Michael J. O’Connor, the physical-plant director at Appalachian State University, is watching his staff shrink bit by bit. When people leave, he’s not rehiring. “I’m not the kind of guy who likes to lay people off,” he says, noting that the university faces a 7percent budget cut this year and may face deeper cuts next year.
There is one exception to his staffing plan, however. Despite the economic duress, he is conducting a national search for a sustainability director. The university has ambitious sustainability plans, he says, and needs someone to pull its various projects together.
The sustainability director is the keystone of any campus sustainability program. Whether or not colleges are creating director positions or replacing people who are leaving might be an indication of how seriously those colleges regard their commitment to sustainability.
Dedee DeLongpré-Johnston, one of the best-known sustainability directors in higher education, is leaving her job at the University of Florida to work at Wake Forest University, where her husband has landed a job. She will not leave until this summer, but a national search to replace her is already under way, despite Florida’s deep financial problems.
“That is the magic of being on soft money,” she says, noting that her position is supported through grants and other private funds. She cannot imagine that the university would not fill her job, because the campus has gotten so much good publicity and savings from its sustainability efforts.
“You hate for it to be pigeonholed into that cost-saving thing, but that is real for a lot of organizations right now,” she says. Recently she talked with colleagues in the private sector in Florida and found that corporations that have shown a strong commitment to sustainability in the past are now investing even more.
She also points to a recent study by the management-consulting firm A.T. Kearney, which showed that companies with a strong commitment to sustainability were outperforming their peers. The study’s authors said that companies with a strong sustainability focus “may well emerge from the current crisis stronger than ever.”
Missed Opportunities
Other colleges may try to make progress without a traditional director. Georgetown University’s director of sustainability initiatives, Anne Eisele, left in January to take a job with the State of Maryland that was closer to her home, in Annapolis. It appears that Georgetown is not replacing her for the time being.
Members of Georgetown’s sustainability committee, which is composed of staff members, professors, and student activists, speculated that the university does not have the money to fill the position. (Ms. Eisele did not want to comment.)
Spiros Dimolitsas, senior vice president and chief administrative officer at Georgetown, says the university plans to fill the position at some point. Ms. Eisele’s expertise was in buildings and energy, he says, and the university may look for someone with broader expertise — but not now. “As a university we need to be a little sensitive in how much hiring we do right now,” he says.
He insists that Ms. Eisele’s departure does not mean that the university’s commitment to sustainability is flagging. In fact, he says, as the leading administrator supervising sustainability efforts on campus, he “probably played a stronger role in leading sustainability for Georgetown” than Ms. Eisele did.
“We are perfectly able, for a little while, to continue without Anne,” Mr. Dimolitsas says. “It would be a fallacy to think that we are not moving as rapidly now as we were before Anne left.”
Jonathan Cohn, a student environmental activist who sits on Georgetown’s sustainability committee, says he and other students were disappointed that Ms. Eisele left. “She was very responsive to us,” he says, adding that he has not had much contact with Mr. Dimolitsas’s office. “I think it’s a major obstacle when you don’t have one key person who has the knowledge base of what to do.”
At Appalachian State, the sustainability director would organize the efforts of various committees and groups on the campus and file reports for sustainability programs that the colleges has signed on to, like the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.
One of the biggest problems of not having a sustainability director, Mr. O’Connor says, is missed opportunities for marketing and communications.
“We are not doing a good job of telling our story,” he says. “We have had a million positive things we’ve done, but there is no coordinated way of getting those things out in front of the public, in front of our student body, and in front of our sister institutions.”
He hesitates to describe how Appalachian State found money to hire a sustainability director, but says that he has been able to tap into some money from auxiliary services and from donations. The sustainability director will be supported by those funds until the economy turns around.
Some universities have supported their sustainability programs by taking money saved through, say, energy efficiency, and plowing it back into the sustainability office. State laws in North Carolina will not allow that, Mr. O’Connor says.
One thing he will not do: Hire someone for peanuts. He says the position, which requires a graduate degree, will pay well.
“This person is going to be in demand for a million competing things,” he says, before adding half-seriously: “It’s going to be tough. I wouldn’t take the job.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 55, Issue 29, Page A18
