Start-Up Story

The Beginnings of the Graduate Green Living Program

As one of the many strategies for implementing the Campus-Wide Sustainability Principles approved by President Summers in October 2004, an increasing number of Schools and Departments around the University are partnering with the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) to establish residential green living programs.

During 2004, the HGCI assessed a number of Harvard Real Estate Services’s residential buildings to identify energy upgrade opportunities that would be Loan Fund eligible. As a result of this work the HGCI identified a number of projects that together had a payback period of around six years. To assist with bringing this payback period below the required five years, the HGCI Director, Leith Sharp proposed that these capital projects be bundled together with an occupant behavioral change program because the HGCI had been achieving such extraordinary payback periods on all of its behavioral change programs, especially its undergraduate Resource Efficiency Program. The undergraduate Resource Efficiency Program was three years old and was well know across the University. This reputation was instrumental in making university leaders feel confident in tackling the graduate residential population.

HRES Initiates Program

In May of 2005, Susan Keller, Director of Residential Real Estate for Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) gave the HGCI the necessary approval to go ahead with a loan fund application to fund all of the capital upgrades in concert with the new occupant behavioral change program. Specifically, it was decided that they would try the newly named “Graduate Green Living Program” at Peabody Terrace, Soldiers Field Park, and One Western Avenue for the 2005-2006 school year.

HLS and HBS Join the Program

Around the same time Leith was encouraged by the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Business School to provide them with a range of new service offerings, including programs for the residential populations of both schools. John Arciprete from Harvard Law School along with Doug Scatterday, Bob Breslow and Meghan Carter from Harvard Business School gave their instant financial and managerial support to the concept proposed by the HGCI. Both schools moved quickly to partner with the HGCI in funding a joint effort with Residential Real Estate, to be called the Graduate Green Living Program.

The Program Gets Underway

Loosely modeled on the successful undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences Resource Efficiency Program, the HRES Graduate Green Living Program will educate and engage residents in shifting their priorities and behaviors to reduce the unnecessary consumption of resources (energy, water), to minimize the general creation of waste (through recycling, reuse and procurement) and to generally take greater responsibility for their own role in driving university-related environmental impacts.

The HGCI was given the responsibility of implementing the program from day one but the three Schools and Departments agreed to participate in all possible ways to ensure the success of this effort. The HGCI’s first step after securing the funding was to recruit a program coordinator. The HGCI received over 50 applications to the position and selected Meryl Brott as the most outstanding fit for the task at hand. Meryl joined the HGCI in August 2005 and immediately set about building the organizational and staffing structure of the Graduate Green Living Program. Allison Rogers, the Manager of the Undergraduate Resource Efficiency Program works closely with Meryl to support this most ambitious undertaking.

The decision of HRES, HLS, and HBS to create a graduate green living program was a monumental step forward for Harvard, enabling the University to create the first-known graduate level green living program in the United States, and is a testimony to the visionary and forward-thinking leadership of these three leading Departments and Schools.

The story continues...