Taken originally from http://www.berkshireeagle.com/headlines/ci_6419784?source=email/


MCLA secures grant to go green
By Jessica Willis, Berkshire Eagle Staff



Friday, July 20, 2007
NORTH ADAMS - The environmental studies department at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts can augment its outreach while lessening its carbon footprint, thanks to $250,000 in federal funds secured through an Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
The funding stems from the $31.6 billion fiscal 2008 bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Monica Joslin, MCLA's dean of academic affairs, said that some of the money will be used to purchase a hybrid van that will transport environmental studies students to their field work assignments.
"That's very important for us," Joslin said yesterday. She noted that the department uses a regular gasoline van to go on assignments.
The grant also will be used to expand local school outreach and its visiting speaker programs - the latter being a key networking tool for the students.
She also said that the money would help attract attention to a part of the world where thinking green is not a fad.
"We're located in an area with a rich environmental history," Joslin said. "And (environmentalism) is such an important issue."

In 2005, the Berkshire Environmental Resource
Center (BERC) - the community-oriented component of the department - was formed by MCLA faculty, and the program secured $150,000 in federal funds for the program.
The latest grant, she said, would support the department's internship program; environmental studies students often assist in research at the Center for Ecological Technology in Pittsfield, the Hoosic River Watershed Association and the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation.
U.S. Rep. John W. Olver, D-Amherst, a member of the Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee that approved the bill, noted that MCLA's mission was in line with the Energy and Water Appropriations bill - which, according to the House's Web site, funds research facilities that "attempt to face (the) twin crises" of energy usurpation and global warming.
"The Berkshires are a place of extraordinary natural beauty," Olver noted in an e-mail statement to The Eagle yesterday. "It is only fitting that MCLA, which has made its home in the Berkshires for over the past 100 years, has (the BERC) dedicated to the preservation of the environment that surrounds it."
The University of Massachusetts Amherst also benefited from the bill; the school's Integrated Sciences Building, which broke ground in September 2006, received $2 million in federal funds, according to Olver's press secretary Sara Burch. The four-story, 155,000-square-foot teaching and research facility is scheduled for completion in the winter of 2008.

Jessica Willis can be reached at jwillis@berkshireeagle.com or at (413) 664-4995