NARRATOR: THE U.S. ENVIRONEMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY CREATED A PARTNERSHIP WITH BENNINGTON
COLLEGE IN 2012 TO WORK CLOSELY WITH STUDENTS IN A CLASS CALLED SOLVING THE IMPOSSIBLE.
TAUGHT BY PROFESSOR SUSAN SGORBATI, STUDENTS STUDY INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS AND DEVELOP SKILLS
TO WORK TOWARD SOLUTIONS. THE EPA ASSISTS PROFESSOR SGORBATI EACH SEMESTER WITH ENVIRONMENTAL
PUBLIC POLICY PROBLEMS FOR THE STUDENTS TO WORK ON. ONE CLASS TACKLED THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE
CHANGE. We decided that we want to do a local project
on climate change and we raised this idea with our professor.
So I went to the village trustees in North Bennington our local town and asked David
Monks was there was a project that they were involved in that had to do with energy reduction
or that would be some way of addressing climate change.
Efficiency Vermont had publicized a program where they would help towns and villages to
install LED street lighting, which would not only save energy but is better lighting for
a lot of reasons. So a couple years ago I contacted Green Mountain Power to get a list
of all the street lights and there's a lot of things that Efficiency Vermont wanted you
to do to analyze the street lighting you had can you take out any? can you dim any? so the
first thing I do is I get this big stack of papers from Green Mountain Power with all
the street lights. So when Susan asked if I had any ideas I said well I have a great
one, that if the students are patient enough First we had to go and see if the street lamps
were actually there, and then see how the community members felt about LED and how they
felt about the amount of light in each area all sorts of logistical things. So I designed
this flyer, and on here is a little info graphic we found about LED lights and some information
about the project. Then we dropped this off on everybody's doors.
And they came to one of the trustees meetings and proposed this project and of course the
voting was pretty simple this is hard to turn down when they're willing to do all
this work for us for nothing. So they got the approval and went ahead.
And we gathered so many valuable things that we wouldn't gather otherwise if we were
not involved with the community as much. For example, we figured out that some of the lights
were 24 hours a day on. It's not something that's going to be
marked in the lists of the lights that we were given. The woman that we asked said they'd
been on for the last two years, so you can imagine how much money and, more importantly,
how much energy that's wasting. The last thing they did was they came, again,
to the trustees with all their documentation. They made a full presentation--a slideshow--explaining
that if this was going to save the village close to ten thousand dollars a year, that
Efficiency Vermont would pick up the cost of the conversion so there's zero cost to
the village, and then, they said�we should vote on it! (laughs)--what's there to vote
on? It's going to reduce kilowatt hour usage
by 51,000 and remove about 60,000 pounds of carbon out of the air. So it's pretty significant
for just a small town of 108 fixtures. So by involving the students the project was
able to get completed in a very timely manner and is now in the que to be potentially replaced
within the year. NARRATOR: THROUGH THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN
BENNINGTON COLLEGE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, STUDENTS WERE ABLE TO LEARN ABOUT
CLIMATE CHANGE AND ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND THEN, PUT THAT KNOWLEDGE INTO PRACTICE.
ONE OF THE OUTCOMES OF THE PROJECT WOULD BE FOR THE STUDENTS TO CREATE A RESOURCE OF INFORMATION
THAT CAN BE USED BY OTHER SCHOOLS AND TOWNS TO DUPLICATE THE SUCCESS OF THE BENNINGTON
PROJECT WITHOUT HAVING TO START FROM SCRATCH. The issue of citizenship, to begin with that
one, is something that we really have to understand as not a choice--it's an obligation--it's
a responsibility. And if we, in higher education, think we have to shield our students from
the full implications of that responsibility, we're in trouble. We, on the contrary, it
seems that we have to develop their capacity to do it and do it brilliantly. Specifically
at this age--the age of undergraduates and circumstances of undergraduates--I think
they're uniquely positioned to engage the challenges and frankly the exhilaration of
what it means to really take on the kinds of challenges we're facing.
But they feel that this kind of work connects them to their future. It's not just an exercise
that they're getting a grade for. Personally, a lot of the times climate change
seems like this huge insurmountable issue and it's really hard to address that because,
well, where do you begin? So I think this project helped me see that there are very
accessible, and sometimes easy, ways to address it and establish small changes.
In Susan's class we've talked a lot about leverage points, like how to find spots in
this huge system that can really be turning points and change trajectory of where we're
going. So like this North Bennington project and like a college campus, I think communities
as leverage points is like a really valuable thing that I've learned.
Almost every week there is a new report, there's a new finding, that climate change is happening
even faster than we thought. I think we really need to provide young people ways to get involved
and actually do something. I think that feeling of really changing things really motivates
people to do even more, and that was the case for us.
I want to make a point here that what we're talking about isn't ultimately about Bennington
College. It's about the potential of students in classrooms all over this country to be
able to participate powerfully in actually making a difference in what's going on about
he kinds of issues that the Environmental Protection Agency represents.