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The word “Jesuit” doesn’t usually conjure images of recycling cans and sustainability slogans. But at Saint Joseph’s, the only Jesuit University in Philadelphia, both students and faculty alike are trying to change that.
St. Joseph’s University president, Timothy R. Lannon, S.J., recently announced plans to develop a sustainability committee at St. Joe’s. The steering committee, which is composed of 19 members and chaired by Michael McCann, Ph.D., is at the beginning stages of evaluating challenges that Saint Joseph’s faces and building sustainability initiatives for the future. In total, there are over 50 faculty members participating in nine working groups to assess existing areas of concern and evaluate potential approaches to solving them.
Though efforts to make Saint Joseph’s a more environmentally-friendly institution have existed for many years through recycling programs and other initiatives, McCann noted that the efforts generally lacked organization and direction.
“It’s really been a very grassroots kind of thing, which is great because you get strong buy-in from the community members that are involved,” said McCann, who is also the associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “The downside is you don’t have coordination; the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
The initiative to create a sustainability committee is new at St. Joe’s, but many neighboring universities—like Villanova and the University of Pennsylvania—have been addressing environmental concerns with their own committees for years. When asked what was responsible for St. Joe’s delayed actions, McCann simply said, “We’ve taken a different path.”
Since Lannon announced plans for a new ad campaign in 2005, the university has spent roughly $90 million developing an ad campaign, titled Plan 2010, striving to represent St. Joe’s as the preeminent Jesuit institution in the Northeast, and adding the Maguire Campus (formerly Episcopal Academy).
So why the sudden focus on sustainability?
“To be honest, the interest now exists, I think, among the members of the university community—not just the students, but also the faculty and staff,” said Clint Springer, Ph.D., a botanist and professor at St. Joe’s.
According to Springer, universities across the nation play an important and distinct role in a larger sustainability movement. “Universities have extremely large challenges because we have almost every different sector of life,” said Springer. “We have business, education, research, housing, and lots of different areas where we have to work. It’s a big challenge and it’s going to require a lot of people to work towards that here.”
For Saint Joseph’s University in particular, one of the biggest challenges has been getting the student body involved and excited about sustainability initiatives. Adam Schmidt, a senior business major at St. Joe’s, recently helped to co-found a student club on campus that is focused on educating students on living more sustainable lifestyles. As president of the SJU Sustainability Club, Schmidt has attempted to reach out to the student body through projects like ad campaigns, energy saving pledges in the cafeteria, a Facebook group, and a documentary that’s in the works for next year.
The club’s efforts stem largely from the university’s sustainability committee, which Schmidt is also a part of. One of the main goals of the student club, according to Schmidt, is to bring as many voices to the discussion as possible to address sustainability issues. “We’re trying to get people from all different types of disciplines to a table to tackle all these different problems,” he said.
Although the club has been well-received—it boasted 284 members at press-time—Schmidt believes there are still significant challenges when it comes to promoting sustainable behavior at Saint Joseph’s. Schmidt admits that “students overall don’t think that much about sustainability.” Still, Schmidt is confident that the efforts put forth by both the student organization and the university’s sustainability committee will help change attitudes at St. Joe’s. “If students are constantly flooded with all these ideas of sustainability, eventually it starts to sink in and their mindsets start to change,” he said.
Despite efforts like the SJU Sustainability Club and events like Recyclemania, an annual recycling competition St. Joe’s participates in, sustainability efforts at the university remain lackluster. Currently, only about 20 percent of recyclable products are being recycled on campus; the rest ends up in the trash. In addition, budget troubles provide significant challenges to develop sustainability projects and initiatives.
The University Student Senate, St. Joe’s student body government, and another environmental student group on campus, G.R.E.E.N.C.O.W,, are working together to create solutions for students and faculty interested in promoting sustainability in a difficult economic environment. For example, G.R.E.E.N.C.O.W., which has existed at St. Joe’s for over ten years, proposed the introduction of a “green fee.” The club’s president, Kyle Konopka, introduced the idea of charging an additional five dollars per student per semester in order to fund sustainability projects at St. Joe’s and in the local neighborhood.
McCann was supportive of Konopka’s idea, calling it “a very democratic and transparent process” that would allow students to decide what sustainability efforts could happen at St. Joe’s.Though the green fee hasn’t been approved by the Budget Advisory Committee, Konopka is confident that the student body will be supportive of the fee if it’s put in place next year. “For the most part, every student we talked to was willing to do this,” said the junior finance major.
While the green fee may provide the possibility of much-needed funding, significant challenges remain for St. Joe’s and the university community. In the classroom, Springer’s interaction with students has led to many discussions about possible solutions to the problems that face St. Joe’s and the world. The one conclusion both professor and pupils have come to is that there are no simple answers.
“We’ve tossed around a lot of ideas,” Springer said. “But what we keep coming back to is that this is a very complex scientific, social, and political problem. What we’ve quickly realized is that it’s not going to take one group or another; it’s going to take a lot of effort in different disciplines. Luckily at a university, we have all of those under one roof.”
One step that Springer alluded to may be the incorporation of sustainability-related education into the university’s curriculum, though McCann states that such a change may be slow-going. But McCann remains optimistic that the sustainability committee’s long-term goals can be met through “small steps.”
While those steps are as of yet undefined, the shifting perceptions of the administration and student body mean the university is closer to accomplishing their goals of sustainability than ever before.
For more information on Saint Joseph's University visit - http://www.sju.edu
