Seattle Community Colleges are doing their part as well
Regarding “Campuses push to go greener” [News, Jan. 2], higher education in Seattle also includes the Seattle Community Colleges — with 52,000 students at four campuses and four specialized training centers, along with the 2009 Green Washington Award (in the Academic and Health Care Institutions category) for innovations in our curriculum and on campuses.
Our college district has taken a leadership role in green-jobs training and education with programs such as green real-estate and urban sustainable-agriculture, weatherization and sustainable building management. The state’s largest apprenticeship training-program, at the Georgetown Campus, is leading efforts to incorporate sustainability across the trades. The district’s culinary programs send materials to the Cedar Grove composting facility and we also host educational opportunities for students, teachers and residents at Thornton Creek watershed in North Seattle.
The Seattle Community Colleges have established a baseline carbon footprint for our campus buildings and we will compare the data annually, going forward with the intent of further reducing our carbon impact. Each of our campuses has active recycling, commute trip reduction, alternative transportation, and additional energy-reduction programs under way.
Importantly, students at all of our campuses are actively involved in sustainability initiatives through committees and clubs, and fund a sustainability coordinator at one of the campuses. We are also collaborating with other two-year and four-year campuses in our region, and beyond, on some of these important initiatives.
We are committed to keeping our city vibrant. These green programs and activities are attracting both grant support and great numbers of students and they will benefit our region for years to come.
— Jill Wakefield, chancellor of the Seattle Community Colleges, Seattle