Student groups, admins push sustainability at St. John's

Apr. 21—One of the first assignments for freshmen at St. John's College is to find a square foot of land near campus and stare at it for about an hour, describing and drawing every little thing in the square.

It's a good assignment, said Alex Finch, a junior at St. John's.

As president of St. John's Greenhouse Club — a student organization dedicated to political action and education around environmental issues, climate change and community gardening — Finch said the square-foot study encourages students to remain mindful of their place in the local ecosystem.

"Our whole goal is to get people outside and connected to their community — community in the sense of what grows around them and lives out here besides the human beings," Finch said. "I'm really, really happy with the strides that St. John's has taken to increase the sustainability of this campus."

Sustainability efforts at St. John's, a small liberal arts college with campuses in Santa Fe and Annapolis, Md., are about to get a whole lot bigger. Campus officials will unveil a massive array of more than 1,600 solar panels — slated to generate 100% of the campus' electricity — during Earth Day celebrations Saturday.

The solar panels are just the latest step in the college's efforts to grow a little greener, a change Mark Roosevelt, president of St. John's College Santa Fe, said is consistent with the institution's values. St. John's unique undergraduate curriculum, structured around great books from throughout history, is designed to create good citizens, Roosevelt said, and these days being a good citizen means being conscious of the environment.

For Greenhouse Club members like Finch, sustainability on campus starts in the garden — a medium-sized spread of eight raised beds, in-ground planting plots, flower pots and a compost bin. The garden's current residents include a smattering of lavender, thyme, rosemary and sage. Just outside the garden's fencing lies a butterfly garden filled with dill, hollyhocks and sunflowers to encourage the winged pollinators to stop by.

The club, which operates with about 20 members, is not the only student group pushing for eco-friendly initiatives. Another on-campus coalition is working to increase pedestrian and bike traffic over car usage, Finch said, and student ambassadors are lobbying for upgraded heating systems to decrease instances of heating the campus' buildings unnecessarily.

Eventually, Finch said the Greenhouse Club would like to see a greenhouse to lengthen the on-campus growing season and beehives to maintain pollinator levels.

For now, though, the club — like the campus — is limiting its harmful impacts on the earth.

The garden's irrigation system comes from a snow and rainwater collection system across campus, said Zane Kelly, the Greenhouse Club's vice president, and the club's plants sprout from recycled containers, like egg cartons and reused planter pots.

The entire campus limits food waste. St. John's contracts with Reunity Resources, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit, to compost all campus food waste, Roosevelt said. Whether it's compostable food left uneaten on dining hall trays or leftovers in campus kitchens, the food eventually becomes healthy soil.

The Greenhouse Club is looking to add to that composting effort, Kelly said, by giving students their own in-dorm compost bins and inviting them to bring the waste back to the community garden.

The harvest won't go to waste either, Kelly added. Depending on how much they grow, members of the Greenhouse Club hope to plan a harvest festival, during which students will be able to come by and grab food for free. Any leftovers will be preserved through canning and pickling. Last year, an errant pumpkin accidentally grown in the campus garden turned into pumpkin pie.

St. John's new array of solar panels is a logical extension of all of these efforts.

"It's not really a show piece. It is really very functional," Kelly said.

The panels now stretch across much of campus, with the majority above St. John's parking lots. Although some may find it unattractive, Roosevelt said the large solar footprint is to ensure the campus can generate all of its electricity from a renewable source.

"We hope its a subject of pride for faculty and students. We were definitely urged by students to move in this direction," he said.

The panels are tied to the Public Service Company of New Mexico's regular power grid, meaning the college will feed any excess electricity back into grid. The campus can also draw on that stash of power when the solar panels produce less electricity than the college needs.

St. John's will also install 20 electric vehicle charging stations for use by the college community. Over time, Roosevelt said, the campus will transition its own fleet of vehicles to electric power, too.

Finch and Kelly support the administration's sustainability initiatives and want to encourage more.

Campus officials seem to be heading in that direction. The college president's next goal, Roosevelt said, is to tackle St. John's water conservation systems. Though the college has made progress in that area, Roosevelt hopes to find a way to differentiate sewage from reusable water.

Kelly recommended adding examination of climate change to the college's unique curriculum.

"At a school that [prides itself] on teaching the Great Books program, I think that, since worries about climate change have been a thing since the 1800s, we really should be emphasizing ecological sustainability through books," he said.

The students said they want their campus to last, and they're impressed by administration's commitment to the same thing.

The sustainability initiatives are an invitation to care for the world around St. John's campus, Finch said: "You can take care of yourself, and you can take care of your neighbors. And then go outside, and you can look at more than that."