WP, pg1: Higher Learning Adapts To a Greening Attitude; Students Lead Drive Reshaping Curricula

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Higher Learning Adapts To a Greening Attitude
Students Lead Drive Reshaping Curricula
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2008; A01

The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes.

The University of Maryland teaches "green" real estate strategies for landscape architects. The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. And in a Catholic University architecture studio last week, students displayed ideas for homes made from discarded shipping containers....

What was once a fringe interest, perhaps seemingly a fad, has become fully entrenched in academic life, university officials say, affecting not just how students live but what they learn and, as graduates, how they will change workplaces and neighborhoods. At George Washington University last month, many students pinned green ribbons on their graduation robes or their recycled-cotton caps and signed pledges to take their commitment to environmentalism into their jobs.

Concern about the environment has waxed and waned in the past few decades, said GWU President Steven Knapp. But with fears of climate change and high gas prices, "the situation has become dire enough that people are focused on it," Knapp said. "Energy is costly enough that people are focused on it. We really think this time, it's here to stay."

For years, student activists have demanded environmentally friendly changes, prompting university officials to reevaluate how they heat classrooms, water campus greens and buy light bulbs. Frostburg State University in Western Maryland, for instance, has a wind-powered generating station. Johns Hopkins University is planning to build its own heat and power generator.

Students are also driving the academic push that is infusing curriculum and research with an environmental consciousness....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101673_pf.html