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J. Matthew Sleeth, author of Serve God, Save the Planet, says, "Students need to realize there is more to life than how fast an Internet connection is or how big your house is." Sleeth, who spoke on 21 college campuses in the last six months of 2006, says reaching students before they graduate gets them to "rethink issues before beginning real patterns of consumption."

Daryn Dockter, a senior biology major, has already changed his consumption patterns. As president of the ecology club Terra Nova at Iowa's Northwestern College, Dockter helps manage campus recycling. "Now I try to recycle every piece of paper that passes through my hands," he says. The Terra Nova club has also made a video about Northwestern environmental science professor Todd Tracy's study on wasted cafeteria food to show at new student orientations and other campus functions. "The findings were so shocking, I rarely waste a scrap of food anymore," Dockter says.

Many colleges have programs to spread the environmental word to others. Goshen College's 1,150-acre Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center lies 30 miles from the campus in Wolf Lake. Situated in a diverse Indiana ecosystem encompassing wetlands, fens, lakes, forests, prairie, and savanna, the center is staffed by 15 people who teach the 400 college students and more than 7,000 local K-12 students who come to the center each year. Among other environmentally sensitive efforts, Merry Lea boasts a wind generator with 20-kilowatt output potential that, along with photovoltaic panels, generates all of its electricity.

Goshen also added an accredited master's degree in environmental education last September—its first graduate program.

Environmentally friendly campus buildings, though expensive to build, may save costs in the long term. Calvin's Henry DeVries, vice president for administration, finance, and information services, says, "A college can be faced with the difficult choice of balancing the upfront desire to maximize the square footage of construction … versus the long-term opportunities for lower energy consumption and reduced environmental impact."

Paul Helgesen, the physical plant director at Gordon College, says recycling is "the right thing to do despite being labor intensive." (Gordon recycled about 35 percent of its waste in 2006.) Gordon has saved money through environmental efforts such as low-flow showerheads, lighting retrofits, and state-of-the-art building energy management systems. Changing more than 400 dormitory light fixtures can result in an annual savings of $20,000, Helgesen says. And the Gordon Biodiesel Project—a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit used by a staff member—runs on fry-ladle oil from the student center that previously cost $100 a month to dispose.

At Judson College in Elgin, Illinois, building committee chair Keelan Kaiser oversees construction of the new Harm A. Weber Academic Center, a $28 million, 88,000-square-foot facility designed to be a model for environmental stewardship when it opens in the fall of 2007. By making use of natural ventilation during half the year, the center is projected to use 47 percent less energy than a conventional academic building.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5