Building for the Future

As a farmer and a pilot, the earth and sky were important to Norman Hege ’64. “When I’m flying over farms I wish I was down there farming. When I’m farming and I see a plane fly over, I wish I was up there flying. I have a very good life,” he told his family. Norman died in a car accident in 1987, but an endowment established by Keith ’56 and Elizabeth Hege has now ensured that he will be remembered by others who love the land. Flanked by Keith and Elizabeth, Norman’s widow, Phyllis, cut a ribbon to open the Norman Hege Educational Center at Southwestern College’s Floyd and Edna Moore Biological Field Station.

For nearly a decade students have studied an astonishingly diverse array of ecosystems at the 240-acre field station, from tallgrass prairie to the rockbottom Dutch Creek. Faculty taught in the open air, and classes have taken shelter from the elements in an old barn on the property. The Hege Center will change that.The newly-constructed log cabin is a large classroom with access to power for light microscopes, overhead projectors, aquarium pumps, and other scientific instruments. Students can plug in their laptops and work on reports just feet from where they are gathering data. And the center is unique among the college’s facilities: It is completely off the grid, generating its own power using solar panels and a wind turbine. Banks of batteries store up to 20 kilowatt hours of power, and are constantly being recharged by the renewable power sources. A composting toilet (underwritten by Kent and Sharon Olmstead) provides for sanitation needs.

This center, Keith Hege told about 60 guests at the ribbon-cutting, represents the Biblical mustard seed in the college’s goal of sustainable living. “We are planting a little green plant,” he said, “and it will put down roots. And we will watch this little mustard seed grow into something that transcends the college.”


Builders in the Building

The construction of the Norman Hege Education Center brought together the talents and contributions of many Moundbuilders: Jeff Camp ’82, contractor for construction of the cabin. Brian Robinson ’05 and Justin Cates, Cates Supply, construction of wind turbine. Alex Gottlob ’09, trees and landscaping.

(Excerpted from remarks by Patrick Ross, head of the Division of Natural Sciences)

Before us stands a simple log cabin, perhaps not too much larger than the sod houses that the early settlers might have built. Our hope is that this cabin will become an important nexus for the study of the ecology of the prairie landscape that surrounds us. But it means even more to us than that. Now more than ever we need to reach out to the next generation to help them learn about the delicate interlocking nature of the prairie ecosystem and all of Earth’s ecosystems. If there is one idea that all of my ecology students learn, it is that you can’t change just one thing. All life is interconnected. All actions are interrelated.

In one sense this lesson teaches us some terrible truths about the devastating environmental impacts that have been produced by some of our species’ foolish missteps. But from this idea also comes hope, a hope that small changes for the good can result in an interwoven cascade of effects with far-reaching consequence for the betterment of our home and the species that we share it with. Small changes like the building of this cabin.