Vermont Environmental Consortium

June 12, 2007
Green Mountain College: A School for Change Agents
by
Daniel Hecht

What’s considered “basic” knowledge evolves in response to conditions. For example, how much did most of us know about global warming two years ago? It’s likely that we’ve barely started up the environmental learning curve that will be required of us.

One thing that the oracles of Vermont’s environmental enterprise effort agree upon is the importance of education in the transformative process we’re undergoing: As Vermont seeks to build an economy based on green and sustainable development, environmental education is going to play a more and more important role. Our colleges and universities must produce graduates with the know-how needed for jobs in a national economy which demands environmental skills; and, already, they constitute an industry sector in their own right, drawing tuition dollars into the state, paying professorial salaries, fostering commercialization of new technologies, and conducting crucial research.

Green education is an increasingly prestigious state “product,” and many of our schools have made strong environmental commitments and are offering highly-regarded programs. None, however, got into the game as early, or with as much conviction, as Green Mountain College, in Poultney.

GMC embraced environmental studies as its core mission back in the mid-1990s. Now it calls itself “the environmental liberal arts college,” because each student, in every major, must take at least 37 credits – almost a third of all courses required – in environmental fields. As a small college, GMC doesn’t have the laboratory resources for highly technical studies; instead, the curriculum focuses on integrating environmental knowledge broadly into human, social contexts.

GMC looks like a classic New England liberal arts school. It’s located at the end of Poultney’s Main Street: a scattering of Georgian-style buildings, brick with white trim, set among spacious greens and big trees; a small campus farm that’s home to a flock of Welsh black mountain sheep.

A look at degree offerings and courses shows just how the environment permeates every program. Obviously, the courses in Geology, Botany, or Biology are environment-related. But so are many of the courses in the humanities and fine arts programs. The Economics department offers classes in Corporate Social Responsibility, Economics of the Environment, Ecological Design and Economics. Major in Writing or Journalism, and you’ll no doubt take Environmental Writing Workshop or Environmental Communication. The Education program includes courses on Organic Agriculture, Public Policy and the Environment, and Environmental Law. Even Visual Arts students can take classes such as Drawing from the Environment.

To expand its range, academically and geographically, GMC has joined the Eco League, a consortium of six colleges. Under this arrangement, GMC students can study at College of the Atlantic, in Maine; Antioch, in Ohio, Northland College, in Wisconsin; Arizona’s Prescott College; and Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. One advantage is that each offers different classes and has different support resources. Just as important, each is located in a different biosphere – the unique climate, geology, and ecosystem of each region – that gives students field experience in landscapes and flora and fauna that Vermont doesn’t provide.

The rationale for GMC’s approach to education is anchored in the grand liberal arts philosophy: A broad exposure to ideas, a good general foundation for life, etc. But the GMC curriculum also reflects real trends in the national economy and the employment marketplace.

The best source for prognostications on environmental jobs is Eco Canada, a nonprofit organization that conducts an exhaustive biannual survey of environmental employment trends. What skills do environmental professionals need? What kinds of jobs are available? What kind of education is required?

According to recent surveys, scientific and technical skills are by no means the only ones needed by the green economy. Quite the opposite: The fastest growing environmental professions are in business/organizational administration and management; communications and public relations; public policy administration; and education. In other words, the “green revolution” needs people who can act within the social institutions, cultural traditions, and communities that will have to change in response to an imperiled natural environment.

Green education seems to be a good business move for the college, too. In the last five years, GMC’s enrollment has grown from 600 to 750 students. Their recent capital campaign set an “impossible” goal of $8 million, but finished with $9.2 million. President Jack Brennan says confidently that “The future looks bright – in financial terms and in terms of fulfillment of the academic mission.”

So what are these generalist graduates of GMC prepared to do, to be?

To explain, Provost Bill Throop cites two recent student initiatives. Students actually voted to increase activity fees to pay for campus greening activities. Then they paid for an engineering study to determine how to convert the campus’s central boiler to a biomass heating system – a project that’s now part of the college’s strategic plan.

“Our students learn to be initiators,” Throop says. “Our graduates are people who know they have to walk the walk. They’re skeptical of quick fixes. When they leave here, they function as change agents, who can bring other people together in action.”

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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