Online Conferencing

There's been a good bit of campus interest this past year in webinars, teleconferences, and online versions of bigger conference gatherings. An initial look at our (draft) greenhouse gas inventory reveals a lot of emissions from travel -and often from travel to and from U.S. and International conferences by faculty, staff, and students. Let me be clear, I think it's important for GMC and our community members to represent the College and develop professionally by attending these things, but there are also many opportunities to engage with the broader academic community from right here in Poultney.

Currently AASHE is blogging from the Smart & Sustainable Campuses Conference at College Park (you can keep up with them at their staff blog to the right). And they posted on the staff blog last fall from the Greening of the Campus VII conference in Muncie, IN. Over at Inside Higher Ed., sustainability administrator "G. Rendell" is blogging regularly on trends and topics specific to the field with Getting to Green. And the National Wildlife Federation blogs on their Campus Ecology program here. Of course, reading these blogs isn't going to make you an expert on sustainability in higher education, but it's certainly going to give you the opportunity to engage in the discussion.

Last October we hosted a Campus Sustainability Day webcast at GMC that was lightly attended, but very well received. Shortly after that, GMC student sustainability leader Jane Engelman was a featured presenter on an NWF teleconference highlighting student engagement (scroll down to Nov. 15th to listen to the conference and see the powerpoint).

The point is, we know students are into this, and we have the infrastructure to support it. I'll offer a couple of web conferences this month on campus, and hope folks will be able to come out for them.

• Wednesday, April 9th -- 12-1 pm, Dickgiesser Room: ELP's A GLOBAL VIEW OF THE FARM BILL: The Convergence of Climate Change, Food Security and the Future of Family Farmers Worldwide


• Wednesday, April 16th -- 7pm, Location TBA: NWF's CHILL OUT: Campus Solutions to Global Warming

If you have ideas about online sessions that you'd like to see on campus, contact our office and we'll see what we can do to support it.