Ambler Campus, Temple University

Transforming Temple: Ambler faculty, administrators help guide the University toward sustainability

Ambler’s ongoing commitment to sustainability and the environment spreads University-wide.

In 1910, Jane Bownes Haines conceived of an institution whose mission was to provide a different future for women, a different type of educational experience that would not only facilitate their entry into careers that were not available previously but would allow them to change their communities for the better as well.

In 1911, the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) opened its doors; its students for the next several decades would go on to become pioneers in the green industry. The PSHW’s mission of environmental education would inform the establishment of Temple University Ambler’s signature programs in Community and Regional Planning, Horticulture, and Landscape Architecture.

Ambler’s students and programs have remained the standard bearers for that mission of sustainability begun almost a century ago, a mission that Temple University Ambler faculty and administrators are helping Temple take University-wide.

In spring 2007, Dr. Lolly Tai, professor of Landscape Architecture and former Ambler Campus Senior Associate Dean, was appointed by President Ann Weaver Hart to co-chair, with Bill Bergman, University Vice President of Operations, Temple’s newly formed Sustainability Task Force.

“Essentially we started with a blank slate. The Task Force met weekly to develop a Task Force Report — Recommendations for a Sustainable Temple University — which was reviewed by the President and her cabinet. It was accepted with no changes and formally announced in Spring 2008,” said Dr. Tai. “The Task Force is comprised of a group of seven faculty members, including Dr. Lynn Mandarano (Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning). It is a large, diverse group from a variety of disciplines.”

The Task Force concluded that a balanced approach to sustainability requires Temple to “respect the environmental, economic, social, and communal aspects of its choices to ensure that Temple designs affordable, practical, and forward-looking programs.” To achieve this balance, Temple must find new and more effective ways of collaborating with all of its internal constituents, with neighboring communities, and with regional partners.

“In this time of acute awareness of the earth’s fragility and limited resources, Temple has an obligation to demonstrate how a large urban university can responsibly participate in the global community,” said President Hart, introducing the Task Force Report. “The University can act as a model institution and a resource to address growing concerns among citizens and government at all levels and design permanent, affordable, practical, and forward-looking programs for sustainability.”

According to Dr. Tai, the Task Force Report — available online here — divides the committee’s comprehensive recommendations into three primary categories: Sustainable Campuses, Academic Initiatives, and Outreach and Engagement.

“With ‘Sustainable Campuses,’ we looked at all of Temple’s campuses — their energy usage, master planning, conservation and recycling initiatives, and transportation,” said Dr. Tai.

University-wide goals include reducing energy consumption; increasing energy efficiency; integrating renewable energy technology; reducing green house gas emissions; realizing a sustainable landscape for each campus that builds on their relationship with the regional ecosystem; recommending target goals for the University to “reduce, reuse, recycle, and regulate,” and encouraging the use of sustainable, non-polluting methods of transportation for persons getting to and from campus.

In the ACT (Ambler Campus Technology) Center, sustainable changes are already taking place, according to Susan Hyer, Associate Director of Computer Services at Temple University Ambler.

“Computer Services and the University are implementing duplex printing. All of our printers are now capable of printing on two sides. It’s more economical for the students and certainly more ecologically friendly,” she said. “University-wide, it will also save in recyclable products, such as cartridges and toner. That’s just one of many initiatives that are getting underway.”

Dr. Tai and Dr. Deborah Howe, Chair of Ambler’s Department of Community and Regional Planning, are both serving on the University’s Master Planning Committee, which has been tasked with developing a master plan that incorporates fully sustainable initiatives. The committee will conduct a full inventory of existing landscape conditions; inventory existing conditions of all buildings; conduct “post occupancy evaluations” on all major buildings and renovation projects; improve the integration of site conditions, such as topography, floodplains, vegetation, and air flow; develop lists of fast-tracked projects; and create greenway corridors in cooperation with area communities.

In addition to serving on the Master Planning Committee, several Temple University Ambler faculty and administrators have played key roles in the academic steering committees and workshops that have been an essential part of the University-wide planning process driven by Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico. School of Environmental Design participants included Acting Dean Dr. James W. Hilty, Dr. Howe, Dr. Pauline Hurley-Kurtz, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, and Dr. Jeffrey Featherstone, Research Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities.

“I was pleased to have been asked to serve on the Academic Planning Steering Committee and I also co-chaired, with Dr. Theresa Powell, Vice President for Student Affairs, a workgroup on Strengthening the Environment for Student Success, one of nine workgroups or subcommittees that worked on the plan,” said Dr. Hilty. “Given our relatively small size as a college, we are well represented and that bodes well for the campus.”

“Academic Initiatives” in relation to the Sustainability Task Force Report examined sustainability spread throughout Temple’s campuses and throughout the University’s curricula, said Dr. Tai.

“What sustainability courses are available at each campus? What research is taking place?” she said. “There really was no single office that was gathering this data and implementing new initiatives.”

To that end, the Sustainability Task Force recommended the creation of an “Office of Sustainability,” a new administrative unit to lead the University’s efforts to foster a “pervasive culture of environmental responsibility throughout the university.” The Office of Sustainability was formally established in July 2008, under the direction of Sandra J. McDade, a Temple administrator for more than 30 years who was also part of the Sustainability Task Force.

“I would like to express my deep appreciation for the remarkable work of the Sustainability Task Force, chairs Bill Bergman and Lolly Tai, and the many others who assisted in developing the report,” said President Hart in establishing the new office. “Members of the committee will continue to provide assistance and counsel as we proceed in launching this important initiative for Temple and the environment.”

The Office of Sustainability will be a “centralized resource on green issues and practices — everything from facilities and recycling to academics and research — for the entire Temple community,” McDade said.

“We share President Hart’s goal of making Temple a model of sustainable practice among large urban research universities,” she said.

Dr. Tai said researchers, faculty, students, staff, and administrators in the Center for Sustainable Communities, located at Temple University Ambler, and the School of Environmental Design programs — Community and Regional Planning, Horticulture, and Landscape Architecture — will be working very closely with the Office of Sustainability in helping to implement the University’s sustainable initiatives.

The Center, the Department of Community and Regional Planning, and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture have long histories in taking leadership roles in sustainability research and development, often undertaken collaboratively with variety of University disciplines. Of the University’s 17 schools and colleges, 12 have been involved in sustainability research in some capacity, according to the Sustainability Task Force Report.

“We are the University’s ‘green campus’ — that’s our mission and I’m happy to see sustainability brought to such prominence in the University as a whole since that’s what Ambler Campus and School of Environmental Design have always been about,” said Dr. Tai. “What we do here at Ambler, I think, will overlap in several beneficial ways with the Office of Sustainability as we move forward. One of the initiatives that we have undertaken is developing a master’s degree in landscape architecture that will focus on ecological landscape restoration — I’m working on a proposal for the program with (Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture Chair) Dr. Mary Myers.”

The Sustainability Report recommends encouraging further collaborative efforts among faculty, staff, and students in sustainability research; offering courses that include sustainability research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students — a staple of Center research and the School of Environmental Design programs; and “working with the Office of Sustainability to foster collaboration with communities.”

“An important part of ‘Outreach and Engagement’ is developing and promoting initiatives with student environmental groups, such a Temple’s own Students for Environmental Action, and community groups such as Habitat for Humanity and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s TreeTenders,” said Dr. Tai. “We want to establish environmental responsibility as one of Temple’s top-level strategic initiatives and promote awareness of new and ongoing sustainability initiatives within the Temple community and beyond. Our focus today is, ‘What can we do now?’ We need to follow an independent, reasonable plan that clearly maps out what we can to realistically.”

In reaching out the surrounding community, Temple University Ambler and Fort Washington are offering new non-credit courses with “green” initiatives in mind. Xeriscaping, Making Compost Make Sense; and Creating a Business Case for Green Meetings and Events were all offered for the first time this fall, according to Rhonda Geyer, Director of Non-Credit Programs. The Temple University Ambler Cultural Affairs Series each semester also highlights sustainable goals and initiatives with lectures by noted planners, landscape architects, and horticulturists.

The Sustainability Report also encourages building support and inspiring action “that leads to a green campus culture, fosters behavioral change, and promotes environmental literacy among all campus populations,” something that Temple University Ambler has already aspired to.

As Ambler looks outward to the University as a whole, it is also looking inward. The establishment of the Ambler Campus Sustainability Council (ACSC) in 2007 has afforded Ambler and Fort Washington students, faculty, and staff the opportunity through several “campus visioning workshops,” to examine and make suggestions to ensure that the campuses meet their own sustainable goals.

“Some of the issues we are exploring are how we can make the campus less dependent on cars; more energy efficient; investing wisely in our resources on campus, including our faculty, students, staff, and landscape; and how we can restore natural systems, improve housing, and promote a healthy social ecology ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard,” said Dr. Lynn Mandarano, ACSC Co-chair.

Some of the suggestions from the visioning workshops included improving recycling awareness and adding more recycle containers around campus, modifying and optimizing the campus shuttle schedule, exploring solar and geothermal energy for the campus, increasing the campus’ purchase of wind energy, developing a “ride sharing” bulletin board, adding bike racks to shuttle bus stops and on campus, converting buses and maintenance equipment to clean-burning fuels, updating temperature regulation in the campus buildings, adding pervious paving to the parking lots, doing away with the use of Styrofoam in the Dining Center, and determining “a baseline for energy usage on campus,” among many other possibilities for improving campus sustainability.

“Our mission statement is to inspire collaboration and action that moves Temple University Ambler toward becoming a model of sustainability and environmental responsibility,” said Mandarano.

Brenda Sullivan, who was involved in a directed studies program with Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey in 2008, said it is important to “expand what’s already being done on campus.”

“I see the momentum starting and it’s great to see that on campus,” she said. “Our students are hands-on learners; we are in the discipline of affecting change.”