Wendy Hawkins is more than just the operations sustainability coordinator at Salem College, she is also a 2022 graduate with a BA in environmental studies with a concentration in conservation and ecology. Wendy is on a mission at Salem to bring sustainability to life and educate campus about the wonders and complexities about how human interactions affect the environment. With an enduring passion for both Salem and sustainability, Wendy shares her vision on how Salem can make a remarkable impact on the environment by effective social changes that support sustainable environmental systems.

Tell us about your role at Salem College as the operations sustainability coordinator.

Our Salem campus is a complex ecosystem, nested within larger ecosystems, so I‘m always considering possible interactions and impacts of our decisions! My social role is to bring awareness, engage, and inspire people toward positive change. In my planning role, I collect and help analyze data (I’m a spreadsheet junkie!), which informs such objectives as waste reduction and energy conservation. I help orchestrate short, medium, and long-term plans for waste reduction and environmental stewardship that build upon each other. I am honored to work with Tina Kramer, our executive director of operations, who brings years of sustainability and facility directing experience to Salem. When she arrived last year, I told her “our sustainability department (of one!) is new, but I am your right arm for whatever you want to do! I can’t wait to learn more from you!” Our teamship is the core of this new department!

What does sustainability mean to you?

To me, sustainability means creating an ecosystem where all members can thrive indefinitely. From my first class at Salem (and ever since), I learned that environmentally sustainable plans must include all three components of the “triple bottom line:” environmental, social, and economic. Plans focusing on one or two components at the expense of another will ultimately fall apart. A basic description of components:

• Environmental: the health of the natural environment and our impact on it.
• Social: campus members’ health and wellbeing; awareness, engagement, and care for the natural environment and each other.
• Economic: direct financial costs as well as externalities (indirect costs: to environment or people) of action or inaction. (Example: paying for third-party composting service has a direct cost, but saves other waste costs and significantly prevents external costs to wildlife and people caused by toxins that develop in landfills).

What’s your vision to bring sustainability to the Salem campus?

My ultimate vision for sustainability at Salem is to establish new norms and an environmental consciousness that campus members will practice and proactively lead others to follow for a lifetime. Sustainability concepts fit like a glove with our Health Leadership and STEAM curriculum emphasis at Salem. Exploring, seeking to understand, and working with our natural environment brings consciousness of ecosystem health and our vital role in it. Aiming toward a “net zero waste” concept, we can begin with improvements in recycling, composting, and energy efficiency. We have a big road ahead, but the foundation has been established, and we are setting a course for great possibilities on the horizon!

You are also a Salem College alum, tell us about your own Salem experience.

I always tell people that Salem is the best place I could have ever gone to school! Everyone from your professors, to staff, to classmates all want you to succeed and thrive. Although I was enthusiastic from the very beginning, I knew school would be a challenge; I just didn’t know exactly how great! Every semester was the most difficult in my life (and I had a lot of college several decades ago), but worth every effort! New concepts and skills that seemed completely illusive to my comprehension at first, became second nature and common vocabulary very quickly, thanks to first-class professors and supportive staff and peers.

Since I also had the privilege of working at Salem two years prior to starting school, I knew that, as an “older” Fleer student, I would be thoroughly embraced by my traditional-age peers — after all, they were already my friends! We were all equals, but brought our unique views and life experiences to the working table of projects, labs, and discussions. I’ll never forget bringing the textbook example of the Mt. St. Helens eruption (1980) to life in class when I interjected, “Oh, I remember that! We cross-country skied there when I was a kid, and the part we skied on isn’t there any more! My cousins still have jars of ash they scooped out of their yard! I was 10 when it blew!”

Now I’ve created my dream job right here on campus because of the education I received here, and the doors of possibility are wide open!

From your perspective, what makes Salem remarkable?

The rich, close-knit community and incredible resources that help mold you beyond the person you imagined you could become!