Setting Stretch Goals: Sustainability as the Organizing Principle for a

Strategic Plan

AASHE 2012October 15, 2012

Matt Mayberry, Brennan Professor of BusinessWilliam M. Throop, Provost

Green Mountain CollegePoultney, VT

Two storms converging

Crisis inHigher Education

Global Sustainability Crisis

While real wages have remained flat over the past 25 years, the real costs of higher ed have increased by a factor of 3.

With escalating costs, graduate underemployment, and studies showing poor student learning outcomes, families are reasonably questioning the value of a college degree.

The Crisis in Higher Ed

The global sustainability crisis

We’re on the wrong development path and it does not appear this will fundamentally change any time soon!

The natural response

• Focus on short-term fixes: survival

• Treat the challenges as technical problems

• Allocate specific issues to different disciplines

• Emphasize incremental change

• Avoid options that support a particular view of the good life; adopt the ideal of academic neutrality

The opportunity in these crises• It’s natural to try to separate the problems, but the overall system

cannot be described purely in terms of its individual parts

• This motivates radical transformations that have the potential to address both crises . . . starting with how we live and work together within our own college communities.

• Examples of organizational rebirth by dealing with crises holistically: IBM (1993 – 2000), Apple (1998 – 2005), Microsoft? (2009 - - ?)

Fugiwhara Effect

Global sustainability

crisis

Crises in higher ed

The opportunity is in understanding the interactions between the two crises—to see the whole

Green Mountain College Quick Facts:• Founded 1834 in Poultney, Vermont

• 155-acre main campus in Poultney with Georgian style architecture

• 800 students from 33 states and 26 countries (33% growth in enrollment over past 9 years)

• 20 academic majors, including flagship sustainability programs

• Three master’s degrees

• Environmental liberal arts theme

• National recognition for sustainability – AASHE, Sierra magazine, PR Green Honor Roll

• $41,000 total price; 30% Pell eligible students

Green Mountain College’s initial focus on the first crisis – the long range plan

Board of Trustees

Strategic PlanningWorking Group

Develop a second academic emphasis

Buildenrollment and

strengthen quantity

Diversify the delivery of educ.

programs

Strengthenthe sustainability

leadership

Increase affordability

Enhancefacilities & town-gown relations

Questions that demanded more radical answers

1. How can we increase learning and make it more relevant to students needs, given our best predictions about the future?

2. How can we address affordability and indebtedness while maintaining a high touch, non-industrial form of education?

3. How can we move sustainability from a set of activities and institutional initiatives to a cultural reality?

4. How can we create an inspirational vision for education and human well-being that motivates a paradigm shift?

Reframing the strategic plan

Natural capital

Adaptive systems

Goal: Sustainability 2020

Social capital

Financial Strength

Telling our story

• Human health and quality of life

• Student and employee engagement and well-being

• Community partnerships

• Entrepreneurial spirit

• Low-residency academic programs

• Residential enrollment and retention

• Robust culture of philanthropy

• Enhanced environmental programs

• Career prep: Green jobs

• Positive environmental impact

• Organization structure

• Clear measures of progress

• Facilities

• IT infrastructure

The stretch goal – authentic sustainability

Objective: Through our innovative education and research, Green Mountain College will achieve authentic sustainability by the end of this decade.

Put simply, we’re going to make things better in three ways: ecologically, socially and economically.

Authentic sustainability:

• “Enhancing our well-being without depriving others of the capacity to enhance theirs.”• Requires us to see sustainability not as

“sacrifice,” but as a way to improve our quality of life. We don’t just aim to survive in the coming decades; we aim to have a net positive impact—to thrive.

First steps in plan implementation

1. Create a set of metrics focused on outcomes rather than activities (AASHE STARS and beyond)

2. Rethink the aims, content and pedagogy of a liberal arts education; emphasize applied skills, timely knowledge and the cultivation of virtues (grit, adaptability, frugality…)

3. Define “sustainability” and “well-being” in concrete, achievable terms

4. Reduce costs and reframe the value proposition in terms of navigating the sustainability transition

Objections

• We do not know how to achieve authentic sustainability

• The goal is too ambitious

• The plan is not focused on improving education

• This can only work at a small college