Peter Well that's a really interesting shift into the concept of leadership because what you're talking about is a particular leadership model and I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about…share your thoughts about what is good leadership in that interface between environment, changes in behavior and how to learn how to do it? Beth: Well I don't see leadership in terms of individual charisma, I see leadership in terms of galvanizing broad support and often it's support that was pre-existent but somehow wasn't coordinated and wasn't something that was more amorphous than general feelings or general values and wasn't translated into action. And taking that groundswell of support that I believe already exists and turning it into something concrete where people feel that they've been personally rewarded for doing what they think is right. Peter: Okay.
Beth: And that they feel a gratification for taking action in accordance with their own values that allows them to express their own views on the world in a very concrete and satisfying way. So that's what I see as leadership and it doesn't involve my being front and centre; it involves developing programs that come from the grass roots up and that give those feelings of gratification to those who are involved and allow them to feel that they have grown through the process, that they feel better about their place in the world as a result. Peter: Okay.
As someone who's in a position of leadership and has been a leader and a mentor for lots of people, when you don't have what you need, where do you go? Beth: Depends what it is that I need.
Beth: Often it's time…increasingly it's time that I need. I'm in a very fortunate position of being in a university full of brilliant young people who have lots of energy – lots of ideas and don't always know how to turn that energy and those ideas into something that's concrete. So where I go for time is to the students and the recent graduates and find ways to help them to use that time to allow me to achieve goals that I couldn't by myself. Peter: Okay, that relates to my next question was, you say you are surrounded by these brilliant young people with lots of energy – how do you know when you're getting the full value of what they know and what they're being able to contribute? What are the indicators that…you know, the value's being realized? Beth: Well for one thing, they're having fun. Peter: Okay.
Beth: And if they're… Peter: I like that – that value in fun are really good… Beth: I mean if they're having a good time with the work that they do here and the studies that they do here, they're really devoted to it and it's rewarding for them, then I figure its…you know, we're succeeding and it's more likely to be useful. If they do a better job at the end of the year then the beginning of the year, I also feel that that's more useful to us but it's also more useful to them. One very concrete way that we can measure value is not only the translation of the student's ideas into actions, but the fact that our most loyal and productive students replace themselves when they go. One of the ways that our students can show us that we are getting a lot out of them and that they are kind of serving us…and themselves, is that when our most productive students graduate, they always replace themselves. So they go to first and second year students who they see as very much their peers, they recruit them and so we've been very successful in developing a kind of legacy among groups of students where they find younger students and they bring them to us and those students carry on and develop more programs with us. So we have a sort of a revolving door and I'm not very active in doing that – that's all the students and I know that we're being successful when they feel that's it's been enough fun to be here that they want to tell their friends to come here. Peter: That they want to share that. What are some of the – you've given a few examples of… here on the campus but how are you sharing your results? How are you sharing these successes that you're describing? Beth: We are beginning to share our success now with the outside community – it's taken us a few years to develop some models that we feel are very strong within the University. We're now working with the University Health Network and developing an analog program at the Toronto Western hospital working with the Environmental Coordinator at the University Health Network and with a consulting company, IndEco Strategic Consulting, to basically adapt what we have here for delivery in the health care setting and they'll pilot it at the Toronto Western hospital and hopefully it will then expand to the University Health Network overall and to other hospitals both in Toronto and in the Province. So that's one step. We are speaking fairly widely to interested groups about our program and we have now got – we're actually being inundated by inquiries about how other people can implement similar programs and we're developing a series of workshops that we will start delivering to other interested parties so that they can come in, we explain to them how our program works and we will give them the tools to adapt it to their settings. Peter: Okay. What are some of the greatest challenges you're faced with? Beth: On campus, the greatest challenge I'm faced with is the fact that individual faculty see themselves as self-employed, as individual operators, as people who are paid to be curious, and to explore whatever their personal interests might be and the kind of collective responsibility that they feel to the institution as a whole and the responsibility that they feel in terms of their own behavior for the society within the University that they're surrounded by, is minimal. So we've had huge success with students and with staff but very minimal success with faculty members and that's a huge challenge for us. I would say a second huge challenge is that what we're doing is very unusual – rather than, like Facilities and Services delivering operations to the University, or like faculty delivering teaching, or like research associates delivering research, we do all three and they are very much married in one activity. So our Rewire project involves teaching because the students who develop it are in research courses that I teach and they get marks for doing a good job and I teach them how to do a good job in the process. It's research because we're finding out new ways of doing things – we're monitoring and documenting it and we're publishing it in the Peer Review journals. It's operations because we're monitoring the energy savings and then delivering a vehicle for energy conservation to the University so it then can save money. And all these things happen within one single context – they aren't at all divided up. So that's a huge challenge when we get money for research grants, it can't go and be married with our operations budget, it goes into a completely separate budget which means that our staff are paid from different pockets of money and it's a real administrative challenge for us because there's no vehicle that recognizes that operations, research, and teaching can all be done at the same time as part of the same activity. So we face a huge challenge in that we are really marrying all the missions of the University in one activity and virtually no one else does that. So that's another big challenge. I would say that we are coming to terms with that challenge. I think that the faculty will eventually clamber on board, maybe reluctantly.
The third major challenge and this is something which is a real societal challenge and greatly it transcends the University, is that pricing for resources is artificially low and so the kinds of things that we want to do now we can provide a payback on them. Facilities for example has decided to replace all the incandescent bulbs on the campus with compact fluorescents – it pays back within a year. Our Rewire program provides a significant payback but as we come to the end of those simple kinds of programs and we want to do more ambitious things like install more renewable facilities on campus for example., we will be limited by the price that we pay for energy and the lower that it is, the less that we can do and show a benefit.
Right now society is geared toward subsidizing consumption and punishing conservation – so you know, you drive on the road for free but you pay to take the transit and it's that way across the board and that is the biggest challenge that we face and the one that will be most difficult to surmount. Peter: Okay. What are the greatest rewards that you anticipate?
Beth: The greatest rewards are seeing year after year, tens of thousands of young people graduating and going out with a confidence that they can make a difference and that they can represent their values with their actions and that's the single biggest reward. The second reward is seeing the people on campus who have been here for years, become galvanized and we have a particularly enlightened leadership right now at the University - we've got a wonderful President and a fabulous Provost and a terrific Vice-President, Business and they all get it…they all support the engagement of young people and they're green. So it isn't as if I'm fighting an uphill struggle on campus on the other hand watching all these people become more and more convinced and becoming radicalized in their approach to the environment has been tremendously rewarding. It's great to see also that there's a legacy being left at the University in terms of the way Facilities – they've always been green but they're becoming more and more aggressive in looking at how they can conserve resources and it's wonderful to watch that happening and to watch them take on more ambitious projects and as time goes on and use more creative tools like revolving funds in order to serve those goals. So all of that is tremendously rewarding but the single most rewarding thing on a personal level is working with young people.
Peter: I'm going to ask that impossible question that ends lots of interviews. In ten years, where do you see the environment – knowledge exchange within the environment and the ability to make well-informed decisions?
Beth: Well we are already at the point where environment is such a motherhood issue, that no decisions, or very few decisions even from the personal, to the institutional, to the collective, to the political, can be made without some regard for the environment. So I think that we've already accomplished a great deal in terms of the knowledge – the public knowledge of environmental…urgent environmental issues. What we aren't doing is acting on that knowledge and I would…what I would like to see in ten years is that the kind of confidence that I've described watching in the undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, will be translated out into the wider community so that we see community groups, schools, banks, insurance companies, developers all starting to take more assertive actions and being supported by the kinds of government policies that will create fair pricing so that the actions that people take will be rewarded rather than, as they are now, often being punished. Peter: Beth, I'd like to thank you for taking the time today and sharing your thoughts and experience. One of the things that I do at the end of an interview is just leave it open – is there anything that we haven't discussed that you would really like to include in this conversation? Beth: There is. I work with a privileged group. I mean young people who get to the University of Toronto are fortunate – they are fortunate that they've been able to get a great education that has allowed them to get the marks and that has allowed them to get the financial support either from their families or from the University or government system to attend a great university. What about the majority of people who don't have access to that experience? Either young people or new Canadians or older people who have been here for generations who don't have those transformative experiences? I think that we need to look at different mechanisms for reaching those communities and I think that there are small initiatives which are being undertaken but…for example, I just had lunch with a friend of mine who works with the hotel employees and restaurant employees union. The members of that union are largely new Canadians, they're people for whom English is not a first language and he has ideas for how those people can work on environmental issues in their workplace and how they can feel themselves, rewarded and so they've already negotiated for subsidized transit for example as part of their collective agreements. So I guess I see that very imaginative step as one that's going to have to be replicated throughout society. So it's not just the privileged, like the students that I get to work with, but groups which are much more disenfranchised, are largely either neglected or frightened to participate in the kinds of decision making processes that are in place in Canada, but which they aren't able to access and so I think there's a lot of work to be done there. Peter: Beth thanks very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Beth: It's been fun for me too Peter.
