• To establish Carleton as a leader in living and learning in concert with the natural environment
• To further link Cowling Arboretum to Carleton’s educational mission through continuing research, ecological restoration, and interpretive programming

Carleton is poised to take the lead in being responsible for its own environmental footprint while integrating rigorous study of environmental issues across the curriculum. Investments in the College’s energy and utility infrustructure will enable us to change the energy and carbon profile of the campus for the next 40 years. An endowment fund will enable Carleton to create a greener campus environment while reducing energy spending at the same time. Carleton’s creative and innovative students are active participants in cocurricular sustainability efforts, most visibly in the development of a wind turbine in 2004.

A campuswide sustainability initiative is an opportunity not only to make a contribution to a better environment but also to stimulate quantitative and integrative research across many disciplines. Endowing faculty positions will strengthen the College’s curriculum in areas such as environmental history, conservation biology, and environmental policy, increasing the College’s ability to involve students in team-based research addressing complex real-world problems.

Students have made the environmental and technology studies (ENTS) program one of Carleton’s most popular interdisciplinary endeavors and endowing its faculty and programs are vital to our future. Student interest in the program, which involves 29 faculty members from 14 departments, is extremely high: In 2006–07, approximately 800 students have enrolled in ENTS courses and 24 members of the Class of 2007 are ENTS concentrators.

The Integrative Spatial Modeling Initiative, a new ENTS project, will provide students with the emerging technologies, tools, and skills they need in order to study and solve complex environmental issues. Many of today’s global problems, such as energy, climate change, poverty, natural disasters, health crises, hunger, and biodiversity loss, have multiple causes. Finding solutions requires educated leaders who are skilled experts in their individual fields, but who also can work collaboratively to define broader questions, invent new concepts, and create new theories about how the social and natural worlds interact. Carleton’s ENTS program is ideally situated at the academic crossroads of many of these global issues.

Carleton’s 880-acre Cowling Arboretum offers unparalleled educational opportunities related to science and conservation. It also provides a link between Carleton and the region through opportunities for fitness and reflection.

As an educational asset, the Arb is a place where Carleton students can research natural habitats, especially those linked to the study of biology and geology. An endowment fund would provide permanent support for the Arb’s management, infrastructure, trails, and flood control.

As a conservation project, the Arb provides an ongoing laboratory for restoration of native ecological communities, including tallgrass prairie and oak savanna. The Arb’s natural communities are growing as more of its acreage is removed from agricultural production. Students are active participants in the ecological restoration efforts, working to eliminate exotic species and collecting plant seeds from local prairie remnants to be used for prairie restoration in the Arb. Student naturalists conduct natural history tours of the area.

As a recreational resource, the Arb is a place to walk, run, ski, fish, or enjoy being outdoors. Carleton’s academic environment is rigorous, and students often use the arboretum for reflection and contemplation.