By Daniel M. Asquino | MWCC President
This past academic year has been one of great achievement, not only for the college as an institution, but for our students, particularly those who will graduate on May 19.
Week by week over the course of several months, we witnessed the extraordinary construction of the college’s two wind turbines. Together, these turbines will meet virtually all of the electricity needs on our Gardner campus, while also returning more energy back to the power grid. Through this and other renewable and conservation measures, in less than a decade the college’s main campus was transformed from one that consumed vast amount of electricity, to one that made necessary changes to become almost entirely self-sustaining in its energy needs.
Not unlike the college’s sustainability story, our students also arrive ready to make the changes necessary to achieve personal and academic goals, then graduate equipped with the tools and skills that will help them become sustainable in their own right. And like our turbines that return energy back to the grid, our students go back into their communities ready to use their knowledge and acquired skills to recharge their own environment.
Certainly we believe that the college’s green initiatives have created a greater awareness among all of us – students, faculty and staff alike – to be environmentally conscious and active in our everyday life. In the final analysis, the world we live in and the world our graduates inherit must be a sustainable one for it to truly have any value. We feel confident that the academic and life lessons that were obtained while at Mount Wachusett Community College also will provide our graduates with sustainability – occupationally, intellectually, and personally, as they strive to meet the challenges and adventures before them.
As Peter Senge, the Massachusetts scientist and author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, has stated: “Sustainability is not a problem to be solved. It is a future to be created.”
The end of an academic year is bittersweet. We are ecstatic to see our graduating students achieve their dream of obtaining a college degree or certificate, yet at the same time, this accomplishment means we must bid farewell to those who have become an integral part of the MWCC community. But as you leave here as graduates, you return as alumni and remain members of our community and that in fact sustains our legacy. After all, this institution is not just a collection of buildings, but rather, a community of people with a shared vision for the future.
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