ENVS 295: Environmental Management Systems

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ENVS 295 Environmental Management Systems

• A team based course made up of several different
  roles
• The faculty (Gioia Thompson and Ralph Stuart)
• Assistant faculty (Christina Erickson and
  Michelle Smith- Mullarkey)
• Students from last years class working on their
  senior projects
• Students from this years class
• Designed to develop environmental management
  skills through hands on teamwork (rather than on
  the job experience).

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Where this Course Came From

• 1985 UVM Risk Management Department (2.5 people)
  gets two year funding for a chemical safety
  person for campus due to changing regulations. I
  moved over from a laboratory in Civil Engineering
  to take the job.
• The regulatory changes primarily affect the use
  of laboratory chemicals at UVM, so thats where I
  started.

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What Happens to a Person in a New Position?
Laboratory Emergency Response
Fume Hood Certification
MSDS collection
Laboratory Waste Management
Laboratory Safety Training
Institutional Biosafety Committee
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I Got Lucky, in a way my priorities were set
for me

• The regulations kept changing and about two years
  after I started the job, the laboratory hazardous
  waste program ended up with 10,000 fine from the
  state of Vermont.
• Fortunately, the day the inspectors showed up, we
  had a consultant on campus looking at the
  program. His report arrived before the
  inspectors did and predicted the results because
  of lack of resources for the program.

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The Net Result the UVM Environmental Safety
Facility

• By 1995, 7 people were managing UVMs hazardous
  waste pretty effectively at 667 Spear Street,
  although not without some problems along the way
• 40,000 fine in 1993 before the ESF was complete
• New enforcement initiative by EPA Region 1
  against higher education based on citations at
  Yale and UConn portended similar problems
  throughout New England

Around 1997, UVM was invited to join Boston group
of schools to deal with EPA Region 1 about the
lab waste issue
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Along Comes the UVM Environmental Council

• This grad student representing the Environmental
  Council comes down to Spear Street and asks us
  how our program could be improved and how would
  we know if it was. She had been going all over
  campus asking these questions and had gotten lots
  of cooperation from middle management with those
  questions.
• About this time, we had decided to participate in
  a regulatory reinvention project with EPA and
  we needed lay stakeholders to represent the
  community. The Environmental Council fit this
  need.
• The EPA asked us to develop a plan that looked
  like an Environmental Management System to change
  the regulation, so we were investigating the
  technical aspects of what this meant.

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Around 1999, a new full-time positionThe UVM
Environmental Coordinator
Recycled paper purchasing
Cafeteria styrofoam
Global warming
Recycling
Eco literacy
Greening Aiken
McNeil steam
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Around 2000, a new EC staff co-chair

• The Staff Co-chair does most of the
  administrative supervision of the Environmental
  Coordinator
• Many good things were happening, but I recognized
  the signs of idea overload
• We decided we needed a way to prioritize all
  those ideas and explain those priorities to many
  audiences (the Environmental Council, students,
  faculty, Board of Trustees, the President).
  Perhaps an EMS would help?
• However, EMSs were designed to work in an
  industrial environment, but were proving
  difficult to use in academia.

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Environmental Management atThe Environmental
University

• In our spare time, Gioia and I worked with
  various EMS tools, including a state course on
  ISO 14,000 and a C2E2 checklist for EMS
  development
• Around 2002, an Environmental Council
  brainstorming session came up with the four
  aspects of the Environmental University
• Environmental Campus
• Environmental Academics
• Environmental Culture
• Environmental Accountability
• This approach seemed to form a reasonable basis
  for an EMS concept in academia, but the technical
  problems remained.

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Enter Eco-Campus

• In the spring of 2005, I went to the UKs
  Environmental Association of Universities and
  Colleges conference and heard about a simpler,
  staged model of Environmental Management Systems
  designed for higher education there called
  Eco-Campus.
• This approach seemed like a doable thing at UVM,
  a good way of connecting compliance and beyond
  compliance.
• Gioia and I were also interested in working
  directly on the academic side in order better
  align with the institutional mission, so we
  decided to use Eco Campus as a teaching as well
  as a management tool.

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ENVS 295 2006

• Last years class used the Eco Campus scheme as a
  template to perform a gap analysis - assess key
  environmental programs at UVM and identify
  opportunities for improvement.
• Specifically, we focused on
• Transportation and Parking
• Green House Gases emissions
• Construction and Demolition Wastes
• Overall EMS policy

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ENVS 295 2007

• This year we intend to be more analytical and
  perform management system audits for selected
  programs in order to build a catalog for the
  Environmental Council Operations Committee
• We will also practice these skills at McGill and
  Concordia Universities in Montreal
• We will identify specific programs for deeper
  analysis and provide suggestions for improvement
  to the program managers, the Environmental
  Council and the Vice President for Finance and
  Administration.

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What Ive Learned

• People tend to overestimate what can be done in
  one year and to underestimate what can be done in
  five or ten years.
• Joseph Licklider, MIT computer and internet
  visionary
• We interested in learning how to think on the ten
  year horizon within an organization

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In Summary, the Course Objectives are

• 1) Understand the basic concepts of Environmental
  Management Systems used in industry and by the
  EPA for 15 years
• 2) Develop skills in environmental management
  auditing and reporting through field trips on the
  UVM campus
• 3) Use these skills to conduct an audit of
  specific environmental programs at a Montreal
  university using the EcoCampus model
• 4) Evaluate one UVM environmental program as part
  of a team, presenting the results to the UVM
  administration