Our Campus

St. Olaf follows a design process for any new or remodeled building that includes a deep life-cycle cost analysis. Architectural decisions are made that best suit the building for the duration rather than simply the immediate expenditure. The life expectancy for Buntrock Commons, for example, is nearly 200 years.

New buildings and major renovations at St. Olaf also are designed using the local utility’s Energy Design Assistance Program, which starts at programming, identifies the broadest range of possible opportunities, and then provides incentives for implementation. The Regents Hall project went through the process and was awarded incentives totaling more than $500,000. The result is a facility that will perform more than 60 percent better than the energy code model for the building. This is now the standard protocol for major projects at the college and four major projects have taken advantage of the program.

In addition, custodial supplies have been converted to Green Seal-certified materials, eliminating a large family of chemicals from campus buildings. Residence hall renovations will remove vinyl tiles, replacing them in student rooms with hypo-allergenic carpet tiles that are made with recycled material and are themselves recyclable. Vinyl tiles in corridors are being replaced with quarry tiles, eliminating strippers, waxes, and other surface finishes from the buildings.

St. Olaf is the first liberal arts college in the nation to construct a utility-grade wind turbine for the sole purpose of providing energy to the campus (Carleton College was the first to construct a turbine, but the electricity it produces is sold to an energy company and added to the general power grid). St. Olaf College’s 1.65 megawatt self-generating wind turbine was constructed in 2005.

The college employs natural gas-fired steam, and recently installed a highly efficient (>94%) boiler at the central heating plant, helping to increase year-round efficiency. One measure of successful energy conservation is the fact that St. Olaf College’s 2008 peak steam flow was equal to the 1988 peak steam flow, even though the college had added 600,000 square feet of new space over that time.

Solar garden

Bon Appétit Management Company , St. Olaf’s dining operations partner, is the food service industry leader in sustainability, with a wide array of environmentally and socially responsible sourcing commitments.

Through Bon Appétit’s Farm to Fork program, the dining team at St. Olaf strives to source a minimum of 20% of the food served in our cafés from within 150 miles of campus. In Northfield, the team nurtures long-term relationships with local food aggregator The Good Acre, as well as local farmers like Open Hands Farm, and Seeds Farm, which is owned and operated by St. Olaf alum Rebecca Carlson. Each year, St. Olaf celebrates these local partners through the Eat Local Challenge, an all-local meal that occurs each September.

Bon Appétit has a long worked to improve animal welfare. All of Bon Appétit’s contracted cage-free eggs and ground beef are Certified Humane. At least 25% of Bon Appétit’s beef, pork, and poultry are from ranches and farms whose practices have been certified by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC)’s Certified Humane program, Animal Welfare Approved, Food Alliance, or Global Animal Partnership. These four groups are independent, not industry led, and have high animal-husbandry standards.

Bon Appétit made the food system and climate change connection with the launch of our Low Carbon diet program in 2007. Today, Bon Appétit combats climate change through a companywide Low Carbon Lifestyle commitment, which entails prioritizing plant-based proteins, preventing and reducing food waste, trimming transportation emissions, and decreasing deforestation. In 2021, Bon Appétit announced a new climate policy, committing to reduce emissions by 38%, per calorie of food, by 2030.

A student-run community initiative, the St. Olaf Garden Research and Organic Works farm project (STOGROW) was founded in 2004 through an entrepreneurial grant provided by the college. Bon Appétit
has worked closely with STOGROW over the years, purchasing produce which is served in dining halls on campus.

Bon Appétit also partners with St. Olaf’s Food Recovery Network student organization to recover food for hunger-fighting organizations in the Northfield community. As of 2022, St. Olaf’s dining program donates food twice a week, and encourages interested students to get involved to increase food recovery and donations.