Traverse City is known as the Cherry Capital of Michigan and they are a beautiful site, and yummy too. They have a Cherry Festival in early July, but the crowds keep me away.I have worked now for a few weeks up in
Traverse City during the summer to strengthen my bank account since being on sabbatical is a beautiful experience psychically, but not financially. I come back to a school that has been beaten up. Everyone is down about losing yet another president to mismanagement and lack of leadership, and because the students have had tuition increased yet again (8% this year, but more than 33% over the past 5 years) and see nothing new for their investment. No new buildings, no state of the art classrooms, and stressed professors with the highest workload in the nation struggling to maintain what little they have. The state of Michigan is now at the bottom nationally for support for its schools.
Is it really the time to institute a sustainable education program?
You betcha.
What better time to step into a new world of hope than when you are down and it seems that all faith is gone? Yes, there are still things that need straightening up at the school, and I have gone there enough already, now is the time to look at what other schools in America are doing about looking in to the future, and finding a sustainable world.
With that I would like to present some work I have done over the summer in this vein. I visited several schools that have active sustainable programs. Here is the first,
American University in Washington DC. In this clip of out talk Lindsay Mediera is talking about campus students groups participation and purchasing alternative energy.
