to people who really aren’t a part of it. But among students there is a really vocal minority which people involved in the ESC, those are the ones that might be active on issues but there is also, it’s not that small of a minority, there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to those ideas and are conscious about environmental implications in their lives. They like going outside and hanging out, you know all sorts of things, so yeah I think there are a fair number of students who are at least sympathetic to those kinds of things, whether or not it plays out in whether they drive to school or take the bus you know

I: So their attitudes are sympathetic to it but that doesn’t necessarily mean they carry it out into their actions?

7: No I don’t think it always does like, this is something we were having a conversation with [Name] in our last meeting and he was saying if people really cared about the environment, how come so few of them recycle and so few want to do anything but drive to school in their cars? That’s true but I know a lot of people who really care about it, but it doesn’t quite click and they don’t quite recycle or take their bike or whatever it might be, so I thought it was kind of unfair. I don’t think that was a good analysis of people’s attitudes like that their actions carry out through the structures of Calvin and stuff

I: So you said the faculty and staff are more in tune can you tell me a little bit more about that?

7: I think a little bit it probably correlates their political views a little bit because they, I think students, and it changes a lot an as they progress through schooling, but especially underclassmen environmental issues I’m guessing, their parents aren’t super big on them because they come from a pretty conservative base and there has been a lot of fear attached to environmentalism, or earth worshiping or whatever so you kind of focus on the family ties being really nervous about anything environmental. Students coming out of that are not quite as in tune

I: So most people learn from their parents and learn fears.

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7: I think it comes to them and most people are pretty sympathetic, but I might be bias because of the people I surround myself with.

9: It varies. I think there are some people who are very passionate about it and who really

want to make a difference. There are others that…you know I think the majority of the people are either indifferent or they don’t know very much about it and so they don’t really do much about it. But then I think there are certainly some people who are very passionate about it.

9. There are people on the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, you know, students are a lot of those who are interested in it. Then there’s the Environmental Stewardship Committee that I used to be a part of. And so there are people in those positions who certainly try, think it’s important to make a difference. Then there are others who are just naturally interested in the environment already and they do things that make a difference. You know things like recycling and carpooling and stuff like that. I recycle all the time but not carpool. I used to take the bus but I moved to a new location so it’s harder to take the bus now.

10: In general, I think that there is a sense that we need to be serious about stewardship

and in that, this is our Christian calling. I don’t think that people know a lot of times what that means. It gets lip service, but putting it into practice is part of the next step. People do take on readily, but for a lot of people it stops at lip service. But I don’t think I hear people say, “Oh stewardship, no that’s not something that we need to do.” Everybody is in agreement there. And then I think too in the administration a lot of times, well it goes that way for a lot of us, we’ll do things as long as it doesn’t cost us extra money. But for the most part, we still operate within this paradigm that saving money is good, and spending more money than we have to is bad. That really drives us forward toward our commitment to stewardship. For instance, would you buy more expensive food if you knew it was from a local farmer or organic farmer? Some people would say, “That’s a foolish way to spend your money, why don’t you buy the cheaper.” I think too often we default to the most inexpensive, and a lot of time, I don’t think that’s the best in terms of our stewardship. I think it’s a general attitude. It’s so hard to characterize because I just met with a couple of students this morning who I would never say that they were so committed, and they’re so passionate about their beliefs, and there are some faculty who are too. But I do think that’s a general attitude. Maybe it’s in our culture, maybe it’s in our church. Stewardship is great, and environmental stuff is great, as long as it doesn’t cost us extra money. So people will recycle and go a little bit, and maybe it’s not so convenient, but that’s ok. But if you ask me to spend more money, eh that’s where people will bow out.

11: It’s probably different among different groups. I think I’m biased when it comes to

the students, because I teach environmental studies, so I get a certain segment of those, but I would say, in general, amongst the faculty and staff, there is quite a bit of support for environmental issues.

12: That’s not so easy to say. The interest in environmental issues I think waxes and

wanes. I think there was a great interest in the 1970’s and on into the early 1980s,

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when we suffered from energy supply issues due to embargos that were placed on oil exports from the Middle East to the United States. At that time, we had a sort of semi-rationing of gasoline. There were huge price-hikes and long lines and so on. And at that time, there was a great turning toward environmental issues. That was also true actually in the 60’s, with the concern for environmental pollution. You may recall, in 1971, there was the first Earth Day, and that was sort of the great public awakening to environmental awareness in the United States. But in the middle 1980s, after the oil supply issues eased and gas prices went back down, we became much less concerned with environmental issues. We began to do cleaning up some of the pollution, and we’ve done a fairly good job of that, but I think the awareness of the needs of the environment went down in that 15 year period, say, from 1985 to the year 2000. And now I think it’s becoming, getting to be back on the radar of the average citizen, especially with the concern about climate change. Climate change is an issue that we read about in the public media, hear about on television, watch programs and buy DVDs that address these issues, so I think there is a growing awareness gathering around these issues.

K: What do you see as the general attitudes among students in the Calvin College

community? 1: Yeah, I think that there is a group of students that have a high sensitivity to it. I think

that there is a group of students that think it’s silliness, and I think there is a group of students in between that kind of think it is something that we should be concerned about but don’t spend a lot of time and energy on.

2: Yeah I think there’s a strong urge for us to do that. I think that even the small things

like students that are cleaning up after the cookout – it’s done very well. You know, they don’t want to leave plastic forks or debris out on the lawn. They pick it up and put it where it needs to go.

3: Well, the faculty and staff are about 600 people and the students are about 4,000

people, so I think you’re going to get a bigger bell curve with students. So I think that there is a passionate population of students, then I think there are students who care if their friends care, and then I think there are students who just don’t care, because they’re just not attuned. You know, they might be the same student who’s not attuned to Darfur, that’s not attuned to a lot of things, right? So in a bell curve, I think we’re probably a pretty standard bell curve. Faculty and staff, because they read more are a little bit more attuned about living long, for their children, are we creating an environment that’s good for our children? They might be a little more attuned, although I couldn’t say, that’s my perception.

8: Even though I haven’t been in the classroom for the last three years, I think on the one

hand, students if you ask them—Are you concerned about creation care?—generally they would be. If you asked them—Would they really want to change their lifestyle to really be active in creation care?—I would suspect the answer would be moderate. So ultimately in some ways creation care is going to entail some changes in lifestyle and

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energy sustaining, so that is where you’re going to see how strongly they are going to be affected and as an example of that most of them say “Yeah I am interested in creation care.” Part of it is not being fully aware of the implications of what we do and how it affects the environment, all the way from the kind of food we eat, where we shop for the food we eat, as well as the other things that we shop for. I think a lot of that has a lot to do with, it impacts the environment so if you’re concerned about the part of my area of course, food agriculture and food security, I have taught courses on that so that’s a part of my special interest, well then certainly agricultural preservation is critical if we are going to be able to feed the future 10 billion people that we might expect. So even the fact even in Kent County when we lose on the average 1 to 2,000 acres of farm land a year, how does that relate to us? Cities relate to that and so whether or not you buy local food is going to have an impact on whether those farms are going to be preserved. Part of that is awareness and part of it is a commitment to how do we do our shopping. So getting back to your first question, if you asked if someone is concerned about creation they will say yes, but if they start looking at the implications, a lot of it is awareness and then if they are aware, are they willing to take that next step? And that applies to me. We all have to address that question because we really have a lifestyle that’s really comfortable but by and large are not ready to give some of that up, so the key thing can we begin to release some steps of that. I did initially 8 years ago. I decided to take the buses instead of driving a car. It took me about a month to get a mind change to do that- to walk by the car that was in the driveway that I knew wasn’t going to be used and even though it meant taking a 50 minute ride on the bus against 15 minute drive, I had to do that. Then four years ago we moved into the city so I could be within walking distance of the bus stop, but I am not saying I really did a good thing, I am saying I need to make those kinds of decisions and if I took a look at other students and faculty and staff who take the bus even when they are close to it, that’s an indicator of how much we are willing to change, I think that’s needed. So even in fact yesterday a survey was sent out. Were you part of that survey?

8: There is one question—Do you carpool—well that’s a good question, but more importantly, are you taking the bus, which is deeper than carpooling, so in some sense I think we could have gotten deeper than that. It was too wide, sure it’s important, do you turn the water off when you brush your teeth but I thought we could have gone further with the questioning

I: So you’re saying there are two different things between having a view and actually participating in that and showing it through your actions

8: Sure we can take another issue-climate change-we can get all concerned about climate change. Are we willing to make the steps that is going to affect that and a major impact is how we use our energy and transportation is one very important way in which we can do that, so that’s an illustration of that--are we willing to give that up and the convenience of that.

I: So you mentioned students and faculty having a lack of awareness? 8: I think part of it is lack of awareness as well as the action part, and I would say, in fact

I just read a student evaluation of a student, and our students are simply not aware of the situation by and large they are and they aren’t. I think they are on a very superficial level but not in tune to how deep it was and I could see that just from the

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comments, which is a reminder that is what education is about and a big part of that is education and how can we make sure that at least every student is confronted with the depths of some of these problems. That’s one of my goals to seek and re-implement that.

9: Again I think it varies. I think in general, they think the environment is important but

they don’t see themselves as having a big role in it. You see it as a big cooperation problem or they see it as a rainforest problem and it doesn’t really affect us here and so I think, student…there are some students who know a lot about the environment and are trying to get others to do things different and to make a difference in their own backyards or their own homes but I think, in general people don’t really do much about it.

11: That’s harder for me to judge, because in my department there is, and I know ESC is

quite involved and all, but it’s harder for me to get a feel for the general student body. I would certainly think that with this whole climate change issue that it’s a growing concern.

I: What sort of things are students most concerned about? 11: I think concerning climate change, recycling, biodiversity, you know, issues like the

woodlot, transportation, mass transportation. 12: I think student awareness of the issues is low, but I think there is great interest in it.

I’ve been teaching my energy class for six years, and I will teach it again in the fall. I’ve had decent enrollments all the way through—25 to 30 students generally, and I’ve never had situations where students say “This is just clap talk.” They’ve become very interested in emissions, and they say “Wow, I never knew any of this stuff.” We had exactly the same response during the past interim, when we taught this class to 24 students, I believe. To a person, they were saying “my goodness. This is a course that everybody should have.” It was that kind of eye-opening experience, learning about things that are sort of under the radar in the public media still, and realizing that there are serious challenging facing us. So I think that there is interest when we are made aware of it, but our awareness level is not too high.

L: What do you see as the general attitudes among the faculty and staff in the

Calvin College community? 1: I think that the students and the staff, and then I’ll talk faculty, pretty much mirror

society in that, again, just like I said…there is a group of staff that is really sensitive about environmental issues—recycling, global warming. There is another group that just thinks that is pretty much silly. And then there is the average person that says “Yes, it is something we should be working towards, but let’s not let it get crazy.” Now, I think on our faculty side there is more of a tendency to be really concerned about the environment, about riding bikes, conserving fuel, about turning off lights, those kinds of things. I think faculty tends to be more, at least initially idealistic than more the students and the staff. I think their sensitivity is certainly higher than the

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general public and the staff. We have some staff that really get into it, you know and others that I’d say would say “Hey yeah, it’s a good thing to do, but it’s not going to cause me to not drive my car.”

I: Right, so what you’re saying is that there is pretty wide spectrum of people who care and people who don’t kind of thing?

1. Oh yeah, and of course there is a group run on campus, faculty and students, that this is a cause for them, an important cause. And then there are a lot other students who just say if “I see a recycle bin, I’ll recycle. If I don’t, I won’t.”

2: No, I think that [faculty, staff, and student environmental attitudes] are really in step

with each other. And I don’t know if the students are gleaning this from the faculty or the faculty – you know what I’m saying—because I don’t have that type of interaction with them in their classes and whatnot but I hear similar things from both groups, faculty/staff, more faculty I think I would have to say, and students, staff, maybe not so much. The grounds department and that sort of thing I guess. But that’s not true. I guess I should qualify that because there are a few in the grounds department – [Name], for example, he is a huge push for us to recycle and a help for us in our department. We’ve done things like we now have invested a large amount of dollars, of capital into a bailer, it’s a cardboard bailer. And that really is a huge step that the college made a financial outlay of money. We didn’t have to do that. We could have kept on doing it the way we have been doing it, just sorting cardboard, but it makes it a lot more efficient to buy this piece of equipment to help bail this cardboard. It serves in many ways because it saves in the energy of the people having to come daily to get it. They don’t have that gas expense and labor of coming to get the cardboard every day, and when they do come to get it, it’s more efficient because it’s a 3 to 400 pound block of cardboard. It’s that green machine that you see out there.

4: I think so, I think faculty are a little more, well the faculty is a much smaller group.

And there are pigeon leaders in the faculty. I think the faculty in general are concerned, we get a call from the faculty if there's not a recycling box in there office or classroom. I think they have made decisions and some like me and thing you have done for a long time in your life, um but I guess I would I would, I don’t want to pass judgment on the faculty but I think its interesting that they are generally concerned I’m not sure how much I can ascribe individual levels of concern. I could name you a dozen or 2 dozen faculty members who have very strong environmental concerns who frequently raise those issues and there are some who are just silent on the issue, but I don’t circulate among them enough to say the faculty either are or are not concerned. You know, I saw the note that went out to Calvin, the Calvin email that went out, if you get a broad based, [unclear] response to the survey it will be interesting to see how people self-identify. I think environmental issue are things people easily identify with and say oh that’s a good idea, I believe in that, well whether they actually put that into practice. My conversations with students from the environmental stewardship coalition they say the point here is to get people to change their behavior not just to have them be aware, don’t throw the banana peal into the trash not into the recycling, don’t throw the paper into the trash, it’s the action that makes the

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difference and that’s what we’re striving for as I work with the students. We’ve got to get people to change their behaviors you know, interestingly, right now we’re getting ready to do construction on the new field house and there was some concern about the woodlot and I’m going to meet with the ESC students today to talk about that and how they can get involved. There’s been a lot of public cry about the woodlot for about two years and then no one said anything and now it’s an issue again, it’s a real, it’s episodic, I don’t mean to be uncharitable but it just feels that way.

8: I think it’s similar, on one end we confess we should be earth keepers and concerned

about creation but how far are we willing to go in that are we really concerned about sustainability long term or in local sustainability. I think we need to make much stronger decisions so there might be some differences, but it will be interesting to see from the survey so I guess we will see.

11: I think more people interested outside the science division. So people who aren’t…

it’s not even their area of study, but because they live in Grand Rapids and all of this, it’s become more of a way of life. So we have faculty in the humanities that are very interested in environmental issues.

12: I think that’s growing too. Certainly, I think, in the Science division here at Calvin,

we’ve been addressing these issues, and a lot of faculty are interested in the issues. We don’t always agree on the nature of the problem, and we don’t exactly agree on how to address the problems necessarily, but there is a substantial amount of interest and discussion going on. How that relates to Humanities and Social Science curriculum I am less aware. I led a faculty discussion group that was funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Studies a couple of years ago on energy resources, and I invited participants from across the faculty, but I ended up with I think only two non-scientists and something like eight science people in the discussion group. I don’t think it totally reflected the interest level, but maybe partly.

M: Do you see any significant changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in the

Calvin community over the last decade? 1: Well, I think we have become a lot more sensitive with what we do with our waste;

especially our waste from construction. Now, that may sound strange, but now what we do is try to… we try to recycle our waste so that it doesn’t all go to the same landfill. In other words, steel, demolition concrete, boxes and cardboard goes to another place, and metals go to another place. So now, instead of going to one dumpster, it is now all divided out so that it can be recycled. And I think there is more attention to that. There’s more attention to using recycled materials instead of raw materials. I see more emphasis on that. We’re putting more and more bike racks on campus to encourage students to ride bikes, which I think is good. We are working with the local transit people to city of transit, organizations, to try and make bus rides free for students.

I: Is this a new thing?

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1. No, it’s not really all that new. We are working with them trying to get discounts and we’ve talked about putting bus stops on campus and encouraging carpooling with special parking lots for carpoolers. So that they could have special parking stickers to indicate that they are carpoolers with closer spots to encourage that. So we are looking at some of those kinds of things to encourage less use of cars, things like that.

1. Yeah parking issues on campus and trying to find parking is always tough, so it’s not only an issue of the environment, but also an issue of just the amount of space we have available. So if we can kill two birds with one stone…get people that live off campus to take the bus or ride their bikes versus driving then we can correct a couple of issues.

2: I think I’ve touched on a lot of those – you know, switching over to paper and that’s

not less expensive, it’s more expensive. I: Yeah. Well what do you see in the attitudes? Like since you’ve been here. When you

started, is it any different today? Is it worse? Is it better? 2: I don’t think it’s any worse and I definitely would say that it’s improved. You know,

we’ve improved with our introduction of different products, and the attitudes, you know, I think there are some students that we’ve had employed with us who, you know, we had [name], this is just someone who really, he was a Canadian student and it seems like the Canadian students, in my opinion, seem to take it more seriously than the – you know I hear more from the Canadian students, I guess, than the normal US students. I’m not criticizing the US, but I don’t know what they’re taught earlier or more than we are, but [name] was one that kind of, he was one that took on doing cans and rinsing them out and trying to promote the recycling a lot in our department. He’s really pro-recycling and such.

3: I think that the Interpretive Center is a very symbolic environmental place of campus,

and then the eco-system preserve. So, unlike many campuses we’ve actually gone through an idea to completion. So we, I mean I bet the Helen Bunker’s Interpretative Center was dedicated in 2002, I’m guessing. But if you even notice that building, it uses recycled carpet, and it has natural woods, fabrics, and it’s helping us remember the beauty of nature and that in order to have nature in the future you have to take care of it now. So, for a campus our size, 300 acres, to have 90 acres that’s an environmental preserve where students are actually going out and testing the water, you know testing for the balance of these ecosystems. That’s just, I think it’s just kind of like part of the air we breathe but, so prior to the building of the Helen Bunker center, we were thoughtful about it, but now we even have more concrete, literally, opportunities to express that. Even the way that that is a completely LEED building, so, with the highest award. So I think that’s done a lot, and then I just think again generally what’s brought us is you know, the global warming seminar, that statement that happened with the scientists probably within the last 3 months that said “look, emissions are affecting global warming.” It used to, you know when was it like 3 years ago, we thought probable, it was very probable and now we’re saying it’s without a doubt. So, science is pushing us to the belief system, and I think that gets back incorporated into our own environment here. That’s what I think.

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4: Sure, I’ll try to articulate some of the things that have happened in the last 6 or 7 years since I’ve been here. At least responsibility for the construction, oh we built the Bunker Interpretive Center, you know very intentionally, a very intentional environmentally sensitive project in terms of the construction, the design, all the pieces about the project. We learned a lot about that project, but before that was even happening, the engineering department, some professor in the engineer had gotten a grant to do a demonstration solar panel that turned into a senior design project for the solar panels on the roof of the building. They had done a demonstration project with solar hot water which is actually sitting on top of the science building. Most people don’t see it but we produce some hot water from that project, we have this demonstration project now for the wind turbine which will be on the east campus, just to help people understand is this a feasible way to create or utilize an alternative energy source aside from buying your electricity from consumers power. So the college in combination, it’s almost like an academic service-learning where students and faculty are engaged with the practical and the educational component to see if it works, there are several people watching this project to see does it work to generate your own electricity. Could I get one or two of these and power my house of example. And so I think we’ve done more of that sort of thing, we have you know with a few years ago the college started to subsidize ridership on the Rapid so students who felt it was more important to use mass transit instead of individual transportation could use the rapid. We have behind the scenes been doing some upgrades to our heating and cooling systems. Taking out old inefficient boilers and putting in new ones now no one can tell when they sit in this office where the heat comes from but when we built Prince and DeVos we improved the library power plant and took out 2 really old boilers and put one new one in and on an average day we can heat the campus with one big boiler cause the bigger they are the more efficient they are some we’re working all the time to try to conserve energy on the campus. To drop the heat on campus over night and turn it back up during the day. A lot of the things that happen operationally not only save us money but it is also good environmental stewardship and those 2 things do go hand in hand. As we’re getting ready, as we have remodeled and rebuilt we had added insulation and we’ve improved the efficiency of air handling and air-conditioning and so we’re always think about what can we do not invest now to spend less in the future, as we’re doing work on the new Fieldhouse, you know the current Fieldhouse was built 45 plus years ago when it was cheaper to buy gas to heat the place than to insulate so there no insulation in the roof, in the walls, and so by current standards it’s unbelievable, so just by remodeling that facility we’re going to make it more energy efficient. And a lot of the construction activity we do now is to make things more energy efficient as well as to improve the structures. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but a few years ago we did this front library piece, it used to be you open the door and the air from the outside went right inside but now there’s two door so if you’re sitting in library over by the fire place you don’t get frozen every time someone opens the door you know that’s the kind of stuff we continue to do. It’s not really big and splashy but it does contribute to one of the big things here which is the cost of energy. We’ve got a recycling program, we’re trying to tweak that, that’s been around a long time it was here before I started and we’re thinking, trying to think of ways working with the

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Environmental Stewardship Coalition to increase recycling, and you know there’s been some student senators are working on a plan right now are working on a plan to get more bike rack because if you can ride your bike and safely park it, that means you don’t have to drive your car. So all those are providing alternative methods of transportation and that has an environmental impact so there’s lot of interest in transportation in the last couple years particularly with the price of gas going up.

5: Well thing that comes most immediately to my mind is the question that’s been posed

with the coming of our president here in the last 10 years, [Name] as contrasted with the previous president is one who has wanted to develop this campus and develop means putting up building, it meant putting up an overpass, putting up the Prince conference center, DeVos, you know, CAS building now the new… Now this has put before this community this question, this piece of turf that the Lord has entrusted to us, is it for conservation or is it for development and truth to tell we’ve never really settled that and hence we have all these discussions now, most immediately with regard to the new field house, should we cut a tree down should we not cut a tree down? Should we you know, some would say over our dead bodies you will cut a tree down and other would say what is this campus for, it’s for building and for...so that’s the most immediate thing when I think about the last ten years and the verdict is out on that one. On one hand you have the bunker interpretive center being built but with a visible sacrimentality to it that we think you ought to pay some attention to the preservation of resources and others well ok this is the most immediate thing. The thing, there’s some lesser things like we started recycling and things on campus and encouraging of people using public transportation but that’s minuscule compared to the much larger issue of what are these acres for that clearly in the last 10 years has been raised. Ok.

6: Well, when I came, the concept of Green Building and sustainability. There was not

really a need to come up with those terms. There was always a question that we were using too much oil and gas, and that we should be protecting the environment. But it wasn’t as focused as it is now. And like I say, I am particularly involved with buildings and so that’s what I’m speaking for when I say sustainability. Actually we spend a lot of time on how we can place more of an emphasis on the Transit. Actually it’s been quite successful. We find now that parking spaces are only needed for the crunch period; the beginning of September and at the end of the school year. Also, the ability for freshman to drive, and that would reduce space. And I think one of our goals actually is to…right now we have about 60 percent of our students are on campus and about 40 percent of them are off. And on our Master Plan, well the Student Life Master Plan, calls for increasing the percentage of about 80 percent of students living on campus. Now that includes the Glen Oaks area. But the point is getting juniors and seniors closer to campus so that they can have a better, positive affect on freshman and sophomores; to model to the younger students. So our goal is to get 80 percent on campus and 20 percent off campus. And that would be better environmentally. If we have more people on campus, so they wouldn’t have to drive.

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7: Over the last four years I think it has gotten better, like I mean, given that I was a freshmen I was probably pretty ignorant you know when you’re in the dorms and you watch movies, hang out and do that and that’s it. But since I have gotten here, Calvin has made progress towards subsidizing the buses which is good. There have been new courses introduced on environmental sustainability and food and health and how it all fits together they started doing like local food stuff I guess it’s a step in the wrong direction—building the field house that we have got going on but they put in the Bunker Center this year so that’s good.

7: So there are some really good things, not all improve but we are going in the right direction

8: Haha, that’s a really short term. I have been here 30 years. I will say I think there

have been some definite increase in intentionality and interest in doing more energy conservation. A lot of steps to attempt to change have already happened—having lights that go on and off in response to motion so I think there is, now of course, there can be money savings that way too. It’s a combination but I am an advocate to increase gasoline prices to $5 a gallon because all of a sudden we start making different kinds of choices and we start doing manufacturing differently, etc. So part of our difficulty in regard to some of these issues is we have very cheap energy and in that sense I think energy is undervalued and under priced and it should just be determined by what might be the price of basic oil. There are other factors that should come in that since I would argue there should be an appropriate taxation so that we can make the right choices to reduce other taxes so I am not trying to say we integrate more money but the cost of the energy should be such that it affects more directly the choices we make, and suddenly when energy and those are appropriate, we could probably do a lot more. But at some point if it doesn’t give us direct savings we do have to deal with our budget, but if the prices would go up with the energy there would be a bit more choices unfortunately. The first building of the Campus WERE built pretty similar to the dorms. The architect himself did not deal with energy savings; some of them are not very efficient when it comes to energy savings insulations etc, etc. The fact that you have been in the dorms; there is not a good control over the variation. Some rooms are warm, some are cold, and some students keep the windows open when it’s very cold because it’s too hot. I think it’s unfortunate, that’s not a very good sign that we are not very stewardly.

8: It still continues to be a problem but I would suspect it would be interesting, even those in the dorms in the wintertime, do they dress to stay warm or just crank up their thermostat a number and then are walking around in their t-shirts instead of sweaters. That makes a difference of 5 degrees or more, so do students adjust accordingly?

I: For instance in my house off campus we keep the heat low because it costs more and then I go into the dorms and I am sweating

I: So there is an example there so what other ways has it changed in the last ten years 8: There are some things like the bunker center and in the new buildings architectural

wise there is going to be more attempt to act more stewardly to the environment. There is a cost factor but I think we could do more and I think it would help to have more pressures to do more, whether that would be using toilets or urinals that use less water, well maybe. Just because we live in the great lakes doesn’t mean water

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conservation isn’t important. It may not be a thing we might consider, but it would be every good model even if we might be in an area where water conservation isn’t as critical if we were situated in Arizona, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t encourage the community and use it as a model that water conservation is important and so that when students go elsewhere there are alternate ways we can conserve water and that’s obviously very critical in other parts of the country. But that doesn’t mean just because we live by lake Michigan we can use as much water as we want to because we have so much of it, still is an issue environmentally so there are other areas were we can make significant improvements even though building wise we have a made significant improvements. I don’t want to undermine that I want to give credit for what we have done

8: Part of our education is that you model it, so it’s important we do that so we have done something we have a co-generator that produces heat as well as [unclear] that increases efficiency there, so that when there is a black out it saves energy and we still have a minimum amount of electricity so that certainly is an attempt, on the one end it produces heat energy but it is used to produce electricity at the same time so it’s more efficient

9: I think there have been new publications that came out like the For Every Nation and

the Plantinga book. So more specifically laid out what we believe and it becomes sort of like a place where we start and students can talk a lot more about ok—What do I believe and my attitudes about things instead of, you know…I think when I came to Calvin, there not really… you know it wasn’t so clearly explain. But now that we have the Plantinga book, it is more clearly laid out.

10: Yea, well let’s see. I definitely think that there are some trends that I see among

students. Students are so technologically savvy these days, and everything is so fast, so in some ways to be effective, especially in the non major classes, I’ve got to be somewhat of an entertainer; I’ve got to keep them engaged because I lose them sooner, so that’s definitely a change that I’ve seen over ten years; the attention span is decreasing among students. I also think, along with that, that the students really want to see that something has some relevance to their daily lives, more so than in the past. I think in the past, you tell them it’s important to know this, and they say, “Ok sure, I’ll learn this stuff, just for the test.” Students seem to care more these days about information that will affect their daily life. And I think that’s really a good thing. But boy oh boy, if you’ve got some dry information, and they can’t find any relevance for it, you lose them so fast. So they’re not as gullible…or not as easily manipulated as they used to be.

10: I do think there’s a raising of environmental consciousness on campus, but it’s a small progression, these things never happen as fast as we would like them to, but I think that the Sustainability policy that was developed over a couple of years that has circulated; I think it’s still around. One for instance is that during the fall semester, we have a fall faculty conference where the entire faculty get together and have a meeting, and we split up into little sections. For three years in a row I did a section with [Name] and a couple other people on Sustainability, Campus Sustainability. And the first time I think we had a dozen people, that was three years ago, then the

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following year, we had about twenty to thirty people, and then this year, we had more than seventy people, the same topic three years in a row. I was really encouraged to see where some of the strong concern comes from, like the French department and Engineering department, and some of these places like the English department, where typically you don’t hear that kind of thing talked about.

10: Well, there was a lot of concern about energy usage, global climate change, and how Calvin has contributed to that. Are there things that we can do to offset our contributions to the global climate? So I think that global climate changes have focused a lot of people. And then there have been more specific things about LEED-certified buildings and buildings that are environmentally friendly. That kind of thing. So those are some of the concerns.

12: Beliefs, I don’t know if there is so much change in beliefs. I think the underlying

beliefs about the nature of reality and the place of humans within creation; I think that’s always been part of our awareness here at Calvin, as long as I’ve been here. I think we’ve become a little more articulate about it, and a little more explicit about it as time goes on. Behaviors? Behaviors are in many ways a much harder thing to change. Our behavior is so much imbedded and structured by the culture we live in, so to live an environmentally sensitive life in this culture is very hard. We are almost obligated to use private transportation, and most of us opt to use cars for that, because walking is either not very possible because there aren’t sidewalks, or it’s too far, we’re too far away from the destination. Bicycling is possible, and I do a lot of bicycling and have been bicycling for twenty years as a significant part of my transportation, but even there, our cities are not really structured for bicycles. You get to a place and you have to hunt for a bicycle rack, and it stands out in the open, there are no bike lanes in our city streets. So it’s hard to live an environmentally sensitive life simply because of the kind of culture we’ve developed here.

N: From the side of more behaviors of more specific groups of people, have you seen

a change in the student body or in the faculty and staff as they come in and their ideas?

1: It hasn’t gotten worse, but unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten much better. Ok. I don’t see

a lot of increase in the amount of recycling that gets done by the student body. A part of that is the fact that maybe we don’t have enough containers around campus for them to recycle. But if you go into the dorms and you look through the trash….there is a lot of stuff in the trash that could have been recycled. And every floor in the dorm has recycle bins. So I don’t think the sensitivity is very great there.

I ride on campus a lot coming here at night for a number or reasons, and I’ll notice the basements of the dorms are all lit up and there’s nobody there. And other parts of buildings have all their lights on. People use classrooms and don’t turn the lights off. And we are again in the process of putting in these light controls where the lights go on automatically when you walk into a room, and turn off automatically when you leave the room…when they are no longer being occupied. But that is a very expensive and a labor intense process and we do that as we remodel spaces around campus. And gradually doing that throughout campus…putting in more energy

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efficient lights and more energy efficient…and control switches that turn lights on…and we could save tons of electricity if we just got people to turn off the lights more often. Same with recycling, but my sense is looking…looking at the records, that that hasn’t changed at all…over the last five years. And like I said there is a group of students that this is a real cause for and my sense is that the majority of students have a whole lot of other things on their mind than worrying about turning off some lights. And again, except for that group that is really hot about it.

I: Now, you said something about the light controls and energy efficient lights and things like that. And it is really expensive…the costs could go on. Do you think it is wise to spend the extra time, the extra money to put things like that in…even though it is more expensive…in the long run, you would think it would save some money and save some energy. And you think things like that where it costs more to preserve the environment…do you think it’s worth it?

1. In this particular case, I think we can show a pay back over a period of time. So, your question is a good one and that is if it shows a payback should we do it? Or if it doesn’t show a payback should we do it any way simply because it is good for the environment? And I guess that’s one of those situations of balance. Most everything we do we are looking at what kind of payback there is. We’re adding controls, not only electrical controls, but controls in classrooms that control the heating and air conditioning. So from a central computer here we can turn on and off the heat and electricity. We can dial it back, so we marry that with the class schedules and then when we know there is not a class in there, we are dialing those classrooms down. It’s a programmable thermostat for the buildings. So from the computer here we can make those changes and diagnose problems. But you know, we have spent millions of dollars on heating and air-conditioning and electricity and so there are big numbers that we could save.

I: Oh, yeah, definitely. Now we’ve talked about the students here on campus. And you said things haven’t gotten better, but they haven’t gotten worse; were kind of stuck in the middle. What would you say your impression is of the faculty and staff?

1. I think if it were so, and this is just anecdotal, I don’t really have statistics on it. So everything I’m saying is just my observation and not based on statistics. But I would guess that there is probably a greater desire overall by the faculty and staff to recycle than the students. Now, that is kind of a generalized statement. But again, when I look at the trash, and we pick up trash here at the physical plants…were in charge of the garbage. When we look at the trash, the stuff coming out of the faculty and staff buildings is more recycled than what we get out of the dorms.

I: Now, why do you think that is? What is the factor of this? 1. Yea, I think it is a priority. Some people are just willing to take that extra step to

recycle and others are not. And the students often find that studies and social life are more important and it just consumes their time.

4: Like I said there are individuals who have come with an environmental concern, I

don’t think that is sort of the general proportional of the population has changed a lot, I think there is always a group of students that sees environmental issues as their real point of focus and passion and I don’t think that percentage has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Sometimes issues surface, sometimes instances surface that bring them

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to the forefront. It will be interesting for you to talk with the students who lead the Environmental Stewardship Coalition and see how they feel. Has their membership gone up and down and why they think that has been. I think that is one barometer I think that you might try another person, talk to someone like [Name] or [Name], [Name] and [Name] have been actively involved in the CEAP program for the service-learning side for a long time and they would probably give you a better barometer of how the faculty has generally been aware of the environmental issues they are closer in contact with that constitutions

7: I don’t know, I think when I was an underclassman I was a little bit more absorbed in

hanging out because freshmen year a lot of it is fitting in socially with your floor community before it is like getting involved in anything else, so I don’t know if it’s just something that happens from the beginning of college to the end of college—you get more educated. For me it was a lot of environmental content in classes, so I really couldn’t say what it was like what students are like four years ago versus now, I guess the ESC was around for I don’t know how long now but there was an ESC around a few years before I started

7: I mean a lot of the faculty and staff were into that stuff before I got here. There was an addition to the biology department, who was interesting, he came from Biotech industry, and he was into sustainability but I think it came out of him a lot more after being at Calvin for a little while and hanging out with other professors.

8: In general I am not so much in ten years if you ask specifically in regards to something

like climate change because it’s on the news they may have seen the Gore documentary on that. They say oh yeah that’s a concern but I don’t know how much, if they are impacted more or if they live differently than they did ten years ago. I think students concerns are just as they are now

I: It will be interesting to find out 8: Yeah right it would be, but I think by and large it relates to our interest in our society.

I am not sure how much change there have been in the fundamentals. I think there are more people concerned and willing to do something about the environmental impact but it certainly isn’t not at the level that it should be

I: What about in faculty and staff, changes? 8: I would say that there is an increase in awareness so there is much more interest than

ten years ago in the farmers market, so there is that and there are other alternatives. That’s probably a trend nationwide, so whether or not we are different than that, there is a trend nationwide of a small part of what has to be done because in the broader scene we have got our food stores and our other store like Wal-Mart and we have our Home Depot and they get their goods from all other the world, so if you look at what supplies many of our daily needs and or wants and goods, if they come from all over the world, what effect will that have environmentally. And we are not off the rim because we really don’t know where it’s coming from so we are getting wood products that might be coming from some pretty significant forests elsewhere in the world. Well as long as we get it cheep that’s our main concern so to think that Wal-Mart is not the largest food supplier in the world, it also means they have the biggest buying power of any food organization so they can get any of their goods from

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anywhere in the world at very cheap prices and how does that affect the developments here essentially they are supplying goods and materials to people who can pay for it those who are trying, so there is some impact there and I don’t know how much we as a community changed, there is a growing interest in changing that but even there the farmers market to what extent say they are part of preservation in Kent county or around cities probably not much and if you look at the program for preserving Kent county there is a program to help preserve that I am not sure we are willing to pay the added taxes to do that because that’s going to cost and as soon as that will cost that effects everyone too

I: It affects a lot 8: Now at the same time I know there are a number of faculty who have signed on to the

green electricity—who will pay extra so that the electricity comes not from corporate plants but from other renewable recourses and that’s a certain percentage who have signed on to that, so that’s one way to say ok, let’s try to get more renewable recourses and you can actually do that. It will give them more money and impetus to develop alternate ones instead of energy coming from plants etc., which is going to be more CO2 producing. There are more alternate ways, so I think there is a growing need.

I: Again that is awareness that something like that is out there to take advantage of 8: And willingness to pay another 8 or 10 dollars a month so electricity to do that 10: Well, you know I’d like to say, well there are a group of faculty that you always see

riding the bus or taking a bike to work. Some people can’t because they live too far away, that’s understandable. I know some people carpool, but is that kind of thing increasing? That’s a good question, and my sense is that it’s certainly not decreasing; we’re not moving in the other direction. And I guess I do think that it’s slowly increasing. And like I just said, I think that there is a lot more concern in non-science areas. I just sent an email this morning to someone asking me about planting native plants; he wants to plant native wildflower plants at his house to support butterflies and things like that. And he’s a German professor. So that kind of thing I see happening frequently. So, yeah I think there is. I know that in this building if not across campus, to more green environmentally friendly planters, soap dispensers, and things like that. A lot of people don’t know we have that. So yeah, the grounds people are getting more sensitized the maintenance people. Also, having the Bunker Interpretive Center, the environmentally friendly building on campus, really focused people, that wasn’t here ten years ago. So the more I think about this, and I’m really convincing myself that “yea, definitely there is an increase.” And maybe my hesitation is because it’s never as quickly as you would like. You would like to snap your fingers and everybody would do it sustainably, including myself, but these things are hard, and they take time

11: I think the student body, it’s become more of an issue for the general student body. I

think, probably for the Calvin community beyond that, that it’s become more of an important issue for just managing our facility. So in terms of the faculty and the staff and the administration and the students all working together, it’s more of a common viewpoint.

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11: I think more [faculty members] interested outside the science division. So people who aren’t… it’s not even their area of study, but because they live in Grand Rapids and all of this, it’s become more of a way of life. So we have faculty in the humanities that are very interested in environmental issues.

12: What is true, I think there is maybe a minority group within the student body, those

kinds of students who are involved in the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, for example, who provide leadership in these areas. I am very grateful for the work that they do. I think they are very dedicated to trying to raise environmental awareness on campus, and I see many of them doing alternative transportation. They are riding bicycles, they are taking the bus, they are not driving cars to campus, and when I look around on campus here, almost every day that it’s possible, I see bicycle racks full of bicycles, and I like that. I think those are good signs. They are little ways to witness to other people that there are different ways to get around in this world, more environmentally sensitive ways. I think we have become aware that recycling is a very good thing. We still have to get better at it, but we eventually need to get to the stage where we get rid of the idea of waste in our society, that we don’t think of stuff as waste or trash anymore, we think of it as feedstock for the next step, either biological recycling, or technical recycling, as an instrument for something. It would be great if we could get rid of our waste dumps.

O: Have there been any policy changes aimed towards bettering the environment

over the past ten years? 1. Yeah, actually I am part of a committee that is developing a, what you call, a

sustainability policy. And what we are doing is trying to find ways on campus and define policies that would promote a sound environment; different procedures.

I: Ok. Now could you give me an example of some of these policies? What would something like that be?

1. A policy like that would be relative to remodeling. For example, we will only use recycled materials in the development of… [Pause: reads the following information] Calvin College’s electrical and natural gas costs exceed 3 million annually. We recognize the importance of exploring and implementing thoroughly thought out and fiscally responsible measures to conserving energy in existing buildings, renovations, and construction. We will investigate new technologies for energy systems and use of energy as we have in the past. We continue to conserve the use in the future. So all we are saying is that it’s an important thing for us to do, to conserve energy, and our policy is to look at new technologies that are fiscally responsible and well thought out. And that’s just one of many. We are pooling together certain policies and recommendations for teaching research, for purchasing services, for waste reduction, recycling, for energy purposes. From the uses of water to how we deal with hazardous materials and waste, what we do relative to transportation, and the grounds of the school. How do we deal with investments? And let me give you an example…do we invest Calvin’s money into companies that abuse the environment or do we not? We must have diligence in where we invest out money. Is that part of our criteria of where is our money going? And then we also want to look at how we

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as a college use our influence in the greater community by what we say and how we act. Colleges are good closed environments where we can practice and try to do things here that then can be re-used outside of our community.

2: Yeah, one that kind of registers with me a little bit goes back to the worship

symposium. When that group is on campus, they really are pro-recycling and pro-environment. And that group has changed, we used to do different packaging for them and they really don’t want that, they want it streamlined and simple. They prefer us not to, you know, I can remember getting a complaint because we had put in a box the lettuce and tomato in a bag. But it was in a box and they were upset because we had used a bag. We do that just because the moisture, we don’t want it to get all over everything. So, that’s something that registers. So we don’t do that anymore. We just put it in a box.

I: So basically the main thing is that people are becoming more serious about caring for the environment would you say?

2: I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s been really, really consistent. I wouldn’t really say that there is more today than there was. You know, I heard about it seven years ago and I hear about it today. I don’t really know, other than you two coming to me talking about it, I don’t know maybe it is more. I don’t know. I would have a hard time measuring that to be real honest with you, because it’s been very consistent. We talk and we try a lot of different things. One thing that comes to my mind too is down in the, we’ve tried to introduce, it’s called Greenware. I don’t know, you guys might not even be aware of this but it’s a product that made 100 percent from corn, and we’re serving our cold beverages in the fish house from this product, and it’s kind of weird, you look at the cup and it’s a plastic cup. You think it’s plastic but it’s actually corn. So it’s a process that they’re starting. They’ve introduced it…

I: That’s really cool. So if you go to Johnny’s and get a cup of coffee, in the fish house 2: No, not coffee. Cold beverages. If you put a hot beverage in it, it melts. I: When did this whole Greenware – is this a recent thing last year? 2: Nope, this year. And they had advertised it. It is on the web. So that’s something kind

of new. 3: Well, I can think of three. One is the, the most recent the Rapid bus idea where you can

get the, you know, you can do the rides and then the discussion that’s not a policy yet, about more subsidy for riders. Then the second one I would say is when the discussion of the woodlot came up. I think that the college was willing to release then what they thought was 2 million dollars more to save the woodlot by readjusting the building and so on. And that was, that’s a huge commitment when you think about how costly buildings are. I know that it hasn’t been adopted, but there has been reviewed by a number of people a sustainability proposal. Another person I just want to say too, I think that [name], in environmental health and safety, I should mention here even as a, as one of the leaders. I think that [name], consistent, consistent, consistent work, has just helped us all think, you know like the Purell now, you know is out, that’s a health, kind of health environmentalism. But she, OSHA, you know, she’s very attune to making sure the campus is [inaudible word] compliant. I think that’s an environmental commitment. We hire her, we pay her salary, we, every

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support staff, we, you know, people meet. So you know, every time you have a meeting, if you took your salary and divided it up by how many hours you have per week, and so how much per hour does an hour cost, and you say, you know 6 or 8 people meet with her, or meet on this committee and meet on that committee, you’re probably, you know it’s probably thousands of dollars an hour of commitment to those issues.

6: Well, I think probably the biggest one would be this driving policy; that we would

have a stricter diving policy, although it’s not that strict. We have a more strict smoking policy, and I think that’s another environmental issue; the air quality, and also, relating to people’s health needs. So I think those policies; parking, mass transit, and smoking are certainly policies that have changed in the last 10 years. We’ve actually purchased more land in order to make up for areas that we have developed. So now, for example, this swamp right here is owned by Calvin. So you can imagine how much green area is there to make up for certain green areas we take out there. So we are making up for reducing green area.

7: There have been a lot of policies that have started to change I mean the food thing in

the dinning hall that has some level of change, well actually with the PE building originally they were just going to go in and build it, but because of a lot of pressure from faculty and students they are doing mitigation areas where they dig up a lot of plants and move them. They are actually going to buy a bunch of trees to introduce grow new natural areas to make up for much of what they have destroyed, well you’re replacing trees with roots as big around as this table with little guys, but still I mean, the fact that that’s something that they are considering doing is even better than it was a couple years ago because I don’t think that was even on the radar.

I: So are they planting them around the Field House 7: There are a couple spots, there’s like kind of by the tennis courts where they can

expand the woodlot out a little bit and there is a couple other areas where they can kind of add on to it like an appendix, but then there is over by the Burton entrance or no, it’s actually by [President] Byker’s house where that’s going to get more trees in his yard. It’s pretty amazing that he was into that, I wouldn’t think he would be that interested, so that’s really good and I think by the Lake Drive entrance there is a spot by the Raven House where they are going to cut back into the lawn and put more trees around.

I: It might look better too 7: I am not a big fan of the sloping smooth green 8: Well one thing is the policy for faculty and staff because students aren’t here between

Christmas and New Years we have to close the campus at that time of year. We can’t, in closing the campus, we can reduce out energy cost because we can reduce up to a certain point, but doing that there is one rationale, so there’s a policy change that is going to help energy, apart from recycling and I am going to say I do give the physical plant credit for trying to pay attention to recycling. I think we need to continue that but they have been more than willing to do that work to try and continue that, 15 years ago and it continues, but in terms of other policies we don’t have a

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policy to have our temperature controlled in the wintertime and in the summer time that can keep air conditioning. I know there are some engineering questions that are frustrating that we, but part of that is engineering with a whole new design of air conditioning.

9: Well, I know when I was on the stewardship, we were working on a Sustainability

Document that is now being used as the basis of what we as a college make environmentally sound choices. So there certainly has been just within the last year or two. I think this is just the beginning. I know as a committee we were working very hard to publicize more what environmental decisions we are making. So what are we doing with the gardens around here? Like making the choice to do natural planting instead of exotic plants and trying to cut down on the amount of fertilizers we used. Things like that, I think those, the kind of behind the screen things that I think we can talk to people about why we’re making these choices and my role here at the [department], is to tell the public about some of the things that we are doing as a college and hopefully that will help people to make decisions in their own lives to take care of the environment.

10: There has been the Sustainability Statement which isn’t a policy, it doesn’t require

anything of anybody, and some people have criticized it for not having teeth. I worked on that statement with several other people for about, and we talked about that a lot. Do we want to mandate this? And we thought that, at this stage, a better route to go was to let it linger as a vision for what we would like to see Calvin go. We encourage people to jump on board with that vision. So getting back to your question, have there been any policies? I guess I’m just not aware of, right now there’s a bit of controversy that the last building built, the Bunker Interpretive Center which was recognized for being environmentally friendly, and the next building, the Wellness Center, is not going to be LEED certified, and we were hoping the Interpretive Center would set a new standard, and it wouldn’t be an exception. But now it’s looking to be an exception, in the wake of this next building. And there have already been environmental concerns which went into the design of the Wellness Center, and there’s a plan to try and mitigate for the loss of trees that are cut down for that, so there are some positive elements there. Maybe it’s my idealism, but why can’t we just say that from now on, every building we are going to build is going to be LEED certified because that fits so well with our mission. I know it costs more money, at least initially, but anyway, I don’t remember what the question was now, but that sort of the frustration; I was hoping that this was a new path we were taking, but it looks like maybe we aren’t on that path yet.

11: I think the big change is probably the restructuring of the Environmental Stewardship

committee so that there is more institutional commitment to it, or more monitoring and desire to monitor how we’re doing. I think with […] the architect, somebody like him who’s speaking up and trying to do LEED certified buildings and change the standards of how we do things.

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P: Have there been any programs aimed towards bettering the environment introduced in the past ten years?

1. Now, here is a policy that we’ve just implemented here a year ago. All of our cleaning

products that are used by our custodians on campus are all “green products.” They are all environmentally sensitive products. They are not hazardous to the environment, and this was implemented over a year ago, close to 2 years.

We have two committees here on campus, I don’t know if you know that, but the there are two committees. One committee is made up faculty and staff called the Environmental Stewardship Committee. That is made up of faculty and staff, and I am a member of that as is our recycling personnel. And then there is an environmental committee made up of students called the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, and they I think are under the responsibility of the Student Senate, if I’m not mistaken. And they are a group of students that are very involved and also in promoting environmental issues on campus. So I think that Calvin is very in tune with environmental issues and is working steadily towards trying to become even more responsible. And you probably know of the Bunker Interpretive Center. There is a, what is called the Green Building Council and they came up with a program called LEEDS. Now, LEEDS means: Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design. And they have a whole list of criteria for what you need to do and then they’ll certify a building based on how many environmental sensitive or environmentally correct things that have been done in the building. And those are ranked by certified, silver, gold or platinum levels. So based on how many points you get based on the kinds of things you’ve done to make it a ranked building you’ll get a certified level. And the Bunker Interpretive Center is a gold certified building because we’ve done such things as solar panels on the roof to provide electricity for buildings. We’ve got composting toilets and waterless urinals, we’ve got light controls. A very interesting thing about that building which you probably didn’t know is that when the building gets to be a certain temperature outside the air conditioning will go off and the windows will open automatically. There is no parking close up, so people have to walk up to the building to encourage less driving. And the water used to clean your hands with is recycled.

And that is a gold rated building. What were trying to do is that every new building that goes up here on campus that we try to follow the “guidelines” set by the Green Building Council.

7: Well there’s programs like the CEAP, the Calvin Environmental Assessment program,

which is a lot of students in classes and different situations do some kind of projects like a big poster session. Community members can come and see all this different stuff that’s happening, part of this Embrace Our Place thing is it’s the 10th anniversary of CEAP this year so they are going to have a big celebration and all that so, I really want them to be able to introduce that the bus is going to be free next year.

7: Well, hopefully. They are optimistic, but they were optimistic last year too. I: I think that would help out a lot especially with the students 7: Wow that would be really good there’s other stuff to like there is a chemistry professor

who has been hired to do like this master assessment of Calvin’s energy use

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7: The CEAP week overlaps with earth week so we have the same interests so we are going to lump it all together they are going to do bike rides like those critical mass rides around grand rapids so ESC is going to do its annual bike tune up right before that so everyone is tired and they will get pumped up

10: I don’t know when it was, it was before ten years ago, but we had an environmental

studies major, and I think a lot of good things have been happening in International Development or Third World Development, I’m not sure what it’s called, but you know what I’m talking about, right? There was also a new course offered in the Biology Department called Global Health and Sustainability; it was offered last fall for the first time. So I do see some things shifting toward more environmental concerns in our curriculum; there is this Sustainability Study being done by [Name] of the Chemistry Department, so he’s basically going to come up with a big report card for the campus of what we’re doing well. So yea, there are some institutional things that are happening, and I think it’s moving rather slowly but it does seem to be moving.

11: The Environmental Stewardship Committee is trying to develop guidelines on all

kinds of different things, and you know, we’ve moved towards more recycling bins, so that’s become more intentional. We’ve moved towards buying more local foods, so that’s become more intentional. And I know that lighting… they try to change the lighting whenever they can.

12: I think in the building area, we’ve gotten more environmentally aware. LEED,

Leadership in Environmental Energy Design, that whole movement has made an impact on our planning of buildings. I think you know that the Bunker Center, for example, is a gold-certified LEED building, one of the few in this state and that’s a nice symbol of what can be done with a sufficient commitment to do it. Unfortunately, that kind of construction still is quite a bit more expensive than conventional construction, so I think you do have to have this will to say “We are going to apply the financial resources to make this part of the construction possible.” And I know many of the people who are involved in planning for buildings on this campus are very sympathetic. I think our building and grounds-people are by and large also becoming very environmentally aware. We use quite a lot of chemicals on our grass, but I think they are becoming conscious that chemical use on lawns and so forth is not necessarily a good thing, and you have to try to minimize this behavior. I think that awareness… I’ve spoken to our head of physical plant here about these matters, and I think that he is quite aware of a lot of these issues and sensitive to them.

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