 Sometimes you read the paper, watch the news, and it seems like there's more bad news than good in the world. But you know what? It's just not true. I at least can hold on to something. There's something, maybe it's small, but there's something that I'm doing to make a difference. It's just a feeling that you have. If you can help people, you have to. There's no alternative. Every child has potential that we just can't know. And so, to my mind, that's what we're doing. We are saving potential for the future. It is one thing to go to college and learn about lofty issues like environmental sustainability. It is quite another to live in. For a hundred years, college unions on thousands of campuses have been the ideological laboratories for important social causes from civil rights to world peace. At the University of Vermont, the College Union is more than a place to think about the environment. It is a living example of what sustainability looks and feels like. But it is also a place that reflects the culture and ideas of the community in which it resides. We are at the University of Vermont, the Davis Center. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Oh, slip in, slip in, slip in. Wellington, Vermont is a quintessential New England community. It's right on this beautiful lake called Lake Champlain. And the university sits on a hill atop overlooking it and we have the Green Mountains to our east and the New York on a Rondex to our west. And it's one of the most spectacular places really to live and in my case to be able to be a part of a great university. The university in the town really are two inseparable entities that benefit each other. And that's what's great about Burlington and the University of Vermont because they partner on not only the success of our students but the success of incredible community life. It sounds good to me. You know, I just want to understand the more problems in the neighborhood. You know, I'm a professor at heart and I would look at all of us together, all students, faculty and staff as a community of scholars. I'm talking about food. Yes, oh, oh. Running from there. Running from there. Rock the bell. It sounds good to me. I would say, you know, you can't have a community of scholars when there's no place for them to gather. The Student Center starts with a sense of place and to some extent we didn't know what we were missing until we built the place. They can sit on the green on a warm summer day but you're here on a day when my thermometer said seven below. The cold, the winter, people embrace it here in Vermont, of course. And what this building does is a sense of place. There's this other part that you hope is going to happen when you build a building like this. And it's sort of the informal impromptu part of the dynamic of the building. People just showing up here and say, I'll meet you at the Davis Center. And you can't program that in. That has to happen because of the nature of the building, either where it's situated or the program elements that you put into it. We're very intentional about putting it in the center of our campus. And so it really becomes a crossroads. It's the living room of our campus where people come to grab a bite to eat, to engage with faculty, staff or students, to hang out with friends. And we've created a sense for people to come here, be in their living room, be comfortable with the values of the institution. We decided to identify four principles that this building would operate around and try to strive and bring to the campus. Environmental stewardship, social justice, student-centered, and looking at our connections to the academic part of the campus. Have a great day. Congratulations again. My job is to create an ethos in the Davis Center. It's really important to me that the building reflects the University of Vermont community. So our mission, valuing environmental stewardship and social justice is essential. And I would add to that in terms of our values, both in Burlington and Vermont and the campus and what we try to impart with our students as they come and they're new to our community are values like environmental stewardship. And this building being lead-certified gold, the first campus center in the country to meet that challenge. The idea behind the Davis Center was that it would be built to be a learning laboratory. So the lead gold certification aspect was really a guideline to say here are some priorities that you should think about and try to incorporate into the building so that people can have that information to learn from. What we did at the very beginning of the project was take a look at all of the different elements of the design. So we actually worked very closely with all of the subcontractors to make sure that we bought our materials as locally as possible, that we recycled as much construction debris as possible. Students these days are looking for schools where they can learn about how to be a comprehensive citizen of the world and not just learn what's in books. So the idea behind the lead certification for this particular project was that the building could teach everybody. Without just providing a space that the students can be in but for the lead certification it's a stamp that the public recognizes that the university is investing in the future of the buildings and the students. So there are visual cues throughout the building that say things like this building recycled 92% of the construction and demolition waste. And the students are able to see those no matter what floor that they're on. So this is a data monitoring and display system. It takes the building management system information from our sensors and meters within the building and then they send it back out to the internet where everybody can take it in no matter where they are. The really interesting aspects include the electricity, heating, cooling, natural gas is what we use for the kitchen cooking. We wanted to make sure that people understood what these numbers really meant. One of them is the Ben & Jerry's organic vanilla ice cream consumed today. But you can look it up in Ben & Jerry's organic vanilla ice cream to approximate how many pints you would have to consume to generate the same amount of energy. One of the big student initiatives is that people want to source their food. They want to know where it came from. And one of the things that the students really wanted to... they told us is they wanted local foods. They have a network of over 80 farms that we draw from. One of the things we really noticed about the local push from the students is that it's really a way of life. And the wonderful thing about Vermont and this college is many of our graduates, many of our alums are those farmers or are those purveyors. And now they have the opportunity to bring their product back to our campus to highlight it, to showcase it. And then students interact with them and say, wow, that's something that I could do. This restaurant was actually started by my brother Chris Hathaway as a street vendor out in front of the campus here in the early 90s. We both are alums of UVM. I'm class of 94 and my brother's class of 92. One of the things I think that makes our food something that the students choose is that it's we're as fast as fast food but we make everything ourselves. We use a lot of fresh ingredients. Everything's made from scratch including the tortillas. We make the tortillas ourselves at our location here in Burlington. This isn't just a place to study and get a meal. It really is the center of student life on campus. This is a place much like a town would be. Much like Burlington is that they provide all kinds of connections and services for everybody here that's welcome. We've got 150 or so student organizations here. Every piece of this building has been incredibly intentional. And especially this hallway even of bridging our student newspaper and radio station and a branch of our health center is all intentional in trying to provide those things that connect students and create the community that we love. So right now we're in the cynic office which is UBM student newspaper and the cynic office is in the Davis Center. I got to see us move from the old digs which were sort of cavernous and not very bright and out front. The incredible thing about campus is no matter where you go students are doing things but having the Davis Center be here in this magnificent building with wonderful resources it attracts people. We get a lot of walk-by's. A lot of people are excited about the newspaper and come in because they're excited about the newspaper. Being here in this hub of energy with this unbelievable student body changed me as a journalist because I learned from the people with this interest here but also every step I take in this building someone's doing something. So infectious the energy that you get in here and even last night I mean we were in this office till 1.30 in the morning trying to put this paper out. You know in some sense I don't think I'd rather be any place else because everybody's experiencing it together and I think being with all these people that are doing the same thing that you're doing is just really really special and you know I think this has made me just a much better student a much better person. We are here at the University of Vermont Davis Center here with student employees of the Davis Center. The American College Union. It's association. Association. You think it's American but it's association of college unions. International. Why'd you let me do that? Why'd you let me do it? It is the professional organization for staff who work in college unions all over the world. This association provides wonderful programs and support for the jobs you do in the unions. We do programs for the staff so that they can benchmark and know all of what's going on in the country so that you can do the very best jobs that you guys can do. Tell me the things that you will learn from your job that will complement what you have learned in the classroom. A lot of the things I would say I've learned and will come out with here are a lot of leadership skills, how to work with people. And I just think that working here has actually increased my socialness with other people. I'm not really as shy anymore. I'm friendlier and it's increased my leadership overall. I'm going to walk away with a lot more leadership skills than I came in with. Happy 100th anniversary, ACUI. For the visionaries, I'm Sam Waterston. Visionaries is brought to you in partnership with Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. And through the generosity of Frank and Barbara Mandlin, Tom Hormel, the Parker Family Foundation, Nebraska Tourism Commission, Rogers, Our Passion is Building, Advantage Fitness Products, P&C Bank, Grand Island Chamber of Commerce, and from the generous support of Out In The Following.