Director of Sustainability Kelly Boulton, ’02, was recently honored with a spot on the 2023 City & State Pennsylvania Impact List for her work to achieve carbon neutrality at Allegheny College.
The list recognizes 75 individuals each year who, through their efforts, help their communities become more “equitable, sustainable and prosperous.”
Christine Scott Nelson ’73 Endowed Professor in Environmental Science and Sustainability Eric Pallant, Boulton’s former professor and colleague of over 20 years, said that what he has seen Boulton achieve over the past decades has been remarkable.
“She has really transformed and transitioned Allegheny into being one of the leading institutions in the country,” Pallant said. “There’s really no one else like her.”
Boulton has made it her mission to amplify the message of sustainability since she became director in 2008. Since the beginning, Boulton and the rest of the Office of Sustainability have worked hard to educate students, faculty, board members and staff about the importance of lowering the college’s carbon footprint.
“The Office of Sustainability was started back in 2007,” Boulton said. “At that time it was created to say, ‘If the college was going to do anything about our contribution to climate change, how do we know what our contribution is and how are we going to come up with a plan on how to take charge of that?’”
Beyond achieving carbon neutrality at the college, Boulton has accomplished several other notable milestones.
“She has worked on everything from improving food availability so that it’s the best it can possibly be for the environment, making sure water use is as efficient as it could possibly be on campus and she has saved Allegheny hundreds of thousands of dollars in being efficient with our purchasing of resources,” Pallant said.

“That’s amazing that one person can save the college hundreds of thousands of dollars and save the environment.”
Boulton’s work also serves as a blueprint for other institutions who are embarking on their path to becoming more sustainable.
“We get calls all the time from new colleagues at other institutions who are starting up programs,” said Sustainability Coordinator Kurt Hatcher, ’07. “They see Allegheny as an example to follow. We get calls or emails from students at other universities who don’t have a sustainability program on how we take on our greenhouse gas inventory. So (Kelly) kind of being recognized for the success that (she’s) had in making this work is important to everybody on campus and visible to people off campus.”
Boulton does not hesitate to bring people into the fold who want to learn about sustainability, according to her peers.
“What I like to think about what Kelly has done is create a more hopeful future by engaging students — not just environmental science majors — all kinds of students from all over Allegheny,” Pallant said. “Everybody is welcome to join her in thinking about what will make the world a better place.”
While Boulton appreciates the recognition, she said it was not the end goal for her work at Allegheny.
“I don’t do this for the attention,” Boulton said. “I do this for the work that’s being accomplished. Yeah, I got an award, but I’m also just like, ‘Let’s put our heads back down and keep working.’ For me, more than getting the state award, the part that felt really great was the fact that someone at Allegheny had to nominate me for this award.”
For individuals who want to get started in the field of sustainability, there is often the worry of not being able to do enough as one person or not knowing exactly where to start. Boulton and Hatcher have an answer for that as well. The Office of Sustainability offers numerous types of internships, giving students a variety of places to start.
“It’s an internship in change making and change management,” Hatcher said. “It’s getting to the idea that students want to be engaged in this work. But the theoretical work that you do in classes doesn’t always translate to the logistical challenges that you face in your head to implementation.”
Boulton said that the internships are a good preparatory step for those hoping to have a career in a field related to environmental science. She also explained some of the difficulties incoming sustainability experts might face when entering the field.
“We have graduates who go into sustainability who call us, and a lot of what we talk about is that we know what we want the outcomes to be, but the difficulty is in the implementation,” Boulton said. “Our internship focuses on how do you take an idea and then back it up and build a foundation of an implementation plan under it.”
Boulton said the key to succeeding in the field is planning out each step one at a time.
“That’s the only way we get to those big lofty goals,” Boulton said. “It’s easy to just focus on the big lofty goals and we’ll never get there unless we focus on the steps.”