Sustainability at ICC Part 3 of 3: Teaching Green
EAST PEORIA — Sustainability is a developing focus at Illinois Central College. It is in the buildings, landscape, technology and policies. However, in the end, sustainability is a belief and a human practice, and the way to truly encourage an idea like that is to do what ICC is designed to do, teach about it.
Over the years, ICC has had to work to build up it’s sustainability initiatives because there was a time when sustainability, especially environmental matters, weren’t seen as a collegiate priority.
ICC biology professor Kristin Jacobson-Flex has seen some ups and downs in the sustainability progress that ICC has made over the years.
“When I started working here in 1992, I was adjunct, I as they say,” said Jacobson- Flex. “I tried starting an environmental biology class in the 90’s here in the biology department, and I was told then that there was no need for an environmental biology class. At another point they were supposed to put in dishwashers when they redid the cafeteria and that got pulled from the budget and they decided to keep using styrofoam dishes. It seems like we have good ideas but they get pulled from the budget regularly and then we move along until finally at glacial pace things get changed.”
She has seen a change in recent times, though.
“I feel that finally we are putting our money where our mouth is,” said Jacobson-Flex. “We have a committee with faculty and administration that is taking it more seriously than they did in the past. I feel like finally the glacier’s melting and the tides changing.”
In the past few years, ICC has been taking more official actions to make sustainability an official part of the educational structure. ICC President Dr. John Erwin has signed commitments pledging that the college will meet certain goals in sustainability, and there is a group here at ICC called the Greening the Curriculum Committee that has been working towards integrating sustainability into the general teaching styles at ICC.
Michelle Nielsen-Ott, a reference librarian at ICC, leads that committee, and she hopes to give students a real world feel for sustainability.
“It’s so important that students realize that sustainability is kind of an interconnected topic,” said Nielsen-Ott, “and that’s not just about recycling and it’s not just about saving the planet from an environmental standpoint – it’s about being sustainable in how we spend our dollars and how society is structured and things like that.”
For the college’s role in this, she wants professors to realize that they can promote sustainability in practically any of their classes.
“Sustainability is a theme that can go across curricular. It’s not just only in this class and only at this time. It’s something that you can apply to all facets of your education and your life.”