Kurt Teichert is environmental coordinator at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he develops initiatives with students, faculty, and administrators to reduce the negative environmental impacts of the university operations.
Monday, 21 Jan 2002
POCASSET, Mass.
My dog Auggie and I headed out before breakfast this morning for a sunrise walk in Mud Cove. Located at the end of an unmarked gravel road, past the underutilized railroad tracks that carry trash to the off-cape incinerator, this cove is classic Cape Cod. I am careful to walk Auggie deep into the woods in the adjacent Bourne Conservation Trust Land, as canine-originated nitrogenous effluent (aka dog poop) is a major cause of shellfish bed closures in this area. I will be home all day today and will not be making the trek into Providence, so I linger to enjoy reflections of yesterday’s snowfall on the calm water.
Mud Cove in Bourne.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
It is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and my thoughts are filled with what could have been: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Dr. King would now be wise elder statesmen had they lived full lives. I am buoyed by the realization that this holiday is still largely about a great person and a dream — not about shopping — and that many feel compelled to spend the day in service, rather than just taking “a day off.” The last time I remember going to work on this day was when I was at New Alchemy Institute, working under then-director Greg Watson, an African-American who is a true visionary in the environmental and energy fields in New England. We planted and dedicated a Peace Pole on the Institute’s farm in a ceremony that was very emotional for all of us.
It was during a six-month appointment at New Alchemy to research the economics of organic farming that I came to Cape Cod with Karen and our 5-month-old son, Derek, back in 1985. Those months turned into years at NAI, where 12-hour days on nonprofit pay were supplemented with bartending at night and carpentry on weekends. My work was dedicated to “sustainable living,” yet it seemed like our life was far from it. While raising our young children, Karen counseled emotionally disturbed foster kids who lived in our home. We were the archetypical young idealists who were way overextended and trying to do some good in the world before we hit total burnout. Hopefully during that time we advanced the ideals of our fallen leaders in some small way. We’re still here 17 years later, with kids in high school, ties to the community, and a 200-year-old home we’re currently remodeling.
Hilary, Kevin, Karen, Kurt, and Derek on safari in Tanzania.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
Today’s service to the community will have to be limited to picking up some plastic jugs and beer cans around Mud Cove, as I have much work to do on the house and Karen and the kids are all home from school today. Last fall I took on the roles of architect, client, engineer, general contractor, and grunt in our home-remodeling effort; we’re putting on an addition that will have passive solar orientation, thermal and mechanical performance to Energy Star standards, and a salvaged active solar thermal hot water system coupled to a radiant slab floor. Much of the work will use salvaged materials so that the addition blends in with the character of the rest of the house and so that I can give the appearance of being a creative, environmentally responsible homeowner when entertaining guests and consuming stuff.
Today we are putting down a base of crushed stone so we can lay insulation and tubing for the radiant floor system. Kevin, our youngest, operates the rented flat-plate compactor (“my hands are numb, Dad”) to pack the substrate for a stable slab. It has been a rewarding (usually) experience to have total control over the project. Friends and neighbors have done much of the hired work and our family is investing plenty of sweat equity in the project (“What will we do next, Dad, if we’re ever done roofing?”). In my work on buildings at Brown, I often have to contend with the many reasons that something can’t be done, either due to an alleged lack of time and money, or an apparent shortage of common sense. On my own project, I can spend less time considering whether to call it green or sustainable and more time just getting it done with my own hands.
Tuesday, 22 Jan 2002
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
One of the few things I dislike about my day job is that I am obliged to wear socks that match. Later today I’ll be in a design team meeting for Brown University’s new Life Sciences Building, so I need to look the part when I sit down with the deans and engineers. Before making the mad dash to meet the carpool, I grab a J. Garcia tie (matches each sock) and notice my mud-encrusted jeans in the corner, standing ready to serve again this evening.
The Urban Environmental Lab, home of the Center for Environmental Studies and my office.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
This gets me thinking about the concept of “work clothes.” When I meet architects and engineers at the outset of any project, I tend to do a quick survey of their hands and try to determine if they’ve ever actually built anything. Working at a university, I’m all for “book learning” and academic degrees, but I also believe strongly in the benefits of applied, tactile learning. Of course, the designers probably look at my hands and wonder if I’ve ever actually hit a nail.
Building design is a process of multivariable zero-sum games, though some of the participants (like those responsible for the capital and operating budgets) seem to understand this better than others. I feel fortunate that I’m able to participate at the design table for every major project at Brown. Since we were reasonably successful at incorporating environmentally responsible design into the MacMillan Hall Sciences Teaching Building project seven years ago, I was appointed to work with design teams to include green specifications and efficient technology in major renovations and new construction projects on campus.
The Brown Is Green initiative has many facets — from recycling programs to environmental education to eco-friendly construction projects. Of all the opportunities and challenges I enjoy as coordinator of the initiative, construction science really winds my watch (or would if I wore one).
One email in my blissfully quiet inbox this morning contains an agenda for this afternoon’s meeting and includes this bullet-point: “Commons glazing compliance with energy code.” I note the conspicuous absence of any punctuation. I favor an exclamation point, but fear a question mark. To prepare for any scenario, I search through my computer for copies of meeting notes and code language so that I am well-armed with information before the meeting gets started.
Study model of the Life Sciences Building.
Photo: Ballinger Architects and Engineers.
It is my belief that all disciplines and licensed professions are clubs that ward off unwanted members with three-letter acronyms (TLAs) and jargon. If you want to be a player in that club, you need to have a comfortable working knowledge of the language (and your socks better match). Because one of my central functions is to coordinate ECMs with NECo’s DSM program, I am always on the lookout for DDC and VSD opportunities to reduce PLDs that can be included in the CDA and save Brown $$$. If you understand that sentence, then — welcome! Can I pour you a drink?
Once I’m actually in the meeting, the agenda item in question becomes the subject of analyses and cost estimates of glazing options (very high cost and long payback for high performance glass) for the commons area that I will be reviewing. We agree to focus our attention on efficient delivery of heating and cooling in the area and decide that radiant slab heating would be a good choice. I have long been a proponent of radiant floor heating, but my own house addition project will be the first installation I’ve done since I built classrooms at New Alchemy Institute in the late 1980s. The latest copy of Environmental Building News has an excellent article on the pros and cons of radiant floor heating.
One of the challenges I face at Brown is that many of the technologies I propose are often dismissed as something that “doesn’t work” (most often due to improper application or installation) or won’t work because “we’ve never done it that way.” I have found calm diplomacy to work best for me at the design table. On the MacMillan Hall project, I actually played good cop to a design team member’s bad cop and we got results.
Bamboo landscaping, outdoor recycling bins, and abundant daylighting at the Watson Institute.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
After the meeting, I round out the work day with a visit to the new Watson Institute building. I had high hopes for this project because it houses international programs on the environment and offices for visiting scholars from Europe who are accustomed to high performance in their buildings. Even though I know too well how practical operating considerations ultimately lost out to accoutrements, I am now being asked to produce some information on the greener attributes of the project. We were able to incorporate more than 20 electrical energy conservation measures in the Comprehensive Design Approach analysis, and the building has wonderful daylighting and a very open, communicative feel inside. So I’ll stick with the general theme of diplomacy in the international studies building and produce a positive write-up.
Back on the home front in the evening, I stop to watch my daughter Hilary start as a high school freshman on the varsity basketball team. I enjoyed the art and science of coaching her and other adolescent girls for four years, but now I have to hold back my instructions and settle in to my role as a rooting parent full of pride. Later, after I stock firewood and don some comfortable socks, Auggie and I head to the Four Ponds Conservation Area for a walk by half-moon light. Auggie’s nose takes control of his movements and the silhouettes of barren trees guide my way as the variable crunch of snow, ice, and soil underfoot reveal the trail’s solar exposure in the hours before New England spun into the dark of night.
Wednesday, 23 Jan 2002
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
A new day broke through a hazy portal this morning, as I awoke from the deepest sleep I’ve had in weeks. Last week I was in the Pacific Northwest for the National Recycling Coalition’s Annual Congress. My schedule was thrown off because I stayed up too many late nights on PST (that’s a time zone) — or maybe it just took that long for the Seattle-strength cappuccinos to finally wear off.
Soon after my arrival on campus on this warm, sunny morning, I head to the Watson Institute to check on the status of some new lighting controls. At the site, I see the waste packer truck by the dumpster for the new building. The driver is struggling with piles of cardboard.
Cleanscape recycling container label.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
I go over to help out and Jay Sisson, Brown’s construction manager for the project, also arrives on the scene. This is the newest stop on Brown’s rubbish and recycling route and we discuss who “owns” the cardboard and what we need to do to communicate how the material should be properly broken down and put in the recycling bins. Jay has burned the midnight oil (along with most of his energy and patience) to finish this project on time, and sorting trash is the last thing he needs at this point. We rearrange the containers a bit, as occupants of the nearest offices in the building have requested that they see recycling containers instead of dumpsters when they look out their window.
This past year, I helped our custodial division separate our waste and recycling contracts. As a result, we now have Cleanscape, Inc. as a dedicated recycling company. In addition to providing quality recycling services to businesses in the Providence area, Cleanscape was started by the South Providence Development Corporation with the mission “to create meaningful, living wage jobs and economic opportunity for residents of the Providence enterprise community.” When we worked with other companies, we had to make a special request that they provide multi-lingual signs. With Cleanscape, that hasn’t been an issue; it’s been their policy from the start, since they provide employment for a diverse population.
Brown does not have a full-time recycling coordinator. One of my responsibilities as the in-house consultant on environmental issues — a free-range green virus, if you will — is to analyze and assist Facilities Management in running the recycling program. Organized recycling started at Brown in 1972 and Harold Ward, head of the Environmental Studies program, and his student interns laid the groundwork for the mandatory commercial recycling program in Rhode Island.
Custom recycling stations at Brown.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
My job description also provides for about 10 percent of my time to be allocated to outreach to other schools. I have been involved with the College and University Recycling Council of the National Recycling Coalition for nearly 10 years. Before that, I had been managing a listserv for green campus initiatives at Brown. As recycling coordinators from campuses around the nation sought to organize and improve communication between institutions, they contacted me to establish a listserv for their group. I got to know many of the founders of this group via email. The Annual Congress provides a place for us to put faces to email sigs and share the triumphs and tribulations of our work. It is a great group of people.
One of the workshops I gave at NRC was on reuse opportunities on college campuses. Brown has incorporated specifications in our contract language to insure that construction contractors comply with a waste management plan so that we salvage and recycle as much material as possible. In another workshop, I facilitated a discussion of the expanding job descriptions with which many recycling coordinators and institutions are struggling.
When I started at Brown in 1992, there were few institutions with a position dedicated to coordinating the environmental efforts on campus. Now, there is a growing cadre of environmental and sustainability coordinators. Individuals that have worked in the recycling programs at their campuses for years represent a great resource, as they have a working, hands-on knowledge of their institutions. I am pleased that I can provide some support for these dedicated folks.
At lunch, I head to Louis Restaurant. This place is a classic diner, with construction workers, facilities mechanics, and students rubbing elbows over their blue-plate specials as classical music completes the ambience. The place is very busy, since this is the first day of the spring semester at Brown and students are buzzing with tales of winter breaks spent in exotic places.
Despite the distance I must travel between home and work, one of the things that I love about my geographically split existence is that the population shifts with the seasons. Summer is hopping on the Cape and quiet around campus. Then, on Labor Day weekend it seems like thousands of people exit my community and come back to Brown. The few weeks in January are the only time both places are quiet.
Back home, I actually get to sit down with Karen for nearly a half-hour over dinner before heading off to the soccer board meeting. For 10 years I served as coach, board member, VP, and president for Bourne Youth Soccer Association, but I stepped down this year to focus on the building project at home. Working with a wonderful group of volunteers in town and advancing the skills of the kids has been a very rewarding experience. As the meeting wraps up, one of the members comments on my Cheshire-cat grin and relaxed demeanor as I make a motion to adjourn the meeting to a nearby location to sample the evening’s pint special.
Thursday, 24 Jan 2002
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
As I traverse the Buzzards Bay Watershed on Route 195, I’m alone in the van and singing along with Martin Sexton on the radio: “Some people will say I’m crazy singin’ out loud like I do here on the street.” I’m being passed by SOBs with cell phone blinders racking up low MPG VMTs in their SOV SUVs, which can really get me PO’d unless I practice a little stress management. Welcome to the commuters’ lounge in the TDM club. (No, not meditation, I’m talking about transportation demand management. And SOVs, for those who’ve forgotten, are single-occupancy vehicles. The rest I bet you can decipher.)
A wakeup call from my carpool buddy Tor had me befuddled at first this morning, as his calls often do, but the synapses soon started firing. Patti had to leave work early yesterday afternoon to make a hospital visit, so Tor and I grabbed the van from work. I figure that if Patti is driving in I will need to go alone, SOV-style, to return the van and Tor should get his car up to our meeting place over the bridge and head in with her. That way, Patti can drop us off tonight and Tor can drop me back at my house. For a while last year, we had five people in our carpool and these calls were actually confusing.
Power plants, SUVs, and tankers as we head over the Braga Bridge in Fall River.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
When I first started working at Brown University, I drove to work alone in an old diesel Rabbit. I had originally intended to commute for a short period, figuring that once I was sure Brown and I were a good fit I would move closer to Providence. The job stuck, but so did my commitment to community and family in Bourne. I soon sold the rabbit — the waft of black smoke outweighed the car’s 54-mpg fuel economy on the scales of my conscience — and took the bus for a while. I eventually started carpooling after a phone technician came into my office at Brown, noticed photos of Cape Cod taken near his home, and asked me how I got to work.
How I get to work — really, how all of us get to work — is an issue dear to my heart. I have worked with many students on projects related to transportation. Students in one introductory course managed to work their way through the administrative bureaucracy to establish a ride-matching electronic bulletin board as part of a class project. Before they could even draft a mission statement for the list, a message was posted: “Ride wanted from Keeney to Barus and Holley weekday mornings.” The students were mortified. Keeney is a dorm about three blocks from the Barus and Holley classroom building. Now there’s a fine example of how hands-on projects teach brutal lesson in reality that just can’t be found in textbooks. Brown University is currently under some pretty intense pressure from the community to do something about the tight parking situation of the urban campus. One student project conservatively estimated that over 50,000 vehicle miles traveled per day could be attributed to Brown employees in single-occupancy vehicles. Some Brown employees leave their offices every two hours to move their cars from one time-limited street to the next — a sport known in the local dialect as “the pahking shuffle.” The supply-side solutions under consideration are expensive and intrusive, so the administration is hoping to reduce the size of new parking facilities and show the community they are working to alleviate the problem.
Fortunately, some headway is finally being made. Two graduate students recently completed an excellent report that was well-received by administrators. Brown has retained a consulting firm to suggest concrete steps to reduce demand, and I am able to provide much of the background data they require, thanks to years of student projects. Our benefits office might soon get it together to offer the pre-tax transportation benefit I requested years ago.
Our carpool is full as we reach the halfway point in our trip home this evening. Patti is driving and has tuned the radio to NPR’s “All Things Considered” — a more universally accepted choice than our individual, eclectic musical tastes. When asked about the pros and cons of carpooling, she told a staff group that one of the things that drives her crazy is the way I constantly change stations on the radio. (I’m only trying to avoid lobotomizing commercials.)
Driving with the tankers on 195.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
I’m typing these lines from the shotgun seat. My laptop’s LCD monitor emits a muted glow similar to the passing haze of New Bedford harbor lights cast up in the fog — what Tom Robbins describes as “cold clam aspic” over Puget Sound on a typical winter day.
In about a half-hour, after the vehicle transfer, Tor and I will be over the bridge and on our final approach to home. It has been 12 hours since I last saw my son Kevin and I’ll have time to give him a quick haircut — “How many more snips, Dad?” — before I head out to watch Derek play basketball.
A slight tinge of guilt washes over me as we pass by the Fairhaven site where a tanker truck overturned off 195 in early December and spilled 9000 gallons of gas into wetlands. Providence is the major fuel depot for southern New England and our daily route is a primary delivery artery.
I wonder if the Ford Valdez drivers ever make the connection between their driving habits and the increased risk of such spills. I rationalize that my energy conservation efforts at home and work hopefully offset my transportation impacts as I take a deep breath and silently hum Sexton’s “Black Sheep”:
Somebody told me once before
you can never go home again once you leave
say anything just to steer me away from the truth of what I who I am and what I believe
Friday, 25 Jan 2002
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
As Dr. Science would say, “I have a Master’s Degree — in Science!” I was the token liberal arts guy while working on a masters in resource economics at Oregon State University in the early 80s. To the extent I’m an academic at Brown, I feel like a token extension agent within the “new” curriculum (as it is still called 25 years later). Practice in the context of theory, or “eyes on the vision, feet on the ground” as we used to chime at the New Alchemy Institute.
When I read Jane Smiley’s Moo, I identified somewhat with Tim Monahan, a bit of a fish out of water who had a habit of arriving late on campus before his first class of the semester. Aficionados of sardonic wit — you are a Grist reader aren’t you? — should get a hoot out of the book’s insights into academia, particularly if you’ve ever done time at a land grant university.
ES41 Students getting clear on the concept of power on a plant tour.
Photo: Kurt Teichert.
The one course I offer at Brown each spring semester, ES41 Environmental Stewardship, is an applied, group-project-based course. The students are responsible for preparing a presentation and leading discussion on an environmental issue of their choosing. We take field trips to composting operations and power plants, and probe the inner mechanical workings of campus buildings.
The first class starts Monday, and in preparation I tuned up the documents and readings on the course web site. As a card-carrying ENTP in the Myers-Briggs club (that’s Extroverted/Intuitive/Thinking/Perceiving, for those of you who haven’t taken a personality test in a while), I tend to prepare for classes, presentations, toasts, childbirth, etc. at the last minute. Improvisation supplants most of those plans anyhow.
I tell the students right up front that in this course they’ll need to be self-motivated and willing to think outside of any boxes and “isms” they’ve been constrained to in the past. I also feel it is ethically correct, or at least entertaining, to clarify that I’m not really a professor and I am basically finding ways for them to help me do my job while they get course credit. “Think of yourselves as consultants to the university, with a schedule of billable deliverables — only we bill you!”
It’s great to figure out what my students are like by gauging their reactions. In addition to the obligatory who, where, why background, I like to have students introduce themselves by sharing their favorite environmental paradox. Some of my favorite examples of oxymoronic behavior: cars idling at the recycling center, dripping low-flow faucets, and recycled-content toilet paper flushed into a failed septic system. Our work is of the utmost importance, I urge, but it is best kept in perspective.
This is your brain on a halogen torchiere lamp.
Photo: Chris Calwell.
Following Harold Ward’s lead of service-learning courses and theses, the projects we do attempt to provide a solution for a particular campus environmental issue or opportunity. Students must identify a central question — what Professor Zappa would refer to as “the crux of the biscuit.” I have a particular interest in proposing projects related to electrical plug loads — computers, lamps, and appliances. A few years ago, we did a project on dorm electrical use that identified an emerging problem with the increased use of high-wattage halogen torchiere lamps. Even though these projects did not compel the university to take action on lamp choices, when the university decided to ban halogen torchieres because of serious safety concerns, the students were able to suggest efficient alternatives that were used by the administration. And the students were able to renew an old theme for a fun slogan: “This is your brain on a halogen torchiere.”
I like the fact that the students work on their projects for the sake of environmental impact reduction. In my work on building projects, I tend to get caught up in the economic analyses, as administrators need to hear the bottom line in financial terms. Students are more likely to be compelled by how projects affect the environment or their personal life. I loved the approach John Passacantando’s Ozone Action team took to increase awareness of global warming issues in New England schools: “Slush sucks.”
I consider it a fringe benefit of my job that I have the opportunity to work with sharp, active, and refreshingly irreverent Brown students interested in environmental issues. For me, the students are like a rewarding night of meteor showers — one great shooting star after another. Every once in a while, one named Becky, Saul, or Charlotte shoots across the horizon with a unique glow or particularly bright presence that really makes you stand up and take notice. I look forward to meeting a new class today and looking for that twinkle.
