Professor pushes focus on conservation

An hour after a ribbon-cutting ceremony launched Florida Gulf Coast University, Peter Corcoran stood in front of a group of students in a classroom on the south Lee County campus.

There he would introduce the course that would define the institution for years to come as FGCU became the only public university in the state to make an environmental class a requirement to graduate.

It was part of a unique mission and a commitment that would carve out FGCU’s niche among the state’s nine other public universities.

It was the reason Corcoran left the small liberal arts college in Maine where he had taught for six years to come to a relatively unknown university in the Southwest Florida wetlands.

“It was a mark of distinction,” said Corcoran, 57, a professor of environmental studies. “I was drawn here by that mission.”

The university’s commitment to the environment was etched into its foundation, meant to survive critics who questioned whether classrooms should be built on 760 acres of swamp that included protected land.

Nearly a decade later, it’s a mission Corcoran is fighting to keep intact.

“I think that we’ve been careless in a lot of ways,” Corcoran said. “I think we could have done a lot to lessen our footprint.”

On a campus that made a name for itself for its environmental practices, disposable plates are always within reach in the cafeteria and air-conditioning and electricity are distributed in ample amounts, Corcoran said.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News

Peter Blaze Corcoran, left, is the director of the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education program at Florida Gulf Coast University, founded two years ago to push the university into the spotlight on environmental issues. FGCU is one of a select group of 20 colleges around the country that is part of the Economicology Consortium that teaches environmentally responsible practices.

The university that opened with seven buildings and 2,400 students now has 58 buildings and is expected to hold more than 8,000 student this fall.

The campus has been under constant construction since the day Corcoran taught his first class.

He’s still waiting to walk through a building composed of energy-saving materials and environmentally friendly methods now common to universities throughout the United States, he said.

“We don’t do nearly as much conservation of energy as we should do,” he said. “We could have been much more thoughtful in terms of our impact on the environment.”

Earlier this week a group of 16 students sat in a circle with their book bags slumped at their sides as Corcoran described the smell of the cypress trees, the backdrop for their outside classroom.

Here students discuss the overconsumption of land and resources they have witnessed both outside the campus walls and within. It was in a class just like this that FGCU graduate Jake Scott decided to change his career path when he attended the university in 1997.

Inspired by the environmental sustainability course he was required to take, Scott gave up plans to become a builder. He now does research for the British Environment Agency, an organization equivalent to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

“What was exciting then and should be exciting now for students is that these ideas are still very new,” Scott, 32, wrote in e-mail from England. “(The course) opened my eyes.”

The curriculum for the class hasn’t changed much during the past decade, Corcoran said, unlike the campus that has provided its setting.

The university today represents exactly what retired biologist Gary Beardsley feared would happen when the site was chosen from among 20 locations. Beardsley served on the Arnold Committee, named in honor of former Rep. Keith Arnold and composed of business, government and environmental leaders who threatened to stall the university’s construction because of effects it could have on the environment.

“The university became the anchor for letting all the growth that’s going to happen in that area. There’s no stopping it,” Beardsley, 69, said. “All those environmentally sensitive areas, there’s a lot of pressure to develop them now.”

Corcoran points out that the land where the university was built already was damaged by logging and enshrined in invasive species. The university improved waterways and promoted the native vegetation when it developed the site, he said, but the campus also grew too quickly to implement energy-saving practices in its buildings.

Most of the construction that has taken place was determined by the steady stream of students that poured into south Lee County to attend FGCU, a circumstance didn’t leave a lot of time or money to constrict building practices to energy-conserving materials and methods, said university spokesperson Susan Evans.

“It’s a lofty goal when you’re building a brand new university and trying to get buildings up to accommodate students,” Evans said. “In a perfect world those kinds of things would be there.”

Two years ago Corcoran founded the FGCU Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education as an initiative meant to encompass the university’s environmental initiative under one roof, something that is hard to do in his small office in Whitaker Hall, where books and folders spill out onto the shelves that line the walls.

A graduate student works in the corner at a desk that takes up most of the small space. “This is the center,” he said with a chuckle.

Last month the center was asked to join the Economicology Consortium, a highly selective group of 20 colleges and universities that includes Yale University and collaborates to provide information on environmentally responsible practices.

Corcoran said he hopes eventually to house the FGCU Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education in a environmentally friendly demonstration building planned near the main entrance of campus.

“I hope that we can be the rudder on the ship that is FGCU,” he said.