Strength Training the Social
& Human Capital Muscle
Aaron Witham
Director of Sustainability
Green Mountain College
• Rural Vermont
• ≈ 850 students
• Sustainability accomplishments:
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Climate neutral since 2011
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Environmental Liberal Arts curriculum
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STARS Gold rating
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#8 in Sierra Magazine’s Cool Schools List
Princeton Review’s Green Honor Roll
• New college-wide strategic plan to achieve authentic sustainability
by the year 2020
What is human capital?
Health
Wellness
Human
Capital
Productivity
Development
What is social capital?
Trust
Diversity
Social
Capital
Inclusion
Associations
Why are these important for
Sustainability?
• Everyday problem solving
• Sharing resources & skills
• Crisis management
Strategic Plan: Sustainability
2020
• Eight-year plan
• Collaboration between the Board, faculty, staff, and students
Establish a baseline
• Metrics task force
• Met every two weeks for eight months
• Focused effort to reach out to diverse campus constituents (faculty
meetings, staff assembly, one-on-one meetings with students, and
lunches open to everybody)
• Community wide conversation event (including the town)
• 30 page technical paper
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Alumni impact: social, economic, and environmental
Social Capital
Trust
Diversity
Social
Capital
Inclusion
Associations
Inventorying social capital
• One method is social network analysis
Discerning Trust, Associations,
Diversity & Inclusion
How do we approximate social
network analysis without 100%
response rate?
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Robert Putnam- Bowling Alone (2000)
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Membership in organizations (PTAs, Red Cross, etc.)
Surveys of time budgets
Participation in politics
Results of GSS
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Pamela Paxton (1999)
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Multiple metrics
Adaptation of General Social Survey questions (GSS) (1972-2012)
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Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey from the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard (2000) (n=30,000)
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Sense of belonging to people in your neighborhood, city, place of worship, school, ethnic group
Level of trust of people in your neighborhood, workplace, stores, news media, local community,
police, people of different ethnic backgrounds
How likely would people comply with directions in an emergency (i.e. water conservation)
How much impact do you think people have in your community
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Trust & Associations Questions
• Would you say that most of the time people on campus try to be helpful
or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?
• For each area of college life I am going to name, indicate how satisfied
you are by your relationships in that area.
• How often do you spend a social evening with someone who works,
lives, or goes to school at Green Mountain College?
• How often do you volunteer to help with a campus project, event, or
activity?
• How often do you attend campus events or activities?
(Questions Adapted from Paxton, 1999 and the GSS Cumulative Codebook, 2011. )
Diversity & Inclusion Questions
Developed by a psychology class:
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Green Mountain College demonstrates a strong commitment to incorporating diversity
awareness into the curriculum.
Diverse perspectives are encouraged at GMC.
There is a strong sense of respect for diversity at GMC.
My experiences at GMC have helped me develop an appreciation for multicultural
perspectives.
GMC demonstrates a commitment to social justice.
My experiences at GMC have allowed me to feel comfortable expressing my creativity.
I feel comfortable participating in my cultural/religious traditions at GMC.
I have felt that my perspectives have been included in the decision making processes at GMC
when I wanted them to be.
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Generally speaking, how much do you think the perspectives of each of the following groups are
taken into account when decisions are made at GMC?
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Board of Trustees
Administration
Faculty
Staff
Students
Members of the general Poultney Community
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Please indicate how much respect you see for the following types of diversity within the GMC
community.
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Race
Gender
Sexual identity
Religious beliefs
Socioeconomic status
Ethnicity
Physical or developmental ability
Political Views
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To what extent is the GMC community inclusive of the perspective of each kind of diversity?
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Are you aware of any particular group that struggles to be included at GMC? If so, please explain
Alumni Impact Questions
• In your paid work and volunteer time, how many hours per week,
total, do you spend deliberately enhancing the social fabric of a
community?
• To what extent do you feel your life’s activities (work, co-curricular,
etc.) are meaningful?
• To what extent do you feel connected with your community?
• How much has the environmental mission of GMC, as reflected in
the Environmental Liberal Arts program, affected your life or your
current pursuits?
Implementation
• Social/human capital survey given in
required 1st, 2nd, 3rd/4th year classes
(voices, dimensions, & delicate balance)
• Emailed to faculty and staff
• Alumni impact questions added to annual
alumni survey given to 1, 3, and 10 years
out
Results
• Quantitative environmental analysis class
helped analyze the data
Strengths
• High identification with the goal of
authentic sustainability and GMC’s
strategies for working toward it
• High trust for faculty and staff
• High respect for and awareness of most
types of diversity
Weaknesses
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Trust with Town
Trust between students
Trust between students and administration
Associations with the Town
Respect for religious or conservative
viewpoints
Trust, Associations, Diversity &
Inclusion
Alumni Impact
• Hours spent deliberately enhancing your
community
Extent you feel connected to
your community
Your life is meaningful and
fulfilling
GMC’s environmental mission
has affected your life
Alumni Impact Correlations
Boosting social & human capital
• More community conversations
• Thanks & Giving
• Green Up Day
• Poultney 2020
New Ideas
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Student-led community conversations
Campus-wide public art effort
Monthly VP letters to campus
Administrator open door hours
Forthcoming diversity committee actions
Integrating strategic plan into the Images
curriculum
References
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Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94, S95–S120.
Diener, E. (2009). Assessing well-being: The collected works of Ed Diener. Dordrecht: Springer.
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 9, 1087-1101.
Duckworth, A.L, & Quinn, P.D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 166-174.
Retrieved from http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Duckworth%20and%20Quinn.pdf
Forgeard, M. J. C., Jayawickreme, E., Kern, M. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Doing the right thing: Measuring wellbeing for public policy. International
Journal of Wellbeing, 1(1), 79-10.
GMC - Green Mountain College (2012). Sustainability 2020. Poultney, VT: Green Mountain College.
Hollenbeck, J. R., Williams, C. L., & Klein, H. J. (1989). An empirical examination of the antecedents of commitment to difficult goals. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 74, 18–23.
Hough, L. M. (1992). The “Big Five” personality variables—construct confusion: description versus prediction. Human Performance, 5(1-2), 139-155.
Knoke, D. & Yang, S. (2008). Social network analysis. 2nd edition. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Le Blanc, P. V., Rich, J. T., & Mulvey, P. W. (2000). Improving the return on human capital: new metrics. Compensation Benefits Review, 32(1), 13-20.
Light, H. K., Hertsgaard, D., & Martin, R. E. (1985). Education and income: significant factors in life satisfaction of farm men and women. Research in
Rural Education, 3(1), 7-12.
Lufi, D., & Cohen, A. (1987). A scale for measuring persistence in children. Journal of Personality Assessment, 51(2), 178–185.
Mueller, C. M. & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.
NORC at the University of Chicago (2012). General Social Survey. Retrieved from http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/
Nussbaum, M. C. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.
Paxton, P. (1999). Is social capital declining in the United States? A multiple indicator assessment. American Journal of Sociology, 105(1), 88-127.
Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6, 65–78.
Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: Collapse and revival of the American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Roberson, Quinette M. (2006). Disentangling the Meanings of Diversity and Inclusion in Organiozations. Group and Organization Management, 31 (2),
212-236.
Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America. (2002). Social capital community benchmark survey short form. John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University. Retrieved from http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/datasets/social_capital_community_survey.html
Sandstrom, A. & Carlsson, L. (2008). The performance of policy networks: the relation between network structure and network performance. The Policy
Studies Journal, 36(4), 497-514.
Scott, J. (2009). Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Extra Slides
Social Capital Community
Benchmark Survey
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“In 2000, some three-dozen community foundations partnered with the Saguaro Seminar: Civic
Engagement in America Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University on the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS). The Saguaro Seminar,
with the help of a top-notch Scientific Advisory Committee, put together a 25-minute phone survey
on levels of social capital.1 The survey was administered to approximately 30,000 Americans in
the summer of 2000, with 27,000 respondents surveyed across 40 communities and 3,000
nationally representative respondents.2 Each community foundation sponsored one or more of the
local community surveys. The SCCBS represented by far the largest and most scientific
investigation of social capital to-date.
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The results of the survey can be found at: www.ksg.harvard.edu/saguaro/communitysurvey. This
site contains the survey instrument, a discussion of the national results, a comparison of the 40
communities surveyed, and whatever community-specific results that the sponsoring local
foundations wished to post. At our insistence, we made the entire dataset available for free to
researchers through the Roper Center (at the Univ. of Connecticut at Storrs). The web site for
accessing these data is: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/scc_bench.html.”
8-point grit scale
Statements:
• New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.
• Setbacks don’t discourage me.
• I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost
interest.
• I am a hard worker.
• I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one.
• I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to
complete.
• I finish whatever I begin.
• I am diligent.
Answers:
• Very much like me
• Mostly like me
• Somewhat like me
• Not much like me
• Not like me at all
Grit
Technical Definition of Authentic
Sustainability