Building a Coalition to Fight a Sea Change

For John R. Broderick, president of Old Dominion University, rising seas and floodwaters aren’t a future worry — they’ve already arrived. The campus, in Norfolk, Va., on the Chesapeake Bay, takes on water from high tides and storms, and the frequency will only increase; by 2050, tides in the area are predicted to rise between a foot and a half and four feet. Making sure that day-to day operations can continue in an environment of more water is a top priority for administrators. “Not even a college president can miss that one,” Mr. Broderick says with a wry chuckle.

Within its academic departments, the university also has sought to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum to teach climate change and support collaborations among disciplines to study it.

Under Mr. Broderick’s leadership, the university has worked to create partnerships with local businesses, government, the Navy, and other groups to help prepare for sea-level rise. For example, Old Dominion, the College of William & Mary, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science established the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency to study the issue, propose policies, and communicate with local residents about the risks and the steps needed to respond.

Old Dominion also organizes forums to bring universities together to discuss the issues. In June, faculty members representing 14 coastal institutions gathered on Old Dominion’s campus to discuss resiliency strategies.

Mr. Broderick spoke with The Chronicle about how his institution is adapting to sea-level rise and what challenges a college president faces in talking about the issue on a national level. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Why do you think it’s important for colleges and universities to plan for sea-level rise?

A. In our case, this has been an initiative going back to 2008. It would be hard as an institution that sits between two rivers — and, frankly, is many times under constant threats from tidal storm flooding — to not be aware of the issue that’s, in essence, at our back door. So there’s a lot of reasons for this to be both a concern and a priority for us. What are those implications for what we build, for what our existing structures may need? How does this play into the day-to-day life of our students, our faculty and staff? How do we get our arms around what these challenges are but yet recognize we have to operate an institution that by and large is open 360 days a year?

Q. What do you think college presidents really can do to mitigate the problem?

A. I’m always reluctant to say what college presidents can do, but I will say that in our case we wanted to raise this issue to a much larger level than our campus. So we partnered with William & Mary and VIMS to establish the Regional Resiliency Center to be a resource not only to the Hampton Roads area but really to all the communities and institutions in Virginia about what are some of those ways going forward that we can mitigate and adapt. We don’t pretend to know all the answers. But we are certainly interested in and working with anyone and everyone to get to what those answers are.

Q. Do you have evidence that your outreach to the local community is having tangible effects?

A. One of the things that I’ve been really pleased with by our initiative is when we try to bring people to the table, the municipalities are there, business and industry is there, the military is there, and so is higher education. I don’t want to say that’s rare in our market, but there’s not a lot of issues that compel all those constituency groups to come to the table with the recognition that we’re all kind of equals in this particular challenge. Everybody has something at stake here.

Q. Do you think that colleges are being vocal enough about the issue?

A. We are in Virginia. And I was pleased that day [of the June meeting] to see the representation we had from institutions certainly along the Eastern Seaboard. Now, I can’t speak for every president from Miami to Bangor, but it certainly is top of mind for me, and I don’t have any choice but for it to be top of mind.

Q. What role do you think college presidents can play in raising public awareness about storms and flooding and sea-level rise?

A. We have to continue to talk about it and be a convener. If you look at some of the commentaries or op-eds that I’ve written, [flooding and sea-level rise] is one of the issues I always focus on; it’s always one of those things that I talk about when I’m in community groups, whether I’m in Hampton Roads or Richmond or Northern Virginia. It’s certainly been something that we have elevated to the attention of our General Assembly delegation.

Q. What other challenges have you faced in getting your campus focused on the issue of sea-level rise?

A. It’s really forced us to elevate our level of communication on campus. Things that maybe an employer or institution in another market might not think about. Like today we’ve got to tell people, if these afternoon rains come and high tide is truly at this particular moment, parking lots A, B, C, or whatever might may not be the place you want to leave your vehicle after 3 o’clock. We have to be anticipating a lot of things that other places don’t. We have some residence halls closer to the river that our facility folks need to be with sandbags and other things that they use to keep water out of some of the first-floor entrances. It really pushes you to act a lot a lot sooner than we probably ever thought we would have had to 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Q. Are you optimistic about the future of our ability to address this issue?

A. In our case this particular issue has — it’s a strange choice of words — but has somewhat galvanized our market because it is one of those rarities where everyone understands this affects them. And from our standpoint, we’ve also been very conscious about, let’s be very careful about being nothing other than objective and accurate in what we say, in what we do. Let’s try to keep the emotion and politics and all that out of the conversation. Let’s just focus on the issue.

Ben Myers is a news-applications developer. Email him at ben.myers@chronicle.com.

Corrections (12/8/2017, 11:25 a.m.): This article originally quoted Mr. Broderick as saying that Old Dominion University’s initiative on sea-level rise dates to 2000. In fact, it began in 2008. Also, the subject of the commentaries he has written involves flooding and sea-level rise, not climate change. The text has been corrected accordingly.