November 4, 2007
Symposium Rolls Out Green Carpet for Educators
by
Steven Pappas Staff Writer
NORTHFIELD — Let the greening begin.

Educators, businesses and environmentalists around the state need to work together more to address mounting concerns over global warming and fossil energy depletion, experts in all three fields concluded Saturday at the "Education in the New Environmental Economy" symposium.

The event, attended by about 120 people, was held at Norwich University, and it included representatives from colleges and universities around Vermont, as well as several of the region's top environmental groups.

By integrating environmental issues into the curricula at grade school, high school and post-secondary institutions, it will be easier to build more environmental jobs into the state's workforce, several speakers concluded.

The symposium, presented by the Vermont Environmental Consortium, touched on methods and techniques being used at higher education institutions around Vermont that integrate sustainability, environmental protection, natural resources, and even environmental law into course requirements and classroom discussions.

Joan Richmond Hall, professor of engineering at Vermont Technical College in Randolph, said the school now is offering a bachelor's degree program with concentrations in environmental issues, aptly named "Green Buildings," "Green Energy" and "Green Sites."

Hall outlined myriad ways in which college students are making the campus "greener," including experimenting with alternate energy sources such as grass, as well as embarking on an ambitious plan to make the oldest building on campus, a converted 19th-century Federal-style schoolhouse, more energy efficient. The students also are resurrecting a hydroelectric dam located on one of the streams on the 540-acre campus, Hall said. VTC has even created a Center for Sustainable Practices.

"This is not just about engineering now," Hall said. "It's become much more."

Other schools represented on Saturday included the Vermont Law School's Environmental Law Center, Woodbury College, Marlboro College, Middlebury College, Sterling College, Green Mountain College, Antioch University New England, Goddard College, Norwich University, and the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. The Five Colleges, a regional educational consortium, also had a presence.

Grant Trump, founding president and chief executive officer of ECO Canada, an Alberta-based company that places Canadian environmentalists into the workforce, said more jobs are being filled with environmentally minded employees.

"People make companies," Trump told the group in his mid-afternoon address.

He said his organization works to match potential employees with companies rather than basing job placements just on a candidate's qualifications.

"It has worked," Trump said. Environmentalists or people with environmental backgrounds now make up nearly 3 percent of the Canadian workforce, he added.

Trump said Canada continues to suffer from a labor shortage, yet ECO Canada, which was founded 17 years ago as part of that nation's sector council initiative, has had unprecedented success in the field of human resource management.

He said 26 colleges and universities, as well as an aggressive Youth Corps program, across Canada are working with ECO Canada to find matches in all sectors of the workforce, from the public and private sectors and businesses of all sizes. In particular, Trump said, integrating nearly 4,000 interns into workplaces nationwide has yielded a 97 percent retention rate.

Many of the ideas presented by Trump came up later in a roundtable discussion of the day's discussions, which began with a panel discussion on three points: How can colleges and universities work more closely with businesses, public agencies, organizations and communities to build a green economy in Vermont and to improve education programs? What is the current status of the environmental industries sector, what trends are seen? And how should these indicators affect what programs are taught?

"We have a lot of work to do in Vermont," said Daniel Hecht, executive director of the Vermont Environmental Consortium, following Trump's remarks.

The following entities were also represented at the symposium: SolarQuest of Chelsea, the Vermont Council on Rural Development, the Agency of Natural Resources, the state Department of Education, the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Northeast Institute for Social Issue Studies, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Stone Environmental of Montpelier, the Environmental Business Journal, and GroSolar of White River Junction.

 

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