Every year at Conn, there are a few words that seem to infiltrate campus conversations and discussions. So far this semester, the big three have been vaginas, Oreos and sustainability. The first two have seen their fair share of Voice coverage in the past few weeks, but the latter topic has only been briefly touched upon in articles covering the failed Mug Share Program — which was not officially supported by the Sustainability Office — and the Sustainable Food Market. Since we have been writing around — and not about — the topic of sustainability, The College Voice recently sat down with Josh Stoffel, Manager of Sustainability at the College, to learn the ins and outs of the Office of Sustainability, as well as its goals and initiatives.
Prior to being hired by Conn in October 2011, Stoffel, who has a master’s degree in integrating sustainability into higher education, worked as a private consultant in Boston and as a sustainability coordinator at UMass Amherst. Soon after he began working at Conn, he was promoted to work for the Dean of the Faculty, Roger Brooks.
“Before I arrived here,” Stoffel said, “sustainability [at Connecticut College] was not as I would define it. It was very environmental, and I am very much trying to kill that as a term. That’s a very closed-minded way of looking at sustainability.”
Many people view sustainability as a way of creating positive environmental changes, but that is only part of this bigger initiative. A holistic view of sustainability, according to Stoffel, “is a balance of need and value of social equity, economic well-being and environmental stewardship at local and global scales. It’s about problem solving.”
Stoffel acknowledges that some of the systemic challenges we face may be purely environmental, but there are certainly social and economic factors to be considered. When we think about solutions to these types of problems, we connect the environmental with the social and economic: “Sustainability allows us to look at [a problem] and ask how it impacts the environment, people, people’s health, economics.”
The Sprout Garden is a great example of a sustainable project that may seem completely environmental in nature, but that has significant social and economic effects. “By selling local organic produce to the dining halls at cheaper prices, we are providing better quality food to students,” said Stoffel. “It’s not just an environmental thing. We are providing students with healthy options and not breaking the bank.”
In a broad sense, sustainability allows us to develop long-term solutions to problems — solutions that will last and that will balance those three components (environment, society, economy). “There is going to be a bit of give and take,” said Stoffel. “But if we balance that compromise, the solution might actually survive into the future. That is, in essence, what sustainability is to me and to the Office [of Sustainability].”
Stoffel wrote a sustainability plan with 14 priorities, and acknowledged that while it might seem environmentally focused right now — “it’s taking the College some time to shift to this holistic view” — the school is getting there. The Office of Sustainability was created at the beginning of this semester, and the office has almost achieved all of its short-term goals. Thanks to a donation from an alumna, the Office is working to create a position for a faculty member who will co-direct with Stoffel to see how sustainability is and can be integrated into the curriculum; the Office has its candidate pool narrowed down, but has yet to announce who will assume this new position.
At the same time, Stoffel is waiting for the administrative shift when President-elect Katherine Bergeron takes office in January to see if she decides to work with the Office on long-term sustainability plans.
“My work has been focused on building student, staff and faculty engagement around issues of sustainability,” Stoffel said. “The role that I hope my office can play is to both help the College consider this idea of sustainability as a decision-making lens, but also to be an organization that can help pull together offices, student organizations, departments and external community organizations in ways that they wouldn’t normally feel pulled together.”
Currently, the Office has 23 student fellows, and two are collaborating with community partners United Way, F.R.E.S.H. New London and Ledge Light Health District to research where K-12 school gardens exist in the county, as well as how they are run and funded, and who uses them. Where there aren’t school gardens, these fellows will work with willing districts to help start them. Having a school garden, “gets students growing their own food, and they’re excited by that … [it’s] empowering to them … if you can grow your own food, it’s a good way of off-setting costs,” Stoffel said.
Students are truly at the core of how the Office of Sustainability runs. “Each of our fellows is working on actual, real life projects on campus. There is a deep collaboration between myself and those fellows,” said Stoffel. “Students … [are] working with committees and task forces. They are the ones coordinating, developing proposals and making things happen. [They] get incredible experience of how to actually get stuff done in a bureaucratic environment…And the College benefits, pushing forward these truly innovative projects, which helps us and the community.”
As Manager of Sustainability, Stoffel wants to work with all groups, organizations and departments to create a more holistically sustainable campus, and is willing to sit down and consider any idea, at least initially. “It’s not just about the environment. We will fail in our efforts if we continue to look at it like that,” he said. “I want to do more projects that are holistic in scope, that impact the campus more than just helping pockets of people.” •
