186 Business View - November 2015
Messiah College Office of Sustainability
Ecologically viable, socially just, and economically strong
“As a Christian college, creation care is a major part of
what we talk about and think about; it’s who we are; and
not only for people, but for the land and the resources
we’ve been given,” says Kathie Shafer, Vice President of
Operations at Messiah College, a private Christian school
of 3,000 students, located in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylva-
nia. Messiah’s dedication to the stewardship of natural
resources, based on its fundamental religious values,
has fostered a culture of sustainability that has perme-
ated campus life for over 40 years.
Early initiatives that put Messiah on the green path in-
clude a groundbreaking, week-long course that was intro-
duced during a 1971 winter session, called “Man and His
Environmental Problems.” In response to the impactful
syllabus, which included seminal works on environmen-
tal stewardship, students started EnCon, an environmen-
tal concern organization that hosted special programs
and awareness days about environmental issues. By the
1980s, the school had instituted a campus wide recy-
cling program that collected material from residences,
CLEAN & GREEN
