Home / Sustainability / Community

 

Since its founding in 1892 Northland College has been both a leader and a pioneer, bringing higher education to the north woods and making a bold decision to be a different kind of college by focusing our mission and liberal arts and sciences curriculum around issues of the environment and society. Today, Northland is taking that leadership a step further. While many entities focus on sustainability at the scale of the institution or the single municipality, Northland is actively engaged in regional-scale sustainability initiatives with a broad range of community partners.

Currently, these collaborations are focused on two critical and interconnected regional sustainability issues: fostering a dramatically expanded local food system; and expanding carbon neutral energy production and energy efficiency. Northland's enhanced focus in these two areas will help to build the region's self-sufficiency and resiliency in the face of climate change, political instability, and economic turmoil while simultaneously offering additional educational opportunities, a stronger connection between college and community, and a scalable and replicable model for other region's to follow. A broadened focus on energy and food will also be leveraged as a distinctive economic development driver for the region by focusing social entrepreneurship on the quadruple bottom line of people, planet, profits and place.