At Ed School, It's Easy Being Green

The gleaming, 200-watt, photovoltaic panels crowning Gutman Library — which is just down the street from where George Washington first assembled his troops during the Revolutionary War — may be the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) most prominent monument in the battle against greenhouse gas emissions.

What’s less evident, however, is the history of their placement, which reveals a particular zeal for going green by HGSE. Leading the School’s charge is a 12-member, all-volunteer task force that has dubbed itself “Mother Nature’s Posse” (also known as the HGSE Green Team).

The back story of those six gleaming panels goes like this: In 2008, as part of a University-wide pledge sponsored by the Harvard Office for Sustainability, 45 percent of the HGSE community took a vow to improve the environment — both on- and off-campus — through simple, everyday measures, such as shutting off lights, hanging wet laundry, recycling, and even forgoing paper napkins. The average pledge rate at most other Schools wasn’t quite half of that.

For full story, please read http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/at-ed-school-it%E2%80%99s-easy-being-green/.