Cedarwood residence hall, Eastern Mennonite University’s first LEED building, is nearing completion. EMU is working with Troyer Group, Mishawaka, IN, and Harman Construction, Inc., Harrisonburg, VA, to create natural lighting, recycled flooring, a bike shed with a “green” roof and native landscaping among other things. Cedarwood residence hall will house 120 students, replacing Oakwood residence, a 40-year-old structure. read more

Seniors at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate auto shop, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, raised money to convert a 1997 GMC Sonoma S-10 pick-up truck from gas to electric. While students studied pollution, they created a vehicle that is useful for the average citizen and much healthier for the environment. The truck uses batteries that are 98 percent recyclable and, by the end of next semester, will have no direct emissions. At its completion in the coming months, the truck will be sold and the proceeds put toward future environmental projects at the school.

To read more, click on “Past Issues.” Go into 2009 and click on Volume 13 No. 15. “The Wheels are Turning” can be found in the left hand column. 

by Jim Bishop

HARRISONBURG, Va. – Not often do graduate students develop business strategies by observing first-hand patterns of meadow regeneration and interdependence at the Shenandoah National Park or by engaging social entrepreneurs at the local Farmers Market and at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton in conversations about achieving sustainability advantage.

Few business programs encourage students to use Facebook and Wikispaces to develop collaborative team strategies outside the classroom.  But then, the Steward-Leadership Masters in Business Administration at Eastern Mennonite University is no ordinary MBA program.

“Given its history of increasing leadership strengths, building management skills, and developing stewardship strategies, EMU’s MBA program is uniquely positioned to serve the needs of today’s demanding work-place and regional employers, as greater emphasis is now placed on ethics, stewardship of natural and human resources and effective collaborative strategies for a fast-changing global marketplace,” said Anthony E. (Tony) Smith, MBA co-director. “These very qualities lie at the heart of EMU’s institutional core values.”

Dr. Smith has been teaching a summer course in the MBA program “Stewardship, Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship,” that engaged students in systems approaches to stewardship and innovation and involved them in live projects with local corporations and non-profit organizations.  The clients included Shenandoah National Park, Rosetta Stone, American Shakespeare Center and the Staunton Creative Community Fund (SCCF).

“I’m very impressed by the amount of research on a complicated topic, in a short period of time that the MBA students have achieved.” said Tim Taglauer, assistant chief of interpretation and education for Shenandoah National Park, after MBA students gave a presentation on business strategies for increasing the “sustainable advantage” for the park.

Their recommendations included repositioning the park as a center for increasing eco-literacy and for the park to develop and strengthen strategic partnerships with local communities and schools.

Meghan Williamson, executive director of SCCF, found that the MBA students had developed an innovative “business to environment” model that could strengthen the success of their small business clients and outlined innovative financing methods to support SCCF’s programs.  The course ended Aug. 4 with MBA business strategy presentations to Rosetta Stone and to the American Shakespeare Center.

“This course is but one example of how the EMU’s Steward-Leadership MBA program offers a distinctive approach to preparing business leaders for the challenges of an increasingly uncertain business environment,” Smith stated. “The program works with the busy schedules of full-time working professionals who are seeking to strengthen their careers.”

For more information about the Steward-Leadership MBA program, contact Smith at anthony.smith@emu.edu or visit the website at www.emu.edu/mba or the MBA Facebook page at http://tinyurl.com/kuez2h.

Anna Yoder emphasized the value of creation care in “Enough is Enough; Rethinking What it Means to be a Peacemaker” during the C. Henry Smith Oratorical contest at Bluffton University in April. Drawing attention to the physical suffering of people around the world, Yoder proclaims that living peacefully means living simply, valuing justice over gain and practicing “radical generosity.” She says, “[O]ur accumulation of wealth has created in us a sense of entitlement that often makes us blind to the suffering of those around us…But as minister of reconciliation, we can’t keep trying to see the world through blind eyes, believing how we are living is peaceful when it is causing the land and people to suffer and die…If I am truly dedicated to a peacemaking lifestyle, than my actions should not be the type that harm God’s creation or keep resources from those who need it the most.” read more

Opportunities for learning do not end in May for students at Eastern Mennonite University. This summer, eight students and three professors conducted research in Harrisonburg, VA, Cambodia and Hawaii with grants from the National Science Foundation and the Hawaii Invasive Species Council. Professors and students joined together to conduct research on antioxidants in tomatoes, drinking water sanitation and the control of fire ants. read more

Goshen College hosted the May meeting of the Sustainable Business Roundtable in Michiana, sharing their green practices on campus. And why not when the president, faculty, staff and academic departments are joining together to advance them? The most innovative practice at Goshen College began developing in 1990. The energy management system is monitored on a hand-held computer which notifies the on-call personnel of campus “emergencies” such as an open window over Christmas break or humidity flocculation. Carefully monitored scheduling of lights, heating and air conditioning has caused decreased energy consumption so that Goshen College is using no more energy today than in 1994 despite the increasing dependence on technology.

Managing energy consumption is not the only area where Goshen College is practicing sustainability. Goshen College currently uses biodiesel fuel from the kitchen’s cooking oil waste and has plans to develop solar hot water heating as well as prairie grass plantings to absorb water run-off. Read More

On June 4, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN, celebrated official recognition of the school’s efforts to make their new library a green building. Scoring 47 of the 69 points possible from the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system, the library received a gold certification from the United States Green Building Council.

Some of the green characteristics of the AMBS library include triple-pane windows and use of natural light, efficient insulation and temperature control and also a landscape which effectively recycles rainwater. Most material for the construction project was gathered from the surrounding region and 92 percent of the building waste was recycled. read more

When children return to Warwick River Christian School, Newport News, Virginia, this fall, Administrator Greg Sommers has a challenge for them: Which classroom can recycle the most material?

The school has signed on to a single stream recycling plan which will enable the children to place a mixture of paper, cardboard, cans and bottles all in one bin. The recyclables will then go to a high-tech separating facility at TFC Recycling, a local company with an award-winning school recycling program that has diverted more than two million pounds of recyclables from landfills in the Virginia Beach area. 

“We are part of a Mennonite community that values stewardship of the land and natural resources,” Sommers says. “Like many schools, we go through a lot of paper and other easily-recycled items that were simply being tossed into the garbage. Recycling options, which were less cost-effective in years past, are now affordable enough for us to adopt.” 

Children at Warwick have also been doing projects on garbage and water pollution in light of the call to care for creation. Middle school students wrote skits and in one case, a puppet-based music video, to show the impact garbage has on our water supply. 

 Warwick River Christian serves children ages 3 through 8^th grade. The school is a ministry of local Mennonite congregations serving mainly children of other faiths or no faith.

At Goshen College the waste vegetable oil from the fryers in the cafeteria and snackshop is converted into biodiesel that is used by the college’s back-up electrical generator.  The chemical conversion from waste vegetable oil to biodiesel is done in an extensive processor that was built by and is run by GC students.  In a year about 150 gallons of the college’s waste vegetable oil are converted to biodiesel.  Learn more at the chemistry department’s biodiesel website. The site explains how the project got started, reviews the chemistry of biodiesel and describes GC’s processor in detail.

The site explains how the project got started, reviews the chemistry of biodiesel

Cedarwood under construction.

HARRISONBURG, Va. – Eastern Mennonite University and Altadena Energy &
Solar are cooperating on a solar hot water system for EMU’s new Cedarwood
residence hall, which is scheduled to open in August, 2009.  The solar hot
water system will preheat the domestic hot water for the new facility,
saving over 50% of the natural gas consumption associated with hot water
preparation for the 120-student dormitory.

Cedarwood, which is replacing EMU’s 39-year-old Oakwood residence, is both
a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and US
Energystar-rated building.

“Energy savings from the solar hot water system is estimated to be 2900
therms per year, which is over 2600 gallons of gasoline equivalent (GGE)
per year, or 528 tons of CO2 over its 30-year lifetime,” said Hans W.
Rosenberger, president of Altadena Energy and Solar based in
Altadena, Calif.

“The hot water system will dramatically reduce natural gas consumption,
which will also decrease the energy costs and price volatility for the
university,” Rosenberger said. “Solar system performance will be displayed
for the students in the building lobby and simultaneously recorded by the
building management system for further validation and analysis.”

The solar hot water service will be provided to Eastern Mennonite
University under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) from Altadena
Energy & Solar. The system will be built and commissioned in late summer
2009.