Board’s Endorsement Places Sustainability Goals Front and Center at DA
Story by Dylan Howlett | Photography by Kate Auger
It started, like all worthy causes do, with an idea: four 11th-grade boys huddled around a whiteboard in the Upper School Learning Commons, scribbling fragments and notions that would become a constellation of dreams. It was the fall of 2018, and the quartet of Durham Academy juniors — Brandon Caveney ’20, the late Jack Linger ’20, Will Nichols ’20 and Andrew Owens ’20 — had formed, in the most informal sense, Durham Academy’s inaugural Sustainability Club.
They did so at the behest of Tina Bessias ’78, an Upper School English teacher and Independent Learning coordinator. That same month, Bessias had read, with no shortage of alarm, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark report, which concluded that the warming of the Earth by 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels would portend a cascade of cataclysms from which our planet — and, quite possibly, humans — may never recover. The boys, however, saw something more hopeful. “It kind of highlighted that while there is a doomsday scenario, there absolutely is a way to make change to kind of reduce the negative impacts of climate change,” Owens said. “It’s very easy to say that we’re past the point of return — and we might be — but we’re not past the point where we can at least reduce the negative consequences.”
Five years later, on a brisk December day, Merritt Schulz ’25 also found himself in the Learning Commons. The co-chair of the DA Upper School Sustainability Committee was tucked away in the library when he saw Bessias (now serving as DA’s first-ever sustainability coordinator) and his co-chair, Zara Miller ’25, striding forth with an ebullience that only the best of news can inspire. They conferred with Schulz, who leapt to his feet. “We need to tell Ms. Caruso!” he said. They sprinted across campus to the STEM & Humanities Center, where Andrea Caruso, an Upper School science teacher and divisional sustainability leader, erupted with commensurate glee. The dreams of the dry-erase board had come true.
In December 2023, the Durham Academy Board of Trustees voted to endorse the goals suggested by the DA Sustainability Leadership Team and the Upper School’s student Sustainability Committee, which had presented its aspirations and concrete plans to the board and DA’s Administrative Team over the course of several years. The endorsement of three explicit goals — educating students in all divisions about sustainability, reducing DA’s carbon emissions by 25% within four years, and increasing biodiversity across DA’s campuses — comes 10 years shy of the school’s centennial, all the while positioning sustainability as “a top-shelf priority for the institution,” Head of School Michael Ulku-Steiner said.
To support these goals, the DA Family Association committed a substantial gift to assist with rewilding and biodiversity efforts at the Upper School and Middle School. (The $100,000 gift also included funding for a climbing structure and natural features of the Lower School’s new nature-centric playground.) Ulku-Steiner shared this news with Upper Schoolers at a Jan. 5 assembly in Kirby Gym, beneath a bank of fluorescent lights that will soon be replaced with LED lighting — cheaper-to-maintain, brighter and more efficient technology — in another visible display of actionable change. Ulku-Steiner motioned toward a group of familiar faces. “I want you to recognize that it’s students who catalyzed this change,” he said, as he was joined by seven DA alumni who worked tirelessly on behalf of sustainability efforts. “These are some of the students who took unpopular stands,” Ulku-Steiner said, “who went to extra meetings, who worked on weekends, who worked on evenings.”
They would work again on this day, too. As the assembly concluded, the seven alumni and dozens of current students, faculty and staff members walked to the grassy area beneath the Elder Oak — a gargantuan, 232-foot scarlet oak tree on the corner of Pickett and Ridge roads. The tree was recently designated as a “Champion Tree,” an honor bestowed upon the oldest tree within a given species in the state of North Carolina. The lawn beneath the Elder Oak — which is, as all grass lawns are, monocultures that are unable to support many beneficial species of wildlife — will soon become DA’s first “pocket prairie.” This assemblage of native plant species will offer refuge and nourishment to critically important pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds.
The post-assembly work session served as an unofficial groundbreaking, or literal lawnbreaking. Bessias and Caruso laid pieces of cardboard to cover the grass, and students shoveled mulch atop the cardboard to kill the existing sod and prevent weeds from sprouting through the soil. Committee members soon realized an unintended consequence of so much enthusiastic participation: They ran out of shovels. “We didn’t expect that many people to be out there,” Schulz said. “It was such an amazing surprise.”
It was, too, for members of the original Sustainability Club who couldn’t have fathomed a day like this when they commandeered a Learning Commons whiteboard. “I was honestly astounded,” Nichols said, laughing. Owens, who was part of the first student presentation to the Board of Trustees on potential sustainability initiatives, agreed: “This is something I never would have expected years ago. We were proud of what we had done, the fact that we stood up for something we believed in. But I think it’s really nice to see that there’s some tangible change.”
It was not, of course, a straight line from whiteboard to institutional backing. Sustainability at DA represents the boundless passion and resolve of students and faculty who are buoyed by the simplest of creeds: If we can do something, then we must. Here is a closer look at the board’s endorsements, and a glimpse into the indefatigable journey of those students and staff members who dared to dream.
The Endorsements: How the Board’s Support Will Move DA Forward
Advocates for environmental sustainability at Durham Academy have celebrated several milestones in recent years, and these efforts received a major injection of institutional support with a grant from DA’s Innovation Journey Fund (IJF) in spring 2022.
With the grant, a schoolwide Sustainability Leadership Team was formed, and the school partnered with Raleigh-based firm GreenPlaces, which worked with students in the Upper School Sustainability in Action elective to analyze data on the school’s greenhouse gas emissions and to formulate a plan to lower the school’s carbon footprint. Thanks to the IFJ grant, DA was also able to partner with The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education to offer workshops and ongoing coaching to faculty, staff and students looking to infuse sustainability into curricula. And in February 2023, the Upper School Sustainability Committee hosted DA’s first-ever Sustain-In to broaden the school’s brainstorming power around sustainability.
But DA has, by its own admission, moved more glacially than the moment requires.
“The truth is, Durham Academy was behind,” Ulku-Steiner said during his address to Upper Schoolers. “We had not acted as an institution in the ways that we should have — as ambitiously, as thoughtfully, as comprehensively. We always had a lot of good stuff happening in the realm of green action here. We’ve been recycling for 25 years. We’ve been composting for five. But never before has the school made an institutional commitment to reducing the emissions, to educating every single student and to rewilding the campus as much as we can.”
“I think Ms. Bessias probably put it best when she said that the best thing we could do — and what we did do — was light a fire under their feet,” Owens said of the committee’s persistence across campus. “The more you push for something that you believe in, the more likely there is to be tangible change. Sometimes it takes a never-ending commitment to see the change that you want implemented.”
Change at DA has arrived. Here’s what to expect from the Board of Trustees’ endorsements (including the addition of sustainability to the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the board) and the Sustainability Leadership Team’s implementation.
1. Educate students in all four divisions about sustainability
Sustainability education will be incorporated into all subject matter at all levels as part of a cultural, schoolwide academic commitment.
Bessias ’78: “In some ways, education is really the foundation of it all. There are those who say — and [renowned climate scientist] Katharine Hayhoe is one — that speaking about climate change and sustainability is the most powerful thing we can do. And it’s really important because it’s all too easy to do harm while you’re trying to do good. Getting rid of single-use plastic, in general, is a worthy goal — but if we replace them with very resource-intensive, very thick, heavy bottles with 150 times as much material in them, and we lose them after five uses, then we’ve actually done harm rather than good. We have to actually study these things. We have to train ourselves. We have to learn a lot, not just a little. And we have to get used to talking about it. That’s why education is the No. 1 goal — and it’s what we do.”
Miller ’25: “Sustainability can be incorporated into so many different things. Younger kids can find a passion in it. If we’re able to do this starting in the Preschool at DA, I think it will really merge different parts of campus and make everyone more passionate about sustaining the goals.”
Schulz ’25: “We’re only here at DA for so long. The future comes from all of the other divisions and all of the other grade levels. We need to educate them and really inspire them to take up the mantle like the [previous] leaders did for me and create a culture where it’s fun, where there’s a purpose. That’s really the most important goal — just educating.”
2. Reduce carbon emissions by 25% within four years
The original Sustainability Club deployed “Operation: Shoe Size” to ascertain DA’s emissions related to transportation, electricity, food and waste. With the support of GreenPlaces, that data — and the ideal areas for improvement — have become all the more precise.
Miller ’25: “We realized, ‘Wow, we’re releasing a lot of emissions.’ Compared to a lot of schools, we’re kind of similar. But I think as a private institution, just the amount that we’re emitting, it’s kind of scary to look at in numbers to see the impact that we’re having as a whole student body. Obviously, you can’t really see emissions, but they’re there. Reducing those emissions will show to other schools, ‘We care about this. You need to, too, because we’re setting a new standard.’ ”
Schulz ’25: “We should be the standard. We should be the role model for other schools. With that number, that’s the easiest way to be a role model. If you’re cutting down that number, everyone can see that you’re being more sustainable. It’s a very easy way to show sustainability, and it’s also very helpful.”
Bessias ’78: “We can do it. It isn’t something abstract or indirect. If we make changes and reduce our carbon emissions, it will help in a significant way. We don’t have to persuade somebody else to do that. We can first work on ourselves. I’m fond of the Archimedes saying — people think of it as, ‘Give me a lever and I can move the world.’ But that leaves out a part. He said, ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world.’ In my mind, knowledge is our lever, and personal actions are the place to stand. It gives us credibility to move the world. It gives us power when we actually take action ourselves.”
3. Increase biodiversity across DA’s campuses
Of the $100,000 DA Family Association gift, $40,000 is dedicated toward the new “pocket prairie” beneath the Elder Oak; a portion of the remaining funds will improve biodiversity at the Middle School’s Academy Road campus. The genesis of the pocket prairie traces back to the February 2023 Sustain-In, when Sanju Patel ’23 and Frankie Stover ’24 pushed for biodiversity as a higher priority within the committee’s efforts. The design of the pocket prairie features input from faculty and students, and it will proliferate native species; Bessias, Caruso and Ann Leininger (an Upper School parent and former DA trustee and Family Association president) learned about starting Southeastern native plants from seeds through a workshop held at Duke Gardens.
Schulz ’25: “It shows that sustainability is more than just carbon. That number is amazing to cut down. However, biodiversity loss is still one of the leading problems in the world today. To show that we’re doing our part to give a home to these species in North Carolina, it really does a lot. It’ll also just be good for the mental health of our students. It’s going to be a good place for students to study. Teachers can go out there and help students learn about different species. I just think it’ll improve DA as a whole — not just for sustainability, but also for education.”
CJ Nwafor ’23: “This shows there’s actually commitment and actual, physical change that you can see — changes in your community that you can see — that actually contribute to the cause.”
Caruso: “I’m excited to both start a small patch of pocket prairie with my biodiversity elective this spring semester, as well as help spearhead the development of the Family Association-funded project by the Elder Oak. I think this space — to be designed for gathering and learning, wellness, and habitat — may end up being the lovely corner of campus.”
Parker Silliman ’25: “Bringing kids at DA into a space where they can learn about sustainability hands-on — if they’re out there in nature, they can really enjoy it and see how important it is and how they need to save it. If they have that more emotional and physical connection to nature and the planet, they might feel like they need to help out more.”