GMC Journal – September 12

Sierra Ranks Green Mountain College a Top Ten “Cool School”

Green Mountain College has been ranked among the nation’s top “Cool Schools” by Sierra magazine, the national magazine of the Sierra Club. In a list made public last week, Sierra places GMC at number ten among 201 schools surveyed.

“These are the colleges working hardest to protect the planet in 2016,” the magazine says in its September/October issue. Green Mountain College is the only college that has ranked in the top 15 every year for the past seven years, and this is the fifth time the College has landed in the top ten.

The ranking comes just days after GMC was ranked the third green college in the country in The Princeton Review’s 2017 edition of The Best 381 Colleges. This is the fourth year in a row that GMC has ranked in the top Princeton Review green colleges.

“Those who want to learn deeply about the environment go to GMC,” Sierra noted in its description of Green Mountain College’s mission. “Sixty percent of the undergraduate faculty is engaged in sustainability research, administrators have gotten fossil-fuel funds out of the endowment, and the campus has been carbon-neutral since 2011. Next up on GMC’s eco-checklist: to rely only on renewable energy by 2020.” Read more here.

College Welcomes New Faculty

Prof. Jason Derry (communication studies) specializes in rhetoric, ethics and media studies, primarily within the subfield of environmental communication. Jason’s Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Denver investigates media influences on children’s agency in response to climate change, within popular film and science discourses. He holds a master of arts in environmental education from Goshen College in Indiana, where he says his formal training “was highlighted by moments such as catching frogs with second graders, leading wild edible hikes, and sitting in a tree dressed up as a great horned owl to teach children about the nocturnal raptor.” He earned his B.A. in English/writing at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. In addition to academics, Jason has experience in the broader environmental movement as a community organizer, advocate, policy writer and naturalist. He is the founder and project manager of the environmental children’s book company Oakenday Press. Recent publications include works focused on elephants, pangolins, and women in STEM.

An interdisciplinary environmental designer, prof. Andrew Keller (REED) is a licensed architect, urban planner and builder. His recent academic destinations include Yestermorrow Design/Build School (coordinator, Ecological Design in the Built Environment), Norwich University (adjunct professor, School of Art and Architecture), and Vermont Technical College (adjunct professor, Landscape Design & Sustainable Horticulture Program). Devoted to the principles of ecological design, Andrew believes that theory and practice are inseparable. “In other words, critical thinking and making are both necessary tools to advance resource conservation and increase personal and environmental awareness,” he explains. Andrew is the principal of Andrew Keller Design in Montpelier, Vt. and has twin 8-year-old girls. A former ski racer, he’s reluctantly put his straight skis away and tried shape skis. In an attempt to combine the two, he annually sleds down the 4-mile access trail on Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains. Andrew holds master’s degrees in architecture and in city planning from University of California, Berkeley.
Christina Roy Ryan (communications studies) was appointed over the summer as instructor of graphic design. At GMC she will split her time between teaching and working as a designer in the College’s communications office. Christina has extensive experience in the classroom and in the design industry. Since 2007, she’s worked as media design and development manager at The Home Service Store where she produced marketing and support materials for national home improvement programs. She also worked as a senior graphic designer at LMW Design, Inc. in Rutland. As an adjunct professor at Castleton University, Christina has taught a wide variety of courses in publication and advertising design, typography and computer graphics. She holds a BA in fine arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Prof. Steven Fesmire a Research Fellow at University of Edinburgh

Prof. Steven Fesmire (philosophy and environmental studies) spent early June in Michigan on the faculty of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) summer institute: “Moral Psychology and Education: Putting the Humanities to Work.” He spent the rest of June and July as a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Steve argues in his recent research that our chief obstacle to conscientious citizenship in pluralistic democratic societies is moral fundamentalism, a term coined by Mark Johnson in Morality for Humans (2014). He defines moral fundamentalism as a disposition to act as though there is a single right way to deal with moral or political problems and hence a single theoretically correct formulation of, or approvable solution to, any particular moral or political problem. “A tragic result is that, instead of mutually transformative dialogue, every discussion begins with a foregone conclusion,” he writes.

Creative Sign-Making Event to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

Join us for a solidarity action and rally at Green Mountain College calling on President Obama to instruct the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke the permits for this dirty oil pipeline. Through social media, we hope to call attention to the brave water and land protectors at Standing Rock and encourage the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider this project. Please bring art and banners to Booth Lounge between noon and 4 p.m. this Saturday, Sept. 17 to create posters. At 4 p.m. we will gather on the steps of Ames to take a group photo with our statement posters to be shared on social media with #NoDAPL and #westandwithStandingRock. Additionally, we will be accepting donations to support the peaceful protesters on the front line of the pipeline. For more information contact Rebecca Wolfgang in the student involvement office at 774-487-4627 or rebecca.l.wolfgang@greenmtn.edu

Alumni and Family Weekend

For more information about Reunion/Alumni & Family Weekend go to www.greenmtn.edu/reunion or contact Michele Almeida, director of Alumni Engagement and Giving at michele.almeida@greenmtn.edu and 802-287-8293 or Andrea Roebuck ’14, director of Student Activities at andrea.l.roebuck@greenmtn.edu and 802-287-8371.

Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg Presents on Thursday

Richard Heinberg, visiting scholar for this week’s graduate program residency, will make a presentation “The Case for Resilience” Thursday, September 15 from 7:30-9 p.m. in Ackley Hall. The event is free and open to the GMC community and the general public.

In recent years, resilience has become an increasingly popular concept—particularly in the response to the climate crisis. But what does building community resilience really mean? And what does it look like in practice? Richard Heinberg will share some key lessons from the field of socio-ecological resilience and examples of how communities are already working to building resilience in terms of distributed energy, local ownership and investment, localized food systems, and resource conservation.

The annual residency, which brings GMC students enrolled in masters degree programs to Poultney for an intensive four-day session, is led by GMC faculty and a visiting scholar who is a national leader in sustainability. The residency also offers an opportunity for undergraduates to learn from leading thinkers, authors and entrepreneurs.

Richard Heinberg is considered one of the world’s leading advocates in shifting away from our reliance on fossil fuels to renewable solutions. Over the years, he has written thirteen books including The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality. He has written numerous essays and delivered hundreds of lectures on energy and climate issues around the world.

Heinberg has also been featured in films and television documentaries and produced several animations including “Don’t Worry, Drive On,” “Who Killed Economic Growth” and “300 years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds.”

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