PCC ready to roll with C-RISE
Noelle Studer is climbing the stairway to sustainability as the new sustainability coordinator at Portland Community College. She is shown here at the Technology Classroom Building, built with LEED principals in mind, on the Sylvania Campus near Lake Oswego.
CLIFF NEWELL / LAKE OSWEGO REVIEW
One of the virtues of sustainability is that it covers just about everything.
Of course, that means a lot of work, but Noelle Studer is ready for the challenge as the sustainability coordinator for Portland Community College.
A grant of $70,000 from the National Science Foundation came through last April, which provides seed money to plan the Cascadia Regional Institute for Sustainability Education (C-Rise), led by PCC.
“Today’s students are going to be faced with tough challenges,” Studer said. “We’re facing a future of uncertain energy supplies, which will impact every aspect of life from food to transportation.
“It’s inspiring for students to gain practical skills and apply good old-fashioned American ingenuity in the quest for energy independence.”
Core partners of the C-RISE team are Portland State University and Lane Community College. In addition, dozens of other education, public and private partners have already agreed to participate. Area employers who would like to get involved are encouraged to contact Studer – especially employers in the fields of construction, building maintenance, architecture, drafting, engineering, landscaping and biofuels.
Studer plans to match people in business and industry with educators to identify skill needs, because “ultimately, this institute is for employers. We know Oregon needs a more technically competent workforce, but it’s essential to connect this with actual jobs.”
The big date on the fledgling center’s calendar comes in October when a planning summit will be held at PCC’s Rock Creek Campus. It will be a gathering of business and industry leaders, policy makers, educators, and representatives of non-profit organizations.
“We’ll be showing state of the art projects, like the OHSU South Waterfront Building, which is the ‘greenest’ (most ecologically designed) building in the country,” Studer said. “It has so many features in ultimate building. We have to ask ourselves, ‘How can we make this a normal thing?’”
From building, it is an easy jump to ask how the land can be better preserved.
On a residential scale, “How can landscapes be more functional in handling water?” Studer asked. “How can it be better absorbed in the rainy months? How can it be drought resistant in the dry months? That’s the challenge of the landscaping industry.”
With the new C-RISE institute, Studer will be rounding up all of the inquiring minds she possibly can. She will be planning curriculum for students in science, technology and trades, plus classes for high school and college teachers.
While those classes on sustainability practices will certainly be filled with students in the usual college age group, Studer said, “Mid-career people can come to school.
“We’ll be collecting curriculum and finding ways to distribute it in the Northwest. I envision clusters of educators and industry people working throughout the state by 2009.”
Studer has a most thorough view of sustainability. She admits with chagrin, however, that her business cards are not made out of recycled paper.
After all, just about every place Studer has been she has left more sustainable than it was before. In high school she initiated the school recycling system. As a student at Ohio University she led a presidential advisory group that institutionalized recycling.
Then as a graduate student at the University of Washington her research and writing was crucial in the campaign to build the new horticulture center (which ironically was burned down by ecological terrorists) according to green standards. The building was constructed to such a high green standard that this past February it received the coveted “Silver” designation from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the organization which sets the standards for green building.
“I did a lot of educating and cajoling,” Studer said. “We had been teaching but not actually doing anything. The building was an example of actually doing something and students being inspired by it.”
Grant Bennett, the facilities projects manager on the Sylvania Campus, believes Studer is just the person to make sustainability vital and viable at all three PCC campuses.
“As a beneficiary of Noelle’s presence, I see her constantly bringing issues to a whole variety of individuals at the college,” Bennett said. “That alone is a tremendous asset. She’s a central resource for activity in this region.
“She has already stimulated contact between the science faculty and the people at the physical plant, and that is not a normal occurrence. She’s sort of an ombudsman pulling up threads to get connections made. She’s in the forefront of trying to get that to happen.”
To that statement, Studer laughed and said, “It’s an uphill battle!”
She also says, “This is really an exciting time.”
As a sustainability coordinator Studer is a groundbreaker in a new field, and she has arrived at a time when interest in sustainability is surging for both selfless and self-interested reasons.
As Bennett wryly pointed out, “Three dollar gas helps raise people’s consciousness.”
Studer is only just beginning her task to bring sustainability to PCC. But she is already looking beyond establishing better conservation practices, setting curriculum and bringing diverse groups together.
“We want to track everything we do and learn to optimize our efficiency,” Studer said. “We’ve got to check what we’re doing because that improves our accountability.”
To find out more about the C-RISE institute at Portland Community College, call Studer at 503-614-7635 or e-mail her at noelle.studer@pcc.edu.