Jessica Madrigal knew exactly what she wanted to do when she enrolled at Dickinson College three years ago.

She has taken education and foreign language classes and studied abroad with the goal of becoming a Spanish teacher.

But Madrigal's college experience has gone beyond career preparation. Her time at Dickinson has influenced the Conestoga Valley graduate in a way she never expected. It's caused her to think about the environment.

Now a senior, Madrigal turns out the lights when leaving the bathroom. She recycles paper, cardboard and containers. She avoids taking a car when it's reasonable to walk. She washes clothes in cold water and uses a drying rack. She drinks from a reusable water bottle. She chooses locally grown or organic food when it's available. And so on.

"It's little things like that they instill in you" at Dickinson, Madrigal said.

Highly rated

A 2,300-student liberal arts college in Carlisle, Dickinson offered its first course on the environment in 1970 and made environmental studies a major in 1994. Those steps led to others to make the campus more earth-friendly and to encourage students to be stewards of the planet.

Dickinson's efforts are gaining recognition. It has earned an A-minus on the Green Report Card, the highest grade given by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. Dickinson was one of 26 colleges nationally and only two in Pennsylvania to score an A-minus. (Franklin & Marshall College got a C-plus, and other local colleges weren't rated.)

And last month, Dickinson was ranked No. 2 in the Sierra Club's rating of America's Greenest Schools.

"We were extremely pleased," Neil Leary, director of Dickinson's Center for Sustainability Education, said. "It validates what we're trying to do. We're very deliberately pursuing sustainability to distinguish ourselves from other institutions."

Madrigal, 21, said that in high school she didn't think much about the environment except being aware her mother recycled. But at Dickinson, she said, freshmen see sustainability in action "from the get-go."

In the dining hall, for example, Dickinson got rid of trays to reduce water/ energy use and food waste.

Forty percent of the food budget goes for organic or locally grown food, some of it from the college's 33-acre farm that students cultivate and fertilize with dining hall waste.

Dickinson also imposes a per-student laundry quota of one wash and one dry a week. A quota also applies to printer use.

Ambitious goals

And for 14 students who want to be as green as possible, they can move into the Treehouse, a dorm featuring solar power, a pellet-burning stove, real-time energy monitors and toilets flushed with used shower water.

Dickinson's commitment to the environment is also evident in its energy-efficient facilities, vehicles run on student-produced biodiesel and multiple committees of students, faculty and alumni looking to do even more. Significantly, the college has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020.

Some students question the college's green policies, and Leary welcomes the debate. "Our goal is not to brainwash students, but to get them to think," he said.

Although Madrigal finds the laundry quota a bit draconian - she takes clothes home to wash - on balance she's glad Dickinson has taught her to care about the kind of planet her grandchildren will inherit.

"It's not what I came to college for," she said, "but it's something I'm going to take with me."

Jeff Hawkes is a Lancaster Newspapers reporter. Conact him at jhawkes@lnpnews.com.