Putting the 'Green' in the Big Green

Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff take action to create a more sustainable future.

Dartmouth is wild at heart. Surrounded by forests, mountains, rolling hills, rivers, and streams, students say Dartmouth's profound sense of place heightens their awareness of the precarious condition of the planet. The landscape's natural beauty also intensifies their concerns about climate change and their desire to protect and preserve the environment. When it rains on a day when they'd expect snow, or when smoke from wildfires a thousand miles away mingles with morning fog, that gets their attention.

There's a big correlation between people who are outdoorsy and appreciate nature, and people who are more environmentally conscious or aware—those go hand in hand," says Ali Bauer '25, a double major in geography and environmental studies from Radnor, Pennsylvania. Bauer, whose courses this summer included Agroecology, works as a research assistant with the Energy Justice Clinic (more on that below). "Being at a place like Dartmouth, where we are so embracing of nature, that's a draw for a lot of people, like it was for me."

When it comes to opportunities to develop a more environmentally sustainable future, Dartmouth's reach is local—and it's global. Students delve into projects that range from granular to grand. The undergraduate curriculum, for example, is chock full of courses that touch on of-the-moment topics related to climate and sustainability, ranging across disciplines from anthropology, geography, and earth sciences to engineering. The campus itself offers opportunities for environmental research—with students working side-by-side with faculty and administrators to assess how Dartmouth could develop more efficient heating and cooling systems. They also conduct experiments on plants, soil, and insects at its 200-acre Organic Farm, with an eye toward creating more sustainable food systems. A student-run repair shop refurbishes junked bikes for sale and rental. Members of the student-run Dartmouth Energy Alliance have fun tackling energy challenges at hackathons and trivia nights. Meanwhile, students travel from Chile to the Arctic, and from West Virginia to the Gulf Coast, to research the impacts of climate change and resource extraction on the people who live there—and to learn how they can help make a difference.

Farm Days

On a hot summer afternoon in July, environmental studies majors Dario Arazi '24 and Maia Crichlow '25 prepped strawberry plants to cultivate in a grid of test plots at the Organic Farm, alongside the banks of the Connecticut River. Both work as research assistants with environmental studies professor Theresa Ong. "We're trying to determine how different layering of nitrogen-fixing plants can affect plant productivity," Crichlow explains.
Strawberries are nitrogen fixers—their roots attract beneficial bacteria that enrich the soil. "It's really cool to see what's thriving, to see the intersection between earth and plant," Arazi says, as he points out differences in plant growth in various test plots marked with flags. "At least for now, the plots with nitrogen-fixing plants are outpacing the others." Arazi, who is from New York City and considering either a career in academia or starting a renewable energy company, says a goal of experiments at the farm is to get food systems to a point of hyper-efficiency—"to do the most with the least." The farm grows more than 4,000 pounds of produce a year, from basil and broccoli to carrots, kale and a variety of winter squashes—and donates a third of that to the community.

During the growing season student interns and volunteers help with planting, weeding, and harvesting about 40 different vegetables, as well as flowers, and, as winter gives way to early spring, some work on the Sugar Crew, tapping about 120 trees for maple syrup. "It's an educational farm, for experiential learning, and a great canvas for creative thinking and creative problem-solving," says assistant sustainability director Laura Braasch, who oversees farm operations. "It's a place where students can turn their ideas into reality."

Advocating for Energy Equity

Last year Solange Acosta-Rodriguez '24, a member of the Energy Justice Clinic, traveled to southern Chile to meet members of the Indigenous Mapuche-Williche community. "They believe that their ancestors' souls flow through the rivers of their land," she says. The Mapuche have been engaged in a protracted dispute over their spiritual and territorial land rights with Statkraft, a Norwegian state-owned company that acquired rights to build dams on those rivers for hydropower projects.

The clinic, founded by anthropology professor Maron Greenleaf and post-doctoral researcher Sarah Kelly in November 2021, gives undergraduates hands-on experience in supporting equitable energy transitions. It was created with the support of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society, which was founded in 2016 to leverage the College's strengths in interdisciplinary teaching and learning, engineering, business, and sustainability to provide solutions to critical energy problems across the globe.

"In this generation," says Greenleaf, "there's a sense of urgency about the climate crisis. There's a real sense of 'We need to do something.' Participating in the clinic is a way to take what we learn in a class like Environmental Justice about inequality in the world and try to do something about it."

Miami resident Acosta-Rodriguez, who is majoring in geography and environmental studies and worked on the Appalachian Trail this summer, accompanied Kelly to Chile. She then joined a small delegation from the Mapuche-Williche community who traveled to Norway to press their case. She was gratified that members of the Mapuche "mentioned how important it was to feel like they were heard—like they aren't just voices crying out in the desert."

Closer to home, the Energy Justice Clinic continues to work on Community Choice Aggregation, helping people in towns including Hanover decide whether to join the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, which enables municipalities to collectively purchase electricity that is more renewable—and less expensive. Clinic members also partner with Vermont nonprofit Cover Home Repair to help Upper Valley residents weatherize their homes.

"We've had the fortune to attract students who want to get engaged in real-life issues around energy justice, who are interested in really relating to communities, and also are quite passionate and driven in their work," Kelly says.

Deluges and Drought

As a first-year student, Christopher Picard '23 took a class called How the Earth Works. "Toward the end of the class we started talking a bit more about climate," Picard recalls. He learned that a student in geography professor Jonathan Winter's Applied Hydroclimatology Group had done some regional climate models. That sparked Picard's interest, and he lined up a grant to dig into the data, working remotely over the pandemic's first summer. He then continued to work as a research assistant with Winter on the project.

Their study, published this spring, predicted that extreme precipitation in the Northeast will increase 52 percent by 2099. That has implications for flooding, bridge stability, and agriculture, Picard says. The study also projected that extreme precipitation in the Northeast's winters will increase by 109 percent.

The study, with Picard as lead author, appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change and was featured in The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor. "I just wanted a summer job, and it ended up kind of changing my whole trajectory," he says. "Undergraduate research has been the most impactful part of my time at Dartmouth. If you want to get into it, it's easy. Just come up with a good idea. The professors get excited and there's tons of funding." Picard, who did a senior thesis on glacier science in Greenland based on remote sensing by satellites that monitor changes in earth processes, is now a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In his class on Climate Change and the Future of Agriculture, Professor Winter's students also investigate how warming temperatures will change crop yields. Using corn plants grown in the greenhouse at the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, his research assistants test their tolerance to differing levels of drought. Winter says his research often overlaps with his teaching. "Students have such great questions. At the end of the term I'm always saying, 'If you're interested in research, in climate and sustainability, you should let me know.'"

Empowering the Campus

Reducing the College's greenhouse emissions is a key challenge for the Office of Sustainability, whose mission is to empower community members to take on the human and environmental problems of a rapidly changing planet. "We also try to use the College's physical plant as an opportunity to engage students," says director Rosi Kerr '97. "Students here are passionate and bright and driven. We're giving them the experience of getting under the hood and figuring this stuff out."

After the College scrapped plans for a wood-burning biomass plant three years ago, it embarked on plans to retrofit and electrify its heating and cooling systems. It also began to explore the feasibility of geothermal heat exchange to supply energy for the campus. (In these systems, pumps harness heat from deep underground in cold weather and transfer it to provide warmth for buildings, and in summer, the heat pumps pull heat from the air and store it underground, to provide cooling.) As part of the feasibility study, hundreds of exploratory test wells have been drilled around the campus.

For environmental earth sciences major Grace Mendolia '24, that turned the campus itself into a lab. Working with earth sciences professor Meredith Kelly, Mendolia, who is from northern New Jersey, has been analyzing and mapping the sediments and depths of bedrock from the test wells—research she plans to continue to develop for her senior thesis. "They're doing all this drilling," Kelly says, "and it provides a gold mine of information." Mendolia's project also could help hold down costs, by providing data to the companies drilling the wells, says assistant sustainability director Marcus Welker. "Grace's work took data and used models to help us better understand the larger landscape patterns."

Among other projects, the office sponsors sustainable moving sales, promotes smart recycling and food packaging, and recently opened the Free Market, an on-campus thrift store, to keep bags of discarded clothing out of the waste stream. And with the Irving Institute it sponsors Energy Immersion Trips to Appalachia and the Gulf Coast to give students interested in future energy solutions a clearer understanding of current oil, gas, and coal infrastructures. "The idea," says Kerr, "is for students to meet people on the ground and challenge their own assumptions."

On Arctic Ice

Ningning Sun '24, a double major in environmental studies and economics who grew up in Xiamen, China, did field work this past year in Utqiagvik, Alaska, and in Hammerfest, Norway, for her two-year research project on the impacts of resource extraction on Indigenous communities in the Arctic. She found that the Iñupiat people in Utqiagvik, who hunt and fish for their livelihoods, actively monitor development and have enacted regulations to balance it with environmental protection and their way of life. "It's important not to impose my preconceptions but to listen and learn what they hope to achieve in the future—to better understand the environmental issues and how they address them."

Liam Kirkpatrick '22, a double major who earned a BS degree in engineering and an AB in earth sciences, grew up in New Zealand and went to high school in Ojai, California. Drawn to Dartmouth because of the outdoors and the engineering school, he continues to study climate change—specifically how to leverage what glaciers reveal about climate and environmental change that occurred over millions of years to predict what's ahead. Now a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, he says that because of Dartmouth's size, undergrads can take a leading role in research. With earth sciences professor Erich Osterberg—his senior thesis advisor, who runs Dartmouth's Ice, Climate, and Environment (ICE) Lab—Kirkpatrick organized a student-run expedition to a glacier in Alaska's Denali National Park to drill ice cores. Chemical markers in ice cores offer a clearer picture of historic and recent climate trends.

"The Arctic is really at the epicenter—it's where climate change is happening, anywhere from three to four times faster than anywhere else in the world," says Melody Brown Burkins, director of the Institute of Arctic Studies. "Students want to be engaged. They are chomping at the bit. We are open to students across disciplines. You're not going to solve the climate challenge if you're just looking at technical issues—people are also involved. But let's give you some more knowledge, because informed activism is the most powerful activism."

Photography by Don Hamerman, Beam Lertbunnaphongs '25, and Robert Gill