Back about the year 2003, an Aquinas College undergraduate named John Ebers asked the head of his sustainable business program about employment opportunities in his chosen field.
“There aren’t any right now,” he recalls Professor Matt Tueth saying. “But there will be by the time you graduate.”
Today, as the sustainable business officer for Metro Health, Ebers feels that Tueth’s confidence has been fully justified.
“It’s been a whirlwind tour,” says Ebers, 27. “I started two years into a major construction project (the building of the new Metro Hospital facility in Wyoming), and the first thing I had to do was to quickly get up to speed. A lot of decisions go into a project like that. I’ve had the opportunity to introduce sustainable design strategies into the plans, as well as the chance to work alongside top executives and senior leadership.”
Ebers first came to Metro as a student intern in 2004, working on sustainability issues there. After he graduated, the position of sustainable business officer was created expressly to keep him there.
“I’ve worked on a lot of things," he says. "LEED certification for the new buildings. Energy use and conservation. Even reducing the incidence of toxic materials in hospital operations and medical supplies. Wherever I can show a positive impact on patient health and safety, Metro has been interested and receptive.”
[LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the nation’s leading standard for the certification of environmental, “green” buildings.]
From Vision to Implementation
Ebers' career is a feather in the cap of Aquinas College, which offers the country’s first, and still possibly its only, undergraduate degree in sustainable business.
But Aquinas is one of at least four local colleges and universities who are members of the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. AASHE members commit to originating programs of sustainability education and campus-based leadership. In addition to Aquinas, Grand Valley State University and Grand Rapids Community College are members. So is Michigan State University, with its main campus in East Lansing, but also with a local office and programs.
I asked John what he felt was the next step for sustainability education in West Michigan. He had a ready answer:
“We should be making a more strategic effort to integrate sustainability into every college department so that ‘green’ becomes standard for higher education curricula,” Ebers says. “Instead of two business programs, have one. Instead of two chemistry programs, have one. If you look at the big schools with dual majors and strong interdisciplinary sustainability programs – Stanford, University of Michigan – they are all flourishing.”
Norman Christopher, executive director of Grand GVSU’s Sustainability Initiative, makes the identical point: “The task is to introduce sustainability more broadly into the University curriculum. In our case, the move to sustainability has been led by student demand, not by the program.”
Christopher also believes the strength of our local college programs is that they are “heavy into application. We’re not just theoretical. We want to know how to apply these ideas and make them work.”
Help Wanted
GVSU offers a unique interdisciplinary sustainability program. The Liberal Studies Program, part of the University's College of Interdisciplinary Studies, allows students to design a major that does not exist. It also invites them to include sustainability as one or the primary component. Those who do receive a “sustainability certification” as part of their degree upon graduation.
Grand Rapids is competing, as you might expect, with burgeoning college-level programs in other parts of the nation and world. But, in certain respects, the region is not just trying to run with the big dogs. We’re pretty big dogs in our own right. We’re still leaders relying on our local strengths: manufacturing know-how, business participation, and world-class industrial design to name a few.
Graduating with a bachelor’s degree from a small midwestern sectarian college may sound to some people like a ticket to oblivion or, at best, a stepping stone to somewhere else.
But Ebers now finds himself at the center of one of the country’s seminal green efforts: the drive to bring sustainability thinking into health care. At Metro Health he occupies, not just a local pigeonhole, but a consequential position with one of the world’s leaders in incorporating sustainability into modern hospital operations and facilities.
Not a bad opportunity for a “green” 27-year old, and further evidence that opportunities are multiplying fast in the sustainability revolution – an impression shared by many here.
“Things are aligning,” Norman Christopher says. “Things are happening. You can feel change in the air.”
Tom Leonard is a writer and independent consultant living in Grand Rapids. He last for Rapid Growth about the potential for solar energy in West Michigan.
Photos:
John Ebers at the front entry of Metro Hospital
John Ebers
John checks the water quality of water run-off from the parking lot
Recyling sorting station in a conference area
John Ebers
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved