Creating and Maintaining the Right Vibe
As a joint student-administrative partnership, a green living program (GLP) ventures into two very different cultures. Students and staff have different lifestyles and working hours. They have different approaches to their experience on campus. Staff leave at night and work daily throughout the entire year. Students arrive in the fall and flee in the spring, living on campus 24/7 in between. They prefer to meet at night after classes while some staff may balk at the suggestion of a post-6 p.m. meeting. Besides the temporal, availability and working differences between students and staff, there are more complex cultural and motivational differences, such as:
- how students and staff perceive their campus (as a home or workplace);
- how they see their campus relationships (as friendships, academic relationships or professional connections);
- why they care about conservation on campus (because it is their home and community or they will see financial savings in their department).
Of course, students and staff can desire the same goals for the same reasons. For example, some staff members seek conservation efforts because they consider the campus part of their community. Likewise, some students seek campus involvement for professional connections and development. All these factors should be considered in your attempt to create the right vibe for a GLP. Recognizing the different kinds of relationships that students and staff have to your campus will be very helpful in creating a vision that meets the needs of both groups.
It is especially important that you find a way to create the environment (or vibe) that allows everyone involved in the GLP to feel they are contributing positively to the program—fulfilling responsibilities, leading, and seeing their personal vision reflected in the program’s goals and agenda. This involves balancing a number of principles:
- Managing and Mentoring
- Leading and Following
- Creativity and Structure
- Adaptability and Accountability