Huston-Tillotson adds solar array
University embraces solar energy as part of sustainability program.
The historically black university’s installation of solar panels on campus buildings is the latest way it has expanded its sustainability program.
From the roof of Allen-Frazier, a women’s dorm at Huston-Tillotson University, you can take in a wide, mesmerizing view of downtown Austin.
But watch your step — you just might trip on one of the many solar panels workers are installing.
In an effort to make itself a green institution as much as a historically black one, Huston-Tillotson is embracing the solar array installation — ranging over the rooftops of three buildings — as the latest in a series of moves to expand its sustainability program.
Over the past couple of years, it has built up an Environmental Studies program and internship programs with the Texas state environmental agency and nonprofits like the Sustainable Food Center; constructed a patio out of recycled materials; started a campus food garden; celebrated Earth Day; and established a student group called Green is the New Black.
Most famous, perhaps, is its Dumpster Project, an envi- ronmental education initiative that saw a professor spend a year living in a 33-squarefoot dumpster. The dumpster is now used as an educational tool for science teachers and elementary school students about how to live efficiently.
In part, the efforts are akin to the green-minded ones found on nearly every campus across America. But at Huston-Tillotson, they are strategic as well, as the university works to distinguish itself from other historically black
institutions.
“It’s a way to make more of a name for ourselves,” said Karen Magid, director of sustainability at the university. “We want to be the greenest (historically black college) in the country.”
Magid said the solar array, installed by Austin company Freedom Solar Power, should provide roughly 10 percent of the university’s electricity and cut carbon emissions by 262 tons annually, or the equivalent of taking 32 cars off the road each year.
She said that because of rebate programs through Austin Energy and the general cost of electricity, the investment in the solar array will pay for itself.
By her calculations, in a small point of pride, Huston-Tillotson has installed more solar power on a per-student basis than the University of Texas, the academic gorilla of Austin.
During a recent trip to New Orleans to participate in a conference on environmental justice, a movement that draws attention to the history of racial and class disparities when it comes to pollution, members of the Green is the New Black group found their school outstripped most of their cohort universities when it came to environmental programs.
But it certainly has its competitors: Texas Southern, in Houston, has a public affairs school led by Robert Bullard, one of the leading scholars on environmental justice issues.
Brittany Foley, a 19year-old sophomore at Huston-Tillotson who made the trip to New Orleans and will travel to Paris later this year for an international environmental conference, says “students get it.”
The Green is the New Black group provides new avenues to get that word out to the community, especially in the poorer communities of color in East Austin, where Huston-Tillotson is situated.
“Sometimes they feel like environmental issues don’t apply to them,” Foley said. (Climate change can be a hard sell in some of these communities, according to a 2014 report by the Texas Health Institute. A chief challenge: Many people are more concerned with more immediate issues, such as jobs, food, shelter and safety.)
“But (pollution) is hurting them like anyone else,” Foley said. “Being so passionate about it, I don’t get discouraged.” Referring to a history of situation of industrial facilities in poorer neighborhoods that have less political clout, she says: “Open up your eyes. You wonder why our mothers get breast cancer and our kids get asthma?”
From the student group to the solar array, the efforts “demonstrate the university’s commitment to something bigger than their in-class education,” Magid said.
Contact Asher Price at 512-445-3643.