2026 Sustainability Newsletter

For its second year, Cannon River Community Science team has continued to collect data to monitor and compare water quality around the Ames Mill Dam in downtown Northfield. We measure dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and temperature, and record visual observations above and below the Ames Mill Dam. This year we’ve also begun collecting water samples which will be analyzed for heavy metal concentrations in the Cannon. Our team hopes to continue monitoring and contributing to ongoing engagement, planning, and implementation of the City Riverfront Development. The City of Northfield plans to remove the Ames Mill Dam as part of its comprehensive plan and a riverfront resilience project. Many faculty, staff, and students in other programs such as Art History, Geology, Environmental Studies, Spanish, Digital Humanities, and Political Science are engaging in water-climate interests in our community or state. For example, Tun Myint, a professor of Political Science and International Relations, continues to engage in policy research on the Ford Dam removal and Berakat Haileab has had students sample and analyze Cannon River chemistry within courses for decades, often engaging classrooms.

If you are interested in connecting to this ongoing project and contributing to the education and implementation capacity of riverfront improvements, please reach out to the Sustainability Office (sustainability@carleton.edu) or Sarah Fortner (sfortner@carleton.edu).

This year, the energy team, including James Zhang and Alex Dudnyk, synthesized commuting data from a survey of faculty and staff. Through both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the team examined commuting distances, commuting frequency, transportation methods, and employee perspectives on alternative transportation options. The survey revealed strong interest in lower-emission commuting solutions, though adoption often depended more on schedule factors rather environmental motivation alone. Many respondents expressed support for expanded biking and e-biking infrastructure, improved EV charging access, organized carpool systems, and potential college-operated shuttle services connecting regional population centers.

The team also wrote a report on mass timber construction, a building method that could help reduce the lifetime carbon emissions of future facilities at Carleton. Mass timber buildings can have lower embodied carbon because timber absorbs and stores carbon throughout the life of the tree. As a result, the total lifetime carbon emissions of buildings constructed with mass timber, from initial construction to the end of the building’s life, can be lower than those of traditional buildings made from steel, brick, and concrete. 

The Zero Waste team worked with Facilities this year on refining their waste audit and education program and continued to collaborate with Wei-Hsin Fu to share data in a GIS platform. Rob Nechanicky, Custodial Supervisor, attained funding from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to improve waste management systems in residence halls. This gave rise to the Garbage Games competition!

Each week, we audited one residence hall’s trash, recycling, and compost to determine how contaminated it is. We calculated “contamination” as a percent of the total weight of each waste stream that was incorrectly sorted. For example, if there were 30 lbs of waste in the trash can, but 5 lbs of that was recycling, and 10 lbs was compost, then the trash is 50% contaminated.

After each audit, Zero Waste team members created and posted flyers near dorm trash cans reporting the amount of contamination in each waste stream and unique tips for each dorm based on what they noticed during the audit.

At the end of each term, we compared all the dorms in the Garbage Games to see which had the lowest overall contamination rate. Then, the winning dorm was rewarded with treats like hot chocolate or ice cream. The Garbage Games program has resulted in more student awareness and engagement with waste sorting. We have not yet reduced total waste diversion from the landfill, but continued development of interventions and education have contributed to dorm specific improvements.

This year the Sustainability Office continued its partnership with Charlie Schwandt and Laura Lindeman and Bon Appétit Dining Hall Services to continue to monitor food purchasing related emissions This is part of our broad college ecosystem of activities that reduce food like food recovery and composting.

This year we worked on getting the word out about what we were finding by participating in LOVE Data Week, an international celebration showing love to data literacy, storage, and preservation that was hosted by data librarians, academic technologists, and staff and students in Digital Humanities, and the Quantitative Resource Center. The Sustainability Office shared how our emissions data supports institutional accountability in energy decisions and even the behavioral emissions we chose to measure and address. A new climate platform used by Bon Appétit supported integrating food purchases into our emissions calculations. In total food contributes 6-7 thousand metric tons of carbon emissions annually, and while beef is only 5% of our purchasing, it represents nearly half of these emissions. In total, our total measured emissions increase by 50%. Lillian Fisher wrote a Carletonian Article on how adding new measures of accountability is important to making change. Likewise, the Reunion and Bon Appétit team directly supported reductions of our beef emissions by removing beef from the menu. Big events are a major way we already improve other sustainability practices like Zero Waste.

Additional food systems collaboration centered on access. During the winter we assisted the Chaplain’s office in hosting a panel discussion on food accessibility across campus, inviting people from many organizations to provide insight including; the Student Farm, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, Dacie Moses House, and the Chaplains Office. The panel centered around students living on campus during the summer. Our panel highlighted the resources available to students such as community meals, the Carleton Cupboard, and produce from the farm. Support resources are centralized with increased summer food support and collaboration planned.

The office radio show, Sustaining the Sustainability Office, has enjoyed another year of success and fun. Running all three terms, the show interviewed over a dozen members of the Carleton, Northfield, and Minnesota community across multiple departments. Some standouts included Mike Provancha from Northfield’s Environmental Quality Commission, Janet Petri and Howard White from the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Heron Mahr from Clean River Partners, and St. Olaf ECOrganizers Sylvia Sandhorst and Ava Lindquist, among many others. Northfield’s public radio station, KYMN, has been mentoring the Radio Show STAs throughout the year. With their help, we have improved our interview’s structure, learned to edit audio using industry-standard software, and started posting interviews as podcasts on platforms like Spotify. Give us a listen! 

Lida Kanoti ‘29, Maya Mitchkess ‘27 and Hadley Ward ‘27 collaborated with the Makerspace and student volunteers to build raised garden beds on the student farm for climate action week. These garden beds offer the farm the opportunity to plant cultivars that cannot be planted in the standard fields lest they outgrow and outcompete other crops. 

As part of Northfield’s Earth Day Celebration, the communication and community science team hosted demonstrations of water testing and discussed results we are seeing from our ongoing monitoring of the Cannon River including supporting discussion on the environmental benefits of dam removal. They also promoted their Beaverfest and discussed beaver’s ecosystem services. They also shared and discussed resources including a new book on the Cowling Arboretum and a fact sheet created by Carleton’s Academic Technology Services on individual choices to improve sustainability practices with generative AI, like asking better questions, reducing the use of image generation, and more. The Arboretum also hosted a tree planting event as part of the community-wide celebration.

Our energy team hosted a tour during climate action week of various sustainable energy sources on campus. These include EV chargers, solar thermal and solar PV panels, wind turbines, passive houses, and geothermal systems. The team explained general facts about each, and how each is tied to campus along with future plans Carleton has to expand its sustainable facilities, such as connecting our second wind turbine to the campus energy grid, and adding more solar panels around campus. The materials from this tour can be updated year to year and inform campus tours by our office or other collaborating offices who are interested in celebrating Carleton’s Sustainability.

Our Zero Waste team hosted a public waste audit, inviting students in Musser Hall to take part in the Garbage Games process during a high visibility time of the week. This integrated the activities we do throughout the year into our Climate Action Week Events. We spent more time getting the word out, and highlighting education activities: why we conduct waste audits, where our compost goes, where our recycling goes, and why it matters. Carleton’s compost is either made into mulch or compost mixes in Rosemount and Shakopee, MN. Our recycling is sorted at Recycle Minnesota in Lakeville and continues its journey to other companies to be turned into new products. Finally, all unsorted or trash-contaminated waste goes to the Rice County Landfill, which is projected to reach capacity within a decade so it is very important we all do our part in sorting properly!

STAs Lyn Chen ‘26, Alex Dudnyk ‘27, Emilia Rodriguez ‘28, and Office of Accessibility Resources peer leader Sara Typrin ‘26 researched and hosted a panel discussion exploring sustainability and accessibility opportunities on our campus. The panel began by sharing the results of a student survey, focusing on disabled students’ perspectives and created with input from the student-led Carleton Disability Alliance, on indoor and outdoor accessibility challenges in winter. Some of the issues students identified included poor elevator signage, uncomfortable indoor temperatures, and most notably, ice and snow creating fall hazards across many areas of campus. Peer leaders researched ways to improve the identified issues without compromising on Carleton’s environmental goals, like alternatives to ordinary salt for de-icing. At the panel, they engaged with Rob Hanson, Energy Manager and Jon Rabe, Grounds Manager, to learn how Facilities and Grounds consider these intersections in planning. For example, the Grounds team already practices low salting strategies, and they also faced a supply-chain related salt shortage last year. The session brought attendees into how our campus makes decisions behind the scenes, and reinforced that student voices and ideas help shape priorities.

Lillian Fisher ‘25 collaborated with the Gender and Sexuality Center to put on two events pertaining to sustainable fashion: a repair fair for clothing in collaboration with the Makerspace, and a sustainable fashion show to highlight the GSC’s gender affirming QT+ Boutique program. Many offices on campus incorporate sustainability practices, and this was a good way to showcase the GSC during Climate Action Week.

Faculty and student pairs from ceramics, geology, french and francophone studies, and environmental studies discussed parallel faculty and student perspectives on the meaningful sustainability projects in their classes. This included exploring sustainable materials and sourcing in ceramics, sustainable development in goals in France, heat solutions in Northfield, and Indigenous guiding principles and tribal management plans. The session was hosted by the Environmental Studies Program and moderated by the Sustainability Office. Presenters included Katharine Hargrave and Kate Imeson ‘29, Kelly Connole and Sam Ullman ‘26, Devavani Chatterjea and Sophia Bastian ‘26, and Roger Faust and John Carlos Alvarez ‘28.

In the fall the Sustainability Office supported two Clean River Partner events, the Watershed Wide Clean Up and Nuestra Agua, Nuestras Vida, which focused on engaging with the Spanish speaking community around water celebration. We also supported volunteers and engagement activities.

We once again held Beaver Fest, a student led event that hosted local experts and fun educational stations related to Minnesota’s wetland ecosystems. Collaborating organizations included the Fairfax Beaver Lab, Minnesota Science Museum, Trappers Association, MN Department of Natural Resources, Carleton’s Office of Sustainability Cannon River Community Science team, and the Carleton Arboretum. A core goal of BeaverFest is to “serve as a jumping off point for important conversations about how we as a community should live alongside the natural world.”

The September AASHE Annual Meeting included the finale of a Decarbonization Academy Cohort that brought together energy and facilities decision makers internationally to discuss how to advance geothermal and other renewable energy projects on their campuses. Carleton is recognized for its exceptional decarbonization strategy and implementation.

Sarah Fortner, Jo Taveres Reager, and Bret Eynon presented on a high impact climate literacy framework including knowledge, skills, dispositions, and promising pedagogical approaches for teaching climate solutions and climate justice. These include: knowledge of: climate change causes and impacts, solutions including mitigation, adaptation, and justice; skills and competencies such as: systems thinking, interdisciplinary integration of ideas, problem solving, data literacy, collaboration, communication across differences, strategic thinking; dispositions such as: hope, curiosity, imagination, tolerating ambiguity and complexity, persistence, empathy, respect, mutuality; and the use of high impact pedagogies including: authentic problems, collaborative inquiry, connecting with campus or local issues, diverse written, visual, storytelling communication and collaborative engagement strategies, reflection on connect on climate activities within other personal and career goals. An additional focus includes embedding climate in introductory courses to expand the reach of climate curriculum and designing applied learning experiences that bridge campus and community to foster knowledge exchange, social fabric and co-planning for resilience.

Carleton continued to have a robust student presence in the UMACS annual meeting held at Luther College. Together we presented three talks and posters, and we also participated in virtual coffee chats about energy, the student farm, and climate resilience education throughout the year. For example, Megan Roesler ‘26 presented Carleton’s student farm model alongside the University of Minnesota Duluth’s model and Knox College, showcasing the centrality of involving every student in the choice making, business elements, and student volunteer engagement at the farm.  As part of hosting this coffee chat, Carleton explored opportunities to expand education opportunities and community building while celebrating the leadership development within the current summer internship.

From November 2025 – May 2026, Farren Groom ‘27 participated in the UMACS Sustainability Fellows program. The cohort of Sustainability Fellows practiced strengths-based leadership strategies, gained intercultural communications skills, and designed fellowship projects to help campuses in the UMACS network advance their sustainability initiatives. As part of their fellowship, Farren developed a “how-to” guide on Community Science informed by the work of the Community Science team and projects completed around the state and country such as the MN Water Volunteer Program and iNaturalist! They hope to use this knowledge to deepen the connections between the Cannon River Community Science team, Carleton students, staff, and faculty, and the Northfield community.

The conference and virtual networking opportunities are open to any Carleton student, and are a great opportunity for cross exchange with other colleges in our region.

During the meeting, President Alison Byerly also received the UMACS (Re)cognition Award in the category of administrator for advancing institutional goals in sustainability that span operations, education, and community engagement. President Byerly has overseen fossil fuel divestment, the advancement of a Center for Sustainability, and will be instrumental to pursuing Sustainable Futures Funds instead of carbon offsets. This planned pool of resources will support projects in sustainability and environmental justice that build student expertise and advance campus and local sustainability outcomes.

The Second Nature Climate Leadership Summit held in Chicago, Illinois featured themes of education, decarbonization and justice. Sarah Fortner served on the steering committee planning themes around: “20 years of climate commitments” in higher education and co-led a session announcing the new Carnegie Elective in Sustainability and shared examples of teaching, research, community engagement and operational action in sustainability, and an ecosystems approach of learning exchange with the community and broader networks. Devavani Chatterjea moderated a session on the environmental justice considerations associated with data centers and higher education responsibility. Both Sarah and Devavani also participated in the Carnegie Elective launch celebration held at the home of the executive director of the Carnegie Electives, Marisol Morales. 

This year we wrapped up our pilot of a Carnegie Elective in Sustainability. Thank you to the Grants Office, CCCE, Arboretum, Career Center, Environmental Studies Program, Sustainability Office and faculty from several departments (e.g. Chemistry, German, Geology) who shared syllabi to support our participation and submission. We are one of 21 institutions helping to shape this national work that will lead to a new way of recognizing institutions for their holistic sustainability action across education, operations, and community engagement. The new elective is currently open for submission by colleges around the world. Carleton now serves on the National Advisory Committee and will participate in championing the elective and expanding institutionalization of sustainability in higher education across academic, operations, community engagement, and workforce preparation. The first awardees of the elective will be announced next summer.

Working as an STA in the Office of Sustainability over the past two years has been one of the most meaningful parts of my time at Carleton. I joined the office in 2024 hoping to gain more professional experience related to sustainability and environmental studies while also contributing to the campus and surrounding communities. I am especially grateful to have been part of the energy team, where I learned so much about campus energy operations and Carleton’s geothermal energy system. During my time in the office, I participated in two rounds of campus energy tours and worked on several research and survey projects, including the campus EV charging usage survey, the employee commuting survey, and a mass timber building research project. These experiences were both challenging and rewarding because they allowed me to apply research and data analysis skills to real sustainability work.

Most importantly, I want to thank Sarah, Rob, Lillian, Alex, and everyone else in the Office of Sustainability for creating such a welcoming and supportive environment. I truly appreciate all the work you do to keep our campus sustainable while also bringing such a positive and friendly atmosphere to the office. I feel very lucky to have been part of this team, and I will always value the experiences, lessons, and connections I gained during my time here.

I came to the Sustainability Office fairly late into my Carleton career, but I really loved being a part of Carleton’s continued journey towards climate resilience, waste and emissions reduction, and becoming the best possible environment for its students.

Working on the Zero Waste team was also a bit of a full-circle moment for me, since my first on-campus job was working on the Custodial team with Rob! Though I only got to be a STA for two terms, I’m so glad to have met so many passionate people in our office and beyond, and it really brings me hope for the future.

I enjoyed collaborating with the Custodial team, the broader Facilities team, and the Office of Accessibility Resources to work on waste reduction and making the campus more accessible and environmentally friendly at the same time. I also had lots of fun making posters to get the word out about audits and Climate Action Week events – it was a great way to stretch my creative muscles while making a difference on campus.

The future is long and full of possibilities, and I am excited to explore ways I can continue to support sustainability efforts at different levels!