The Sophian spoke with Dano Weisbord, former director of the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability (CEEDS) and former Associate Vice President for Campus Planning and Sustainability. After 14 years working at Smith College, this October Weisbord began working at Tufts University as the Executive Director of Sustainability and as chief sustainability officer. We spoke about his recent work at Smith as the COVID-19 administrator, his decision to find a new position at Tufts, the process of adapting sustainability planning work to a larger institution and his legacy of campus planning and sustainability at Smith.
“When you work in a small institution, a lot of times you end up wearing many hats,” said Weisbord about his work at Smith during the pandemic. Weisbord recounted going to his former supervisor David DeSwert, Smith’s Vice President for Finance and Communication, and asking how he could help with what he had initially thought was a “short-lived” crisis.
Weisbord helped facilitate management through the pandemic, planning new ways to adjust learning spaces and campus operations. Tasked with translating state regulations and scientific consensus into recommended actions for Smith to take, the pandemic brought on a whole new set of challenges and responsibilities for Weisbord.
“I mean, it was exhausting, but it was kind of amazing,” Weisbord said. “The relationships I made with my colleagues, particularly those on COVID-19 Incident Response Team (CIRT), they’re unbelievably strong, deep-trust relationships. We had to do a lot of real time management and difficult things, and we had to disagree about stuff, and work through all that. So that was a real gift.”
Weisbord’s willingness to take on new challenges was one of the main propellers in his decision to leave Smith and work at Tufts.
“Post-pandemic, I was kind of ready to do something different and change things up,” said Weisbord. “When the opportunity came along, it felt like a really good fit — in part because I did my graduate work here.”
After he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Weisbord completed his MA in Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts. He credits his experience as a graduate student at Tufts with “changing his personal and professional trajectory,” as it allowed him to shift focus from profit design to expressing his environmental and social justice commitments.
Having started his new position this past October, Weisbord still considers himself in the thick of the transition process to a newer, larger university.
“It’s like jumping onto a moving train,” said Weisbord. He stated that Tufts is in the midst of the sustainability planning process, having focused a lot of energy on their carbon mitigation infrastructure work.
Working at a larger organization has motivated Weisbord to retool his approach to working on projects and getting the student community involved.
“At Smith, there were things I could do just by knowing a lot of people, even being the person connecting them together,” said Weisbord. “Here, I’m starting to think a little more systematically about how you identify entry points for students and faculty … and then advertise and have people join you.”
As he confronts the new sustainability challenges and projects at Tufts, Weisbord hopes to draw from his experience working at Smith. He talks specifically regarding the work he did with staff members Denise Makan, Alexander Barron and David Smith, where they created in-class opportunities for students to work on authentic on-campus sustainability issues through scholarships and classroom projects. By combining academic experience with real-world problem solving, Weisbord says they were able to create deeper learning experiences for students.
“That approach is pretty unique, and Smith has been pretty effective at doing that,” said Weisbord. “You’re taking academics and operations, two things that kind of live in their own ruts, and you’re pushing them out of their ruts, making them connect.”
Weisbord is proud of the changes he’s made at Smith: his aforementioned work with capstone classes and scholarship learning, as well as working on major projects like the Learning Spaces Plan and the Geothermal Energy Projects. He shares the credit with Makan, Smith, Barron and other collaborators he has worked with.
“There’s nothing, nothing that you do alone,” said Weisbord. “Everything that I did at Smith was done in deep collaboration with other people.”
Though Weisbord feels like Smith has made great strides in sustainability efforts, he maintains that there is always work to be done.
“Here’s the thing: we have deep societal inequities around how we utilize resources,” said Weisbord. “Our institutions are always a reflection of those greater challenges, and Smith, just like any other institution, has tons of work to do.”
