COLLEGE IN 2012 TO WORK CLOSELY WITH STUDENTS IN A CLASS CALLED SOLVING THE IMPOSSIBLE.

TAUGHT BY PROFESSOR SUSAN SGORBATI, STUDENTS STUDY INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS AND DEVELOP SKILLS

TO WORK TOWARD SOLUTIONS. THE EPA ASSISTS PROFESSOR SGORBATI EACH SEMESTER WITH ENVIRONMENTAL

PUBLIC POLICY PROBLEMS FOR THE STUDENTS TO WORK ON. ONE CLASS TACKLED THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE

CHANGE. We decided that we want to do a local project

on climate change and we raised this idea with our professor.

So I went to the village trustees in North Bennington our local town and asked David

Monks was there was a project that they were involved in that had to do with energy reduction

or that would be some way of addressing climate change.

Efficiency Vermont had publicized a program where they would help towns and villages to

install LED street lighting, which would not only save energy but is better lighting for

a lot of reasons. So a couple years ago I contacted Green Mountain Power to get a list

of all the street lights and there's a lot of things that Efficiency Vermont wanted you

to do to analyze the street lighting you had can you take out any? can you dim any? so the

first thing I do is I get this big stack of papers from Green Mountain Power with all

the street lights. So when Susan asked if I had any ideas I said well I have a great

one, that if the students are patient enough First we had to go and see if the street lamps

were actually there, and then see how the community members felt about LED and how they

felt about the amount of light in each area all sorts of logistical things. So I designed

this flyer, and on here is a little info graphic we found about LED lights and some information

about the project. Then we dropped this off on everybody's doors.

And they came to one of the trustees meetings and proposed this project and of course the

voting was pretty simple this is hard to turn down when they're willing to do all

this work for us for nothing. So they got the approval and went ahead.

And we gathered so many valuable things that we wouldn't gather otherwise if we were

not involved with the community as much. For example, we figured out that some of the lights

were 24 hours a day on. It's not something that's going to be

marked in the lists of the lights that we were given. The woman that we asked said they'd

been on for the last two years, so you can imagine how much money and, more importantly,

how much energy that's wasting. The last thing they did was they came, again,

to the trustees with all their documentation. They made a full presentation--a slideshow--explaining

that if this was going to save the village close to ten thousand dollars a year, that

Efficiency Vermont would pick up the cost of the conversion so there's zero cost to

the village, and then, they said�we should vote on it! (laughs)--what's there to vote

on? It's going to reduce kilowatt hour usage

by 51,000 and remove about 60,000 pounds of carbon out of the air. So it's pretty significant

for just a small town of 108 fixtures. So by involving the students the project was

able to get completed in a very timely manner and is now in the que to be potentially replaced

within the year. NARRATOR: THROUGH THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN

BENNINGTON COLLEGE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, STUDENTS WERE ABLE TO LEARN ABOUT

CLIMATE CHANGE AND ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND THEN, PUT THAT KNOWLEDGE INTO PRACTICE.

ONE OF THE OUTCOMES OF THE PROJECT WOULD BE FOR THE STUDENTS TO CREATE A RESOURCE OF INFORMATION

THAT CAN BE USED BY OTHER SCHOOLS AND TOWNS TO DUPLICATE THE SUCCESS OF THE BENNINGTON

PROJECT WITHOUT HAVING TO START FROM SCRATCH. The issue of citizenship, to begin with that

one, is something that we really have to understand as not a choice--it's an obligation--it's

a responsibility. And if we, in higher education, think we have to shield our students from

the full implications of that responsibility, we're in trouble. We, on the contrary, it

seems that we have to develop their capacity to do it and do it brilliantly. Specifically

at this age--the age of undergraduates and circumstances of undergraduates--I think

they're uniquely positioned to engage the challenges and frankly the exhilaration of

what it means to really take on the kinds of challenges we're facing.

But they feel that this kind of work connects them to their future. It's not just an exercise

that they're getting a grade for. Personally, a lot of the times climate change

seems like this huge insurmountable issue and it's really hard to address that because,

well, where do you begin? So I think this project helped me see that there are very

accessible, and sometimes easy, ways to address it and establish small changes.

In Susan's class we've talked a lot about leverage points, like how to find spots in

this huge system that can really be turning points and change trajectory of where we're

going. So like this North Bennington project and like a college campus, I think communities

as leverage points is like a really valuable thing that I've learned.

Almost every week there is a new report, there's a new finding, that climate change is happening

even faster than we thought. I think we really need to provide young people ways to get involved

and actually do something. I think that feeling of really changing things really motivates

people to do even more, and that was the case for us.

I want to make a point here that what we're talking about isn't ultimately about Bennington

College. It's about the potential of students in classrooms all over this country to be

able to participate powerfully in actually making a difference in what's going on about

he kinds of issues that the Environmental Protection Agency represents.