We began the Middlebury College Campus Master Plan process in the spring of 2005 with the understanding that we wanted to weave sustainability into every aspect of our thinking and planning process. In other words, our goal from the start was to create a fully integrated and comprehensive plan for the future of the campus. With its basis in our Strategic Plan and its connection to the College’s carbon neutrality initiative, we knew that we were creating a whole new level of institutional planning with our Campus Master Plan.
We gathered together a large Master Plan client team that represented all aspects of campus life including students, staff and faculty. We then sought a master planner who would actively embrace and advance our goal of sustainability planning. While we could find no one who had done such a master plan before, Michael Dennis had a personal passion for sustainability coupled with an eagerness to go out to this leading edge with us, along with much experience with more conventional master planning. He proved to be a fine partner and leader in this new process.
Middlebury has been an environmental leader for many years, so sustainability already permeated much of our culture, our operations, and our buildings. Our initial Master Plan meetings were spent exploring just what we meant by “sustainable master plan.” We started asking questions, including:
Into what nooks and crannies of our buildings, design/construction practices, maintenance and operations could we look to find even deeper levels of sustainable practices?
How could we be sure our specialty consultant team members were committed to sustainability not just in word but in deed?
How could we make this an open, collaborative, flexible process that would allow us to respond, embrace and include other events such as the students’ carbon neutrality petition to the Trustees?
An organic planning process came out of our questioning and evolved in response to input from many sources. It was somewhat unpredictable, but we were breaking new ground. We hope you will find the results of our work will lead you to ask similar questions of your institution.
We invite you to take a few minutes to browse these web pages or give us a call or email and we’d be happy to share what we’ve learned.
Sincerely,
Susan Personette
Associate Vice President for Facilities
Jennifer Oster Bleich
Project Manager, Office of Facilities Service
jbleich@middlebury.edu
802.443.5339