Business View - November 2015 187
classrooms, and offices, and Earthkeepers, another stu-
dent organization, was established with creation care as
its focus.
Shafer recalls that six or seven years ago, a joint meeting
was held among the school’s president, vice presidents,
and deans, in order to share everyone’s sustainability
goals. “One academic dean was thinking about how to
get a major in sustainability,” she remembers, “the PR
department was thinking about how to tell the story
about what our students were doing; and I was thinking
about how we were managing facilities and how we could
have students leave campus in four years thinking about
their choices and how it would make a difference in the
world.”
One result of that meeting was the creation of a cam-
pus sustainability director position. Today, that position
is held by Brandon Hoover, who divides his time between
teaching and administering many of the campus’ envi-
ronmental and sustainability programs. He talks about
the school’s sustainability curriculum: “We have a sus-
tainability major here on campus, with a Bachelor of Arts
in Sustainability Studies,” he says. “And that major has
a core curriculum that all students in the major are re-
quired to take. Then there are three different branches,
or concentrations, within the major: sustainable agricul-
ture; public policy; and community and urban develop-
ment.” Hoover explains that those concentrations span
three different academic departments: the Dept. of Bio-
logical Sciences, the Dept. of Sociology, Anthropology
and Criminal Justice, and the Dept. of Politics and Inter-
national Relations. “So there are a lot of interdisciplinary
and cross-disciplinary conversations around what sus-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Messiah College Office of Sustainability
WHAT:
A Christian, Liberal Arts College
WHERE:
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
WEBSITE
:
CLEAN & GREEN
