Assembly Hall,
Ball State University Alumni Center
 

   The Publics

   The Universities

   The Students

   The Faculties

   The Exemplars

   The Funders

   The Practitioners

   The Schools

   The Organizations

   Steering Committee
 

Thank you for attending today’s final meeting of the Green-2 Committee, at which,  we will be handing to Dr. Warren Vander Hill our Final Report.  We have placed, at the front of the room, a number of illustrations from that document, including a listing of the Talloires Declaration tenets, samples of the Action Item Matrices, the Action Item Categories and the Action Item Tear Sheets collectively developed by the Green-2 Committee membership. 

• The Action Item Matrices went through two rounds of development, wherein members of each subcommittee listed those action items they felt best met the mission embedded in the Talloires tenet for which they were charged to make recommendations. 

 
• The Action Item Categories reflect a re-aggregation of the action items according to common content areas. 

 
• The Action Item Tear Sheets were prepared for the ten items which the Steering Committee selected for immediate emphasis; these provide much more detailed description and list possible funding sources and related web sites that can be used to develop proposals to off-campus agencies for financial support. 

With that as a brief overview and with the reports in hand, it is now my privilege to ask Dr. Vander Hill to step to the podium so that we may formally present the final recommendations from Green-2.
 

On behalf of the members of the Green-2 Committee, I am pleased to provide you with this summary report itemizing the good work of the 94 members you appointed to this mission.  We feel confident that if the University can take action on these recommendations, Ball State can continue to move forward with supporting and indeed modeling environmental stewardship.

Our agenda today is to provide time and appropriate ceremony to the formal acceptance of your final Green-2 Committee report.  I recognize from the interactions and conversations that I have had with the Committee leadership that each of you has contributed a great deal of time to this adventure. Today I want to thank you, individually and collectively, for your service to the mission of this University-wide Committee. And, of course, this is a chance for me also to share my initial response to the many recommendations contained in your report.

I can assure you that as a University, we will remain committed to the concerns embedded in the charge given to your committee, and want to support the follow-through on this splendid work. 

To begin, I’d like to thank the Committee Co-Chairs, the Resource Persons, the Subcommittee Chairs -- in short, the full Steering Committee for their leadership; it has been invaluable.   You have succeeded in this task far beyond my wildest green dreams.  Indeed, you should know, if your ears have been ringing, that I have used bits and pieces about your work as I have heard about it over the last few months as personal talking points with our trustees, President Brownell, external reviewers of our departments and programs, and fellow provost’s and academic VP’s.

Equally important to this work, of course, has been the full Subcommittee membership.  In securing broad University and Muncie community representation, your ranks grew to a count of 94.  Your Final Report clearly reflects that breadth of input.  To each of you, thank you for serving as a member of Green-2.   As an aside and as a small token of appreciation, I agreed to a recommendation that we produce a series of coffee cups with the Green-2 logo. Each of you will receive one of these; it will not only be a reminder of your hard work, but of my appreciation for the time you have taken in service to this Committee.

Now, let me provide a few specific comments. In a university setting, all members of the academic community -- faculty, staff and students -- have a role to play in Greening of the Campus, as does the institution itself in its operations, practices and day-to-day stewardship of resources, not the least of which is its human resource.  Clearly, for the institution to advance sustainability, it must encourage multiple points of involvement (in entrepreneurial fashion). 

In this spirit I am accepting many of your recommendations, and I have decided to take the following actions:

1. Provide incentives for University-wide participation.

2. Institutionalize the continued University-wide representation.

3. Institutionalize the continued administrative support.

1. It is clear that members of the University community must continue to move forward individually and collaboratively -- colleague to colleague, within department and collegiate families, and among branches of the administrative vice president reportages. 

To enable the entrepreneurial spirit within these units to flourish, summer stipends will be made available to enable interested members of the Green-2 Committee and/or other faculty to step forward and advance their particular initiatives.
 

2. We will also establish the Ball State University Council on the Environment: A University-Wide Clearinghouse for Sustainability Initiatives.  It will use the acronym BSU/COTE.  Membership in the Council will comprise representation from each of the academic colleges and vice presidential areas.  The Council will include student and Muncie community representation.  This will provide an institutionalized body to continue the work of Green-2.  The Council will be staffed with an appointed Chair who will report to me and will oversee the staff persons charged with supporting activities for and disseminating information from the Council.  I am pleased to announce that Bob Koester has accepted this appointment and will be able to provide the needed continuity as the ‘Greening of the Campus’ work moves forward. This representational structure will provide a single point-of-access for information regarding activities campus-wide.
 

3. In support of this group, I am asking the Center for Energy Research/Education/ Service staff to serve as the operational Secretariat for administrative support.  This will meet the action called for in Tenet #10 of the Talloires Declaration.  Staffing of the Secretariat through an existing University unit will enable immediate follow-through on the administrative and operational needs of the Council membership once it is appointed.
 

In addition to this support, I also want to act on several of your other recommendations: 

First, I shall provide funding for the appointment of a Green Development Specialist who will be positioned in the Office of Academic Research and Sponsored Programs to work with each and every one of you and others across campus as we proceed to develop outside funding requests and program development initiatives flowing out of the recommendations of Green-2.   Jim Flowers from the department of Industry and Technology has accepted an appointment to this post.

Second, I shall support the appointment of a Green Initiatives Coordinator.  This person will initially help facilitate the implementation of the items of immediate emphasis recommended in the Report.   I am pleased to note that John Vann of the Department of Marketing has accepted appointment to this position.

This summer I intend to convene a briefing with other vice presidents within the University as well as President Brownell (who I must note, has been apprised of the Committee’s work as it has progressed) in order to more fully review your report with my colleagues in the University administration.

This fall, of course, we have built into the Greening of the Campus IV Conference presentation opportunities to share the work of your Committee with those that will attend this international gathering.  In fact, we have extended the largest number of paper acceptances in the history of these conferences, and anticipate a successful meeting. 

As opportunity permits, I will give further consideration to other recommendations you have made, but for now, these initiatives will help move your work forward and establish the next phase of implementation in our ‘Greening of the Campus’.

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Honoring:
John Craddock
Muncie Bureau of Water Quality
G2 Exemplar

In closing, I thought it appropriate for the University, through Green-2, to extend its appreciation to a member of the larger Muncie community for his tireless efforts in securing the health of our White River watershed for current generations and those yet to come.  As indicated in Tenet #5 of the Talloires Declaration, which states “Set an example of environmental responsibility by establishing institutional ecology policies and practices of resource conservation, recycling, waste reduction, and environmentally sound operations,” he truly is an Exemplar.  If John Craddock would step forward at this time, we have a brief presentation. 

On behalf of Ball State University and the Green-2 Committee, we have prepared the first ever Green-2 Exemplar Certificate of Recognition.  You will note that it is signed by our University President, Provost (that’s me) and members of the G-2 Steering Committee -- the Planning Group and Subcommittee Chairs.  Let me read the inscription:

In recognition of your pioneering work and lifetime commitment to protecting the White 
River, one of Muncie’s greatest assets, we herewith honor the Craddock Legacy.

It is now my pleasure to ask one of our colleagues, Barb Stedman, to help close our session today with a brief reading from the work of Rachel Carson.

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“Your generation must come to terms with the environment.  Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth.  Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity.  You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery—not of nature, but of itself.  Therein lies our hope and our destiny.  ‘In today already walks tomorrow.’”

- Rachel Carson, in her commencement address to Scripps College in 1962

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Given the positive response by Dr. Vander Hill to the recommendations of the Green-2 Committee, the future looks bright.  With the creation of the Council on the Environment: A Clearinghouse for University-wide Sustainability Initiatives, the designation of an Administrative Secretariat  in CERES, the appointment of a Green Funding Specialist and a Green Initiatives Coordinator, and the provision of Grant Writing Stipends, much can be accomplished. 

We are very pleased with this commitment by the administration to support the recommendations of the Green-2 Committee and the continuing opportunity for members of both the University and Muncie communities to participate in that emerging work. 

We would ask at this time that you turn your attention to the sign–up sheets for declaring that continuing interest. We also have provided evaluation forms that you can use to provide feedback on the organization and operations of Green-2.
 

Personal Interest Form (involve.pdf - 10k)
Participant Evaluation Form (parteval.pdf - 3k)

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print these files. 
To get a free copy of Acrobat Reader, click here: 
 

Thank you again for attending today’s ceremonial closure to the work of the Green-2 Committee and the launching of the Implementation of the Talloires Declaration at Ball State University.
 

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