LTCC’s green choices reap enviro, economic dividends

By Kathryn Reed

Looking for Lake Tahoe Community College’s fall schedule?

It’s going to be a little harder to find a hard copy of the two-year institution’s schedule as it follows the lead of other colleges by not mailing them out as well as reducing the content. Officials envision the print version going away completely in the future.

This fall and for the foreseeable future it is available via the college’s website or by clicking schedule. Hard copies will be at the South Lake Tahoe college starting Aug. 16 — the only place they will be in hard copy. Open registration begins Sept. 3, with classes starting Sept. 20.

“Where we see the possibility of losing students is people taking the occasional class who are quite used to getting the schedule in their mailbox as their reminder of class availability,” Christina Proctor, LTCC spokeswoman, said.

Besides this being one of the college’s green initiatives, it also is a cost-saving tool. Printing fewer schedules, along with not including a detailed description of the course will save $10,000 a year.

“We have to make sure our limited dollars are going where they need to, which is students. This is one easy way to save money and not really affect services to students,” Proctor said.

The college is hoping people will recycle the schedules by having multiple people use a single copy. With it all being online and the college having computers for the public to use, everyone still has access to a schedule.

This is not the only way the college is going green. When Craig Brinkman came onboard as a contract employee through a federal grant, he noticed most printers on campus were ink jets.

The IT department has wiped out the active inventory of printers by 40 percent. This means a whole lot of people adjusting to not having a personal printer. Laser jets are what they are sharing.

The change also comes with a reduction of ink by 50 percent. Monetary savings comes with fewer cords plugged into a wall as well as less ink needed to be bought, and what is purchased will cost less.

All of this is environmentally beneficial, too.

Everyone is also going to a terminal server. It should reduce the demand on the information technology employees.

“There have been some bumps along the way. It’s a change in the way we do business, a change in thinking,” Proctor said.

Brinkman is also responsible for implementing Datatel, a software system that is supposed to make the college run more efficiently. Brinkman wrote an article for TechEDge about this and IT issues at LTCC.

Another way the college would like to be green is by creating a geothermal facility. It has gone after a number of grants, but continues to be bypassed. The plan is to tap into the geothermal power of Lake Tahoe.

“I have also implemented an online campaign on the college Facebook page and this fall students will find the logo around campus with explanations about other green projects the college is implementing,” Proctor said.