After slow start, Mote helped drive university’s sustainability efforts

When university President Dan Mote took the helm more than a decade ago, this campus's environmental initiatives were primarily limited to a few recycling programs and complying with the law. And for most of the next decade, little changed.

But in 2007, Mote joined a group of academic leaders pledging to drastically reduce their institutions' carbon emissions. And then, according to Office of Sustainability Director Scott Lupin, everything started to change.

That year, Mote signed on to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, laying the groundwork for many of the sustainability plans in place at the university today, Lupin said.

The University Sustainability Council, formed to oversee the university's Climate Action Plan, has pushed for policies that have resulted in LEED certification for Knight Hall and buildings planned for the campus, cut carbon emissions by 10 percent so far this year and preserved the Wooded Hillock near Comcast Center from development.

"A lot of fundamental decisions were in there and he committed the university to the obligations of that effort," Lupin said. "If he hadn't signed, that I don't know what the state of campus sustainability would be."

Perhaps equally significantly, Lupin said, the pledge to become carbon neutral by 2050 was a powerful signal that the university would enter a new era of environmentalism.

"There was little beyond recycling" when Mote first came to the university, Lupin said. "There was no focus on greenhouse gases and there was little emphasis on energy conservation, so when you compare today with then, it's drastic. In 2003 recycling was at about 17 percent and last year it was over 54 percent. It shows how the culture has changed across campus."

The campus's recent environmental improvements have not gone unnoticed.

The university has been judged "America's Greenest Campus," scored well in Princeton Review's "286 Green Colleges and Universities" guide and earned an above-average score on the College Sustainability report card. It was also selected to host the Power Shift environmental conference in 2007.

Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie, who also chairs the Sustainability Council, said Mote has been an "extremely aggressive" advocate of the Climate Action Plan.

"He's been a strong proponent of lighting policies and green procurement," Wylie said. "Anytime there's been a measure we want to take on, he has embraced it. We even increased funding to the Office of Sustainability — even with the economy. He's always made it a priority."

But Joanna Calabrese, the student representative on the council, said that although sustainabilty wasn't on the university's agenda until Mote became president, accolades have been exaggerated by the administration.

"He's done a good job, but there are still blatantly unsustainable practices going on, as well as [public relations] issues," Calabrese said. "For example, he said we're ‘America's Greenest Campus' in his Maryland Day e-mail, but we're not. We composted five tons of waste on Maryland Day, but that's a lot of waste. The fact that we created that much in the first place is bad."

Laura Calabrese, a senior environmental science major who is a member of UMD for Clean Energy and Joanna's sister, agreed. She said that although Mote was a good president, he did not exactly champion environmental issues.

"I think he has been gracious and done a great job implementing environmental initiatives, but this is something he's just been open to and embraced. He hasn't been a champion for it," she said. "He jumped on the bandwagon and seemed happy to have others take care of a lot of it, but it wasn't his thing. I hope the next president will make sustainability a big issue."

cetrone at umdbk dot com