Thank you for the many strategic-planning ideas we have received so far. If you haven’t done so already or you have additional thoughts to submit, we invite you to contribute your idea or ideas to planning Grinnell College’s future. To save you effort and time, we ask that you describe your idea within a page length (about 250 words)
We anticipate that our community members have ideas that range from the general to the specific; ideas of unknown cost to ideas with specific budgets; ideas that could be fully developed over several years to ideas that could be completed quickly. Upon receiving your message, we will facilitate its consideration either by one of the five working groups on alumni engagement, distinctiveness, enrollment, post-graduate success, or teaching and learning; or as part of a cross-cutting theme. We look forward to considering all the ideas generated by the community.
I was disappointed to see in the most recent issue of the Sierra Club magazine that Grinnell ranked something like #92 out of the top 100 "Coolest" schools. My law/grad school alma mater ranked (Univ of Washington) #1 last year and #4 this year, and I'm currently working (in my professional capacity) with UW on changing over their district heating/cooling system to sustainable energy and expanding the system to serve more buildings on and off campus.
I believe Grinnell can do much better on these fronts and would be interested in an alumni challenge to help "green" Grinnell - Where's the commitment to local foods? (Iowa is farm country, after all!) How about wind power? (Northern Iowa is blanketed with wind farms, and St Olaf has it's own turbine(s?).) Solar? (Plenty of sun in Iowa!) Energy from biodigesters? (I bet those pig farms put out a lot of waste that could be turned to energy!)
From my experience with UW, the big schools see this as a front to compete for the best and brightest students, faculty and staff. I think Grinnell's future depends on innovating and developing climate change responses and solutions.