After suffering damage from the derecho in 2020, the hailstorm in spring 2023 and extreme heat in the summer of 2023 that led to students sleeping on cots in the Joe Rosenfield Center, Grinnell College is preparing to meet the escalating threat of climate change. The school is working to improve the safety of students and staff on campus, reduce the college’s carbon footprint and increase research on the environment by encouraging more professors to include climate change related issues in their curriculums.
Wayne Moyer, senior faculty of political science, said that he has observed weather in Grinnell becoming more extreme over his 52 years at the college. “The overall winter temperatures in Iowa have warmed something like 4 degrees over the last 20 or 30 years, and I still have some flowers blooming in my garden,” Moyer said. “I never had that happen after the first of November. So, it’s visible to me.”
Chris Bair, environmental and safety manager and co-chair of the Sustainability Committee, has also noticed increasingly severe weather. “I mean, the fact that we’ve had a derecho, and baseball sized hail storm just in the last, what, five years? I’d never even heard of a derecho before, and this place looked like a war zone … It’s pretty much every 10 years that we’re replacing half the roofs on campus now.”
“Most of the professional development and industry association events I attend provide insights into climate related threats, trends and mitigation best practices, so it’s [climate change] always top of mind,” Heather Cox, director of emergency management and risk mitigation, wrote in an email to The S&B.
Cox wrote that the increase in frequency and severity of derechos, tornadoes, extreme heat and drought are all concerns that the emergency operations team considers, as these “intensify pressures on community and campus infrastructure and resources.”
Under Cox’s leadership, the emergency operations team assesses threats and provides resources in response. “I rely heavily on the alerts and information packets that the National Weather Service provides to emergency managers,” she wrote. “When I become aware that severe weather is in the forecast, I notify a ‘weather team’ on campus that is responsible for employee and student safety, athletic and other events, facilities and grounds, and administrative and academic operations.” She also wrote that Facilities Management and Campus Safety play essential roles during weather events and that she uses InformaCast to keep the campus community informed about emergency alerts and instructions.
Bair said most of the big buildings on campus have backup generators. “It’s not supposed to be business as usual,” Bair said. “It’s more just to respond.”
Bair also said that the unpredictable and unprecedented nature of climate change affects preparedness — “I think just more of those crazy, wacky things are going to happen … You know, resilience is a word that’s tossed around a lot. I don’t really know that we know how to be truly resilient yet, and what that even means. Other than every disaster, we certainly learn what doesn’t work.”
Bair said that addressing climate change at Grinnell involves not only safety but also limiting the college’s own contribution to climate change through sustainability initiatives. He said that when two major new solar projects — the 4 MW Pioneer Solar and the Grinnell Solar Park — come online during the spring, “We’ll be 50 percent renewable, which is pretty exciting.”
As the college has lowered emissions from electricity, natural gas has become the next major target according to Bair. The rest of emissions comes from smaller factors like commuting, campus-funded air travel, and emissions from waste and air. Most of Grinnell’s natural gas is consumed in the boiler plant which heats the majority of campus but, the Sustainability Committee has been pushing to transition to geothermal systems. Already, the natatorium, Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA), the preschool, and the Humanities and Social Studies Center (HSSC) are heated and cooled geothermally. As an interim step, portions of campus have been taken off the boiler plant and more localized hot water boilers have been added, which are both more efficient and can also be converted to geothermal in the future.
Corinne Fox `26, a member of the Sustainability Committee, emphasized the complexity of navigating increasingly extreme weather while also trying to maximize sustainability. “Now I think every dorm has air conditioning, that takes a lot more energy, right? And that’s something that we have to take into account if we want to reduce overall energy usage,” Fox said. “The weather is going to keep getting warmer. We’re going to need more energy, heating and cooling, which also is really water intensive. So that’s why there’s geothermal projects in the works.”
Fox said that student outreach is also important. “I think if students demonstrate interest in climate change, by going to events and proving that they care about it, that makes a big difference too,” said Fox. “Then that becomes part of Grinnell College as an institution’s culture, and that gets more motivation for change.”
One development that aims to engage more students with the environment is a recent donation of half a million dollars from Craig Murphy `74. Moyer said that Murphy will give $100,000 a year for five years, which will be used for curricular development and encouraging professors to include more material dealing with climate change in their courses. Moyer said that he is part of a planning committee that has been meeting to determine how best to distribute the funds, including planning a faculty workshop for the summer.
“What this grant is trying to achieve is virtually every topic we talk about is related by climate change — housing, food, vacations, weather, your ability to work, entertainment, disease, transportation,” Moyer said. “It’s hard to think of things that are not affected.”
Murphy said that the research he has engaged in throughout his life has revolved around global-level problems, of which climate change is one. “The fact that the students at Grinnell… are in a place where they have a period of time when they can actually devote themselves to learning means it’s a good place to provide a chance to learn about this,” Murphy said. “Climate change is probably going to be the most pressing global-level problem that you’re going to have to deal with, and it’s going to be something that will be constantly changing everyone’s life.”
“The scientists are doing a really good job, but science doesn’t lead directly to action,” Moyer said. “You’ve got to get to policy, and you’ve got to motivate people to want to do something.”
