Page 19 – The Wege Foundation

Peter M. Wege Once More Honors His Parents

October 8, 2008September 8, 2014Community Service

As the only child of Peter Martin and Sophia Dubridge Wege, Peter M. Wege began honoring their memory half a century ago. Because of his mother’s strong Catholic faith, her son often used his gifts to church causes as an opportunity to memorialize his parents. His first major gift in 1959 went to help build Alburtus Magnus Hall of Science for Aquinas College.

At the ceremonies opening the new science hall on October 22, 1960, Wege dedicated the building to his parents. A memorial plaque at the entrance to the science building commemorates both Peter Martin, who died in 1947, and Sophia Dubridge Wege, who died August 17, 1959. Almost fifty years later, on September 23, 2008, Peter again paid tribute to his parents and, again, it was through the Catholic Church. This most recent gift was an act of spontaneous generosity and for the most personal of reasons. Seated outdoors in the new Cathedral Square during the dedication of the Catholic Diocese headquarters at 360 S. Division, Peter went back in time as he gazed across the Square. He was looking at a renovated office building on the northwest corner of Division and Wealthy.

In 1911, his father moved into the upstairs apartment in that building when he came to Grand Rapids from Ohio to start Metal Office Furniture. After he married Grand Rapids native Sophia Dubridge, it was their first home. It became the first home of their only child Peter M. Wege when he was born in Februrary 1920.

Now that original Wege home overlooks the newly dedicated Cathedral Square, anchored by the $22 million, 100,000 square-foot Cathedral Square Center building. The new Center is, of course, LEED certified as all Peter Wege’s capital donations must be.

The Most Reverend Walter A. Hurley, Bishop of Grand Rapids was as stunned as the 600 people in the audience were at Peter’s additional, surprise gift. When he had time to reflect on what Peter Martin and Sophia Wege’s son had done for the church, Bishop Hurley wrote:

I am grateful to Peter Wege for his extraordinary gift to the diocesan Cathedral Square project. This recent gift reflects a tradition of support for the Diocese of Grand Rapids, its parishes, schools, and institutions as well as many local, national, and international programs and organizations. Time and again, through his unwavering generosity, Mr. Wege has demonstrated his commitment to and passion for the church, the community, education, healthcare, and the environment.

GRAM’S FIRST REPORT CARD

September 8, 2008September 8, 2014Arts & Culture

After one year in operation as the world’s first art museum to win a Gold LEED medal from the United States Green Building Council, the Grand Rapids Art Museum has doubled its attendance. The new GRAM welcomed twice as many people to its galleries in one year as the number of those who visited GRAM in its last year in the former federal building.

Over those twelve months, the 70,000 viewers to the old GRAM have grown to 140,000 people who came through the doors of the new “green” art museum. Even more significant for the future is that 1,000 new people have signed on to become members of GRAM. Another sign of success in its first year is that 185 tour groups, including visitors from Germany, visited the art museum this year.

GRAM earned national recognition when Newsweek Magazine named the 125,000 square-feet new art museum one of the “Six Most Important Buildings of 2007.” Its location in the heart of Grand Rapids overlooking the Rosa Parks ice rink—the city’s own Rockefeller Plaza—has made GRAM a popular destination. After walking through the galleries, visitors browse the gift shop and watch the skaters over lunch in the cafeteria.

Peter Wege, President of The Wege Foundation, donated the lead gift that initiated the campaign to give his hometown a world-class new building to house its only art museum. His one stipulation: “I want it to be the first LEED-certified museum in the world.” The U.S. Green Building Council’s historic announcement that GRAM had earned the first Gold rating ever awarded to a museum honored Peter’s request—and fulfilled his dream.

Read more on the history and wonderful gift given by Peter M. Wege @ Fast Company Magazine

Economicology Principles Move into Grand Rapids’ Classrooms

August 8, 2008September 8, 2014Education, Environment

Thanks to The Wege Foundation, the Grand Rapids Public Schools are infusing Peter Wege’s concept of economicology into the curriculum. Wege coined the word economicology to define the balance needed between the economy and the ecology. The word summarizes Wege’s advocacy for educating the public on the reality that a prosperous economy depends on maintaining a healthy environment.

The first two GRPS schools that will begin teaching economicology in the fall of 2008 are the seventh graders at City High-Middle School and the sixth graders at the Southeast Academic Center. The environmental principles The Wege Foundation has promoted for forty years will be worked into all subjects for those pioneering students. Each school year a new grade will be added.

City High-Middle School Principal Dale Hovenkamp and his staff have been preparing this program for over a year. A committed environmentalist himself, Hovenkamp is excited that his school is one of the two pilots for economicology. City High-Middle School is the top performing high school in the area, the third best in the state of Michigan.

Along with introducing economicology into the schools, the GRPS is moving toward offering the International Baccalaureate Program. The IB Middle Years Programme is the most recognized pre-university educational program in the world. As its name suggests, the curriculum is based on global learning with 125 countries already participating.

Principal Dale Hovenkamp told a press conference. “The International Baccalaureate program and the Economicology program offer great potential for new and more powerful learnin. The faculty at Grand Rapids City High-Middle is eager to meet this challenge.”

PEACE WITH NATURE INITIATIVE

July 15, 2008May 30, 2017Environment

The forward-thinking president of Costa Rica Oscar Arias Sanchez has launched an international conservation effort that could help save 4% of the world’s biodiversity. Called the Peace With Nature Initiative, President Arias’s plan continues the visionary environmentalism Costa Rica began two decades ago.

Working with Dr. Dan Janzen, University of Pennsylvania biologist, in the 1990s the Costa Rican government began buying up private land to be permanently preserved. Today Costa Rica has put one-fourth of all the country’s land into national parks and green space. Dr. Janzen spearheaded the creation of the Area de Conservaction Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica rich with rain forests and wildlife. Those 163-000 hectares of preserved land support 4% of the Earth’s biodiversity.

The cost to ensure the survival of this vital biodiversity in the ACG is $500 million, meaning $1,000 can save one species of life. Peace With Nature will both acquire more sensitive lands in Costa Rica, and it will create an organization to permanently restore and manage the preserved land. Peter Wege and The Wege Foundation have become early supporters contributing $2 million.

President Arias said this when he launched the Peace With Nature Initiative:
To survive in the 21st Century, we need different ethics than in the past, need
to recognize our interdependency, understand that we are all responsible for
each other.

An earlier American conservationist and crusader for national parks said the same thing a century ago. John Muir wrote, “When you tug on one thing in nature, you find it is connected to everything else.”

U of P Biologist Discusses Costa Rica and Species Bar Coding

July 8, 2008September 8, 2014Environment

In late July, 2008, The Wege Foundation invited friends from several West Michigan foundations to meet University of Pennsylvania professor Dr. Dan Janzen and his wife Dr. Winnie Hallwachs Janzen and learn about their conservation work in the Costa Rican rain forest. Since Peter Wege first met the Janzens in 1991, The Wege Foundation has supported their work buying private land to be permanently preserved. The two Dr. Janzens have worked closely with the Costa Rican government to help the Central American country become the global leader in conserved park land relative to its size.

From the first small purchases of land in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in 1991 through 2005, The Wege Foundation has been the single best supporter among 8,500 other donors. Collectively, these donors have expanded the ACG parcel by parcel so by 2005, the ACG had grown to 376,380 acres—equal to 2% of the entire country! The ACG is now regarded as the leading example of tropical forest restoration in the world.

The importance of preserving this particular land mass, and the topic of Dr. Janzen’s talk to the foundation members, is that the ACG contains 4% of the world’s biodiversity. It is also home to 235,000 species—as many species as exist in all of North America! The professor of biology at the U of P is now part of an international initiative to analyze the DNA of every living species. Mapping out the DNA enables the scientists to then bar code that species to be catalogued for future research.

Dr. Janzen foresees the time when all ten million species of life can be googled through bar coding. He is using his expertise to bar code insects, with butterflies his particular specialty. The University of Guelph in Canada is doing the same for birds. For instance, if Dr. Janzen sends a Costa Rican bird’s feather to the
bar-coding biologists at Guelph, they can check the DNA and identify the species.

“We need to change all human relationships with wild things,” Dan Janzen explained. If humans can’t name a living thing, the professor believes, we won’t care about whether it lives or dies. But naming each species through bar coding gives it an identity so people will want to preserve it. He told The Wege Foundation guests that this project he calls “bioliteracy” will elevate the human spirit. “By sustaining and restoring biodiversity, we will rediscover our own humanity.”

Humanity is pressed for time, according to Janzen, if we are going to save species from man’s careless extinction by bar coding each life form to be libraried. In 1963, not even 50 years ago, the Earth had 95% of the species known in 1600. By 2007, biologists could account for only 70% of those from 1600 still remaining.

ASU Chief Goes After Fellow Academic Leaders

June 15, 2008September 8, 2014Education, Environment

The 2008 Climate Leadership Summit of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment concluded its two days of meetings in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on June 6. Speaking at the closing luncheon, the chairman of the ACUPCC and president of Arizona State University, Michael M. Crowe did not tiptoe around the sensitive topic of membership.

Crowe congratulated the 550 colleges and universities whose presidents have already pledged to Climate Commitment on their campuses, while noting another 4,000 have not yet done so. This head of a major public university himself, Crowe interpreted the slowness of other academic CEOs to sign on as an indication that “most college presidents are cowards.” He urged his audience representing the schools of higher education who are members of the ACUPCC to do whatever they could to encourage the other heel-dragging presidents to join their coalition.

Crowe told his fellow ACUPCC colleagues that colleges and universities have an obligation to do more than “produce leaders…we have to lead ourselves.” Crowe stressed that all of their schools must teach their students about the necessity of climate neutrality “through what we do.”

“We need to make sustainable connections between buildings and nature, between people and the outside.”

Before the lunch began, one ACUPCC member from New England offered a spontaneous toast to Peter Wege for his visionary environmental thinking. John Lebica, Assistant Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability at Cape Cod Community College, saluted Wege as “somebody who has built such a strong foundation for all of us to add on to.”

Junior Achievement of West Michigan Honors Peter M. Wege

June 8, 2008September 8, 2014Community Service, Education

At a black-time banquet in the Amway Grand Hotel, Junior Achievement of West Michigan named Peter M. Wege the winner of the 2008 Edward J. Frey Distinguished Achievement Award. It was Edward J. Frey, a Grand Rapids banker and insurance entrepreneur, who founded the local chapter of Junior Achievement in 1955.

Peter M. Wege, the JA program noted, has been a champion for causes in West Michigan for all of his adult life. Since his time serving in World War II, he has dedicated himself to taking care of the environment and other causes in our community.

The Junior Achievement program also recognized Peter’s father, Peter Martin Wege, who founded Metal Office Furniture, now Steelcase Inc., in 1912. Peter Martin Wege. Along with his early partners David Hunting and Walter Idema, Peter Martin Wege was one of the first leaders named to Junior Achievement’s Business Hall of Fame.

Junior Achievement of West Michigan sends business professionals into West Michigan schools where they teach the skills of succeeding in the world of free enterprise. Among the specific topics, these volunteers show students how to apply and interview for jobs. They stress the importance of education, show young people how to handle their own finances, and teach them how to compete in a global economy.

Over the 2007-2008 school year, volunteers for Junior Achievement of West Michigan went into over 200 schools and reached over 60,000 students in grades kindergarten through high school.

ECONOMICOLOGY 2008 CONFERENCE: A Win-Win for Sustainability

May 15, 2008September 8, 2014Environment

“It will take education and leadership from colleges and universities to meet the environmental challenges we face and leave a healthy world for our children and grandchildren. Together, we can do this…” Peter Wege
The Wege Foundation’s ninth annual ECONOMICOLOGY meeting of environmental leaders and academicians was held on April 24, 2008, at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the first time this April gathering of national sustainability experts from a broad range of universities and colleges also included a large contingent of college and high school students.

The theme of the conference defined the direction of the day-long conversations. “The World As We Want It To Be: Sustainability at Colleges and Universities.” The keynote speaker at the luncheon, Jerome Ringo, Dorothy McCluskey Fellow at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, praised the ECONOMICOLOGY participants for their continued collaboration toward sustainability on campuses around the country.

Working in interactive small groups, the ECONOMICOLOGY 2008 attendees came up with both general and specific suggestions for helping to make “The World As We Want It To Be.” One conclusion all the groups agreed on was that debating the definition of “sustainability” is counter productive. The term will be defined by the changes people begin making to create a sustainable world.

The participants concluded that the mindset of American consumers must be changed from over-consumption to an attitude of “less is more.” They discussed the fact that during the global emergency of World War II, Americans quickly converted their lifestyles into daily habits of rationing, conserving, and reusing.

The question was raised that perhaps it will take a comparable crisis, but an economic one, in this country to change the current thinking that bigger is always better.

Want Quick Green Facts and In-depth Info?

May 8, 2008September 8, 2014Education, Environment

Visit www.css.snre.umich.edu/facts
Since the early 1990s, Peter Wege has been actively involved with the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan where he went to school. In 1991, when the SNR & E won the Environmental Protection Agency’s national competition to house the country’s first National Pollution Prevention Center, Michigan had an important requirement.

A major aspect of the EPA grant was that the NPP Center would appoint an External Advisory Board made up of people outside the academic campus who were leaders in the private sector. Having heard of Peter M. Wege’s environmental influence on Steelcase Inc., where he was an executive, Dr. Jonathan Bulkley and his younger assistant Dr. Greg Keoleian, asked him to head up the first External Advisory Board.

It was the beginning of a mutual admiration society between Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor that led to several collaborative projects, including the annual Wege Lectures given on the Michigan campus. It was also the beginning of a deep friendship among the three men.

In the late 1990s, the environmental thrust moved beyond preventing pollution to promoting sustainability. The National Pollution Prevention Center evolved into the Center for Sustainable Systems, with Peter Wege continuing to chair the External Advisory Board. Among many definitions of sustainability, one of the clearest summaries is that we must meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

One of the CSS’s important callings is to educate people beyond the academic world about sustainability. Their new web site is an important medium to achieving that end. The CSS Fact Sheets are one-page snapshots on the environmental impacts of everything from personal transportation to residential buildings to how our country supplies and distributes water.

While the information in these Fact Sheets is often unnerving, they do offer various solutions and alternatives. The Fact Sheets are a great resource for mainstream Americans not familiar with the environmental lingo as they are written in clear English with lots of graphs, charts, and drawings to help viewers visualize the numbers.

Pictured above is the University of Michigan’s Dana Building housing the School of Natural Resources and Environment. As the Dana approached its 100th birthday in the 1990s, the dilapidated classroom building faced demolition. But SNR & E Professors Jonathan Bulkley and Greg Keoleian convinced the University to instead restore Dana as an example of green rebuilding.

Peter Wege was involved from the beginning in what became known as “The Greening of Dana.” The Dana restoration gained national attention as a hands-on clinic for SNR & E students in environmental reconstruction. In 2005, the Dana Building received a gold rating from the United States Green Building Council making it the greenest academic building in the state of Michigan.