In alignment with Endicott College's Sustainability Plan to reduce scope one and two emissions over the five-year period from 2025 to 2030, Endicott College will advocate for transparency and accountability from the providers of our cloud computing and AI solutions; measure our community usage of these services when possible; and educate our faculty, staff, and students about the strains data centers place on local electricity grids, sources of fresh water, and microclimates through thermal pollution, as well as the contribution of data center operations to global carbon emissions. Endicott will seek opportunities to pair technological innovation and sustainable practice, such as running AI models locally and optimizing smaller task-specific models as an alternative to larger general-purpose models. Moreover, we will provide our fellow community members with tools and resources to limit especially resource-intensive AI activities whenever possible, such as the use of image and video generation and thinking models, electing for options like stock media instead. As the proliferation of large language models (LLMs) continues to modify behaviors at scale—e.g., queries to LLMs replace simple search engine use—we believe it is our social responsibility to mitigate the ecological consequences of our technology use.
