SCAD forms eco practices council

By: Verena Paepcke

Published: Friday, January 4, 2008

Sustainability and green design are hot topics at the Savannah College of Art and Design and throughout the United States. In fact, the college has a new faculty council — the Sustainability and Eco Practices at SCAD Council — that formed in Fall 2007 to focus on SCAD’s environmental stewardship. The council is made up of faculty and staff from the schools of Building Arts, Communication, Design and Liberal Arts, as well as from the SCAD communications and student media departments. The council’s mission is to support SCAD’s sustainability practices and goals to green the curriculum and the college’s institutional activities by channeling the efforts and expertise of faculty and staff.

Beginning with this issue, The Chronicle will feature a weekly column titled The Green Scene that will inform the SCAD community about activities on and around campus that are focusing on sustainability practices from the micro level to the macro. The column will highlight activities in the classroom, initiatives on campus, projects in Savannah and more. Several groups already exist at SCAD and in Savannah with the same goals, and this column will be one of the platforms where we can combine efforts to inform the community. Student groups already in existence are Project Green, led by Brian Bessenaire; the Student Vegetarian Association; Students for a Better Environment and the student group with the U.S. Green Building Council.

One of the newest initiatives is a “teach-in” that SCAD will host Jan. 31, coordinated by FOCUS THE NATION. For more information, e-mail or check out the Web site. Additionally, the council changed requirements for the campus printing service that made double-sided printing a standard procedure at the college. Also, an interdisciplinary major, design for sustainability, is in the development process.

Council members are open to ideas. Members include School of Building Arts professors LaRaine Montgomery and Deborah Brooks; School of Communication Arts professor Scott Boylston; School of Design professors Robert Fee, Peter Fossick, Christine Miller, Verena Paepcke and Pamela Wiley; Faculty Ombudsman Daniel Levine; Assistant Director of Internal Communications Seth Michalak; and Director of Student Media John Bennett.


Paepcke is an industrial design professor and chair of the Sustainability and Eco Practices at SCAD Council.