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Smith College Names Sustainability Director
 NORTHAMPTON, Mass. – As part of its commitment to the environment, Smith College recently created the position of environmental sustainability director and has appointed Amherst resident Dano Weisbord to the post.
Weisbord will begin at Smith on August 11, leaving his position as senior project manager at the Boston firm CLF Ventures, a non-profit consulting branch of the Conservation Law Foundation where he also worked as an environmental policy fellow.
The position is one of many recent initiatives (see below) the college has taken, recognizing that sustainability issues affect us on all levels: local, national and global.
Weisbord will be responsible for coordinating Smith’s integration of sustainable principles and practices into campus operations. He will direct the development and implementation of the college sustainability plan, goals and standards, and work with college departments and programs to develop a culture of sustainability and department-specific plans. He will also research and recommend environmentally sustainable technologies and practices.
After receiving a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, Weisbord earned a master’s degree in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University.
Weisbord began his career as a furniture maker in Providence, R.I. Since then, he has worked with diverse stakeholder groups to implement complex technical projects.
At CLF Ventures, he managed a range of environmentally oriented projects for corporate clients. Earlier, while serving as an environmental policy fellow at CLF, he researched policy issues such as ultra-fine particulate emission from alternatively fueled transit buses, the impact of car sharing on driver behavior and the economic crisis in the cranberry industry.
Locally, Weisbord is a member of the board of directors at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst.
Other recent environmental initiatives at Smith include:
The introduction of a student pre-orientation session about sustainability and ecological literacy, which will be held in August. The session will teach incoming students about how to minimize their environmental impact on and off campus.
The completion of a new environmentally efficient power system, referred to as “CoGen,” that will provide both heat and electricity to the campus beginning in the fall of 2008. The efficiency of the cogeneration system will reduce Smith’s dependence on fossil fuel and cut the college’s greenhouse gas emissions by half.
The May dedication of a 200-acre tract of woodland in Whately as a living laboratory for teaching and research about the environment. The site is named the Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station.
Smith College is the largest undergraduate women’s college in the country, enrolling 2,800 students from nearly every state and 61 other countries. Smith educates women of promise for lives of distinction. By linking the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, Smith is developing leaders for society’s challenges. -30-
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