Fall is flying by! I find it hard to believe that it has already been over a month since the AASHE 2010 Conference in Denver. Thinking back on the many great presentations, keynotes, workshops and networking reminds me of the awesome energy of that week that has continued to carry me through November.
We now have some of the presentation materials online and more is being added. To access these please visit the AASHE 2010 Conference Materials webpage.
All of the conference photos taken by AASHE are now available on our Flickr account - if you happen to see yourself or a colleague in a photo, feel free to add a note and name. Video recordings of our keynote speakers are available on AASHE's YouTube channel - we will be adding the remaining keynotes soon.
Also, many folks (some I didn't know until after the conference had ended) provided excellent coverage of the weeks events. Of course, many AASHE staff were also providing coverage right here on the campus sustainability perspectives blog (using the AASHE 2010 tag).
Some articles from others who attended:
Scott Carlson from the Chronicle of Higher Ed provided coverage on the "Buildings & Grounds" blog:
Eric Wilson co-founder of 2ndgreenrevolution.com also provided great coverage of the conference in a series of posts:
We can't wait to see everyone in Pittsburgh (Oct. 9-12, 2011)!
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Emily Karol is a student at the University of Georgia where she serves as Co-chair of the Go Green Alliance and interns in the UGA Office of Sustainability. Emily attended the AASHE 2010 conference in Colorado last week and over the course of the conference she live-blogged about the event and presentations she attended. There are over a dozen great blog posts from Emily on her blog (http://emkarol.wordpress.com/). This is a great way of seeing the conference through a student's eyes. I encourage you to check out her posts, many of which include nice photos. All of Emily's AASHE 2010 posts have been tagged and are available here.
]]>The following article is a guest blog post from Cecil Scheib, Director of Energy and Sustainability at New York University.
As I travel home by train from the wonderful AASHE 2010 conference in Denver, I write this with my laptop on my lap aboard the eastbound California Zephyr, eventually to meet the Lake Shore Limited bound for New York City. It's the second half of a round trip I made from the East Coast to Colorado for the 3-day conference.
My total trip will have me spend about as much time on the train as at my destination - which may explain why, for most people, airline travel is the only reasonable way to expect attendees to arrive at a national conference in any numbers. And in a country that has no problem funding airports and superhighways, the sad state of support for a national rail system means I shy away from recommending Amtrak to friends. While unpleasant trips have been rare in my 15+ years of cross-country rail travel, one does encounter the occasional stopped-up toilet, rude conductor, or unpleasant seatmate, and I guess I've never wanted to feel responsible for the encouragement that puts someone I know in that position.
Despite all this, and while I personally enjoy flying, I love the train. I relish the stress-free connections on both ends - no airport shuttles, security lines, or arriving hours early at the airport. All it took was a simple subway trip in NYC and an easy walk from my Denver hotel, arriving at the station about 15 minutes before departure. I look forward to watching the scenery flow by with my favorite book in hand or podcast in ear, and arriving rested and relaxed, with my body already adapted to the time change, instead of jetlagged and dried out from pressurized cabin air. I make the most of my brief time during the lunch stopover in Chicago, taking in a meal at a favorite restaurant by Union Station and a walk along the Chicago River before reboarding.
This trip, thanks to the gracious understanding and support of New York University, I counted the full day I spent on the train in each direction as a work day. With the help of a laptop and a Verizon USB stick, I wrote proposals, answered emails, drafted contracts and presentations, reviewed building plans, and did data analysis the whole way. In fact, I think I got more accomplished on the train, free from distractions, than I often do in the hectic office environment.
It turns out Amtrak is an affordable way to travel. With discounts available for students, AAA card holders, NARP members (a one-year membership pays itself back after one trip!), and even through university purchasing portals (I got a free upgrade to sleeper class on the return trip thanks to our friendly sales rep at the NYU vendor fair), train fare prices track airlines pretty closely – I paid the same amount, to within a few dollars either way, of my colleagues who flew. Frequent rider miles mean regular free travel for those of us who use the rails on repeated basis.
I know I’m not the only person from the conference traveling home on this train, and it could be a good way to extend the networking opportunity. Maybe AASHE could ask people how they are arriving at conferences and help share this type of information to allow easier meetups for those who desire it. In fact, perhaps AASHE should encourage low-carbon rail travel for next year’s conference! After all, we got a drink ticket this year for showing up for a 7am session -- why shouldn’t we get one for reducing our travel emissions 90% on the way to a sustainability conference? And since most of the population of US and Canada lives within a one-day train ride of Pittsburgh, maybe it’s time to change the conventional wisdom that air travel is the only way to get farther than a car ride away from home. If anyone can change that kind of thinking, it just might be the folks who go to AASHE conferences.
“We all have a voice,” was the mantra of this year’s Student Summit at the 2010 AASHE Conference. Presented by AASHE and the National Wildlife Federation, this was the largest Student Summit in AASHE conference history with more than 500 registrants who filled the room with a rising hum of excited greetings and idea sharing.
Snowboarding Olympic Silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler kicked things off with her first environmental speech in front of a crowd. “I’m definitely not an expert on climate change,” she told the gathering of college and university students, faculty and sustainability staff from around the U.S. “What I am, is a professional snowboarder who has been chasing the snow around for many years and been able to see the effects of climate change firsthand.”
Bleiler energized the audience by pointing out that it doesn’t take an Olympic medal to encourage steps to mitigate climate change or other sustainability efforts. Instead of assuming that celebrities and professional athletes have the biggest voices, she encouraged students to speak out in any way they can: spreading facts and initiatives via Facebook and Twitter or voting for politicians in favor of renewable energy, for example. “Every single one of us has a unique opportunity to create awareness and inspire change.”
After witnessing the brilliant pinks and purples of a smog-intensified sunset in Santiago, Chile; the unlikely amount of snow in Tamarack, Idaho; and a haze-covered sky in Beijing, Bleiler began to get a sense of climate change havoc. When her summer snowboarding practice season in New Zealand was cancelled because of a lack of snow, “that’s when it really hit home,” she said. “For the first time in six years, I wasn’t able to go and do what I was supposed to do.”
After researching the carbon emissions brought on by the life cycle of a product: the production, transportation, harvesting and eventual waste of products, Bleiler set about becoming a sustainable products activist with the creation of an eco-friendly line of snowboarding wear and signature BPA-free stainless steel water bottles.
“Talk to retailers and demand sustainable products,” she urged. “We need to let retailers know we want these low impact products. Supporting green companies will help this become the norm instead of a boutique part of the retail industry.”
The Summit energy was infectious and the force of student voices evident. Students from both coasts and in between shared techniques, lessons learned and sustainability success stories during breakout sessions including “Waste Management on Campus” with Yale University, Swarthmore College and Bemidji State University; “Financing Sustainability Projects on Campus” with Northern Arizona University and University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign; and “Changing Food and Waste Policies on Campus” with students from McGill University and DePauw University.
Representatives from the Sierra Student Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Program led a discussion about the youth-led Beyond Coal campaign to kick coal off campuses and communities. A major point made was the tremendous mobilization of voices needed to end our dependence on coal-generated electricity. Politicians, it was pointed out, have some of the biggest corporations in the world sitting on the other shoulder.
“What can we do better?” asked a session attendee.
“How many of you made phone calls to your senator?” asked moderator Lisa Madry, NWF’s campus field director. “That’s what we need to do better. The grassroots pressure has to be huge.” NWF is partnered with the Energy Action Coalition for Power Vote, an effort to combat the millions of dollars poured into elections by Big Oil and Big Coal with the collective voice of hundreds of campuses and communities across the country.
Madry urged attendees to take Power Vote postcards back their campuses to collect as many pledges for a clean energy economy as possible. She encouraged passing out the cards during a campus sustainability speaker or other sustainability campus event. “It’s more sexy when you can take 1,000 of these pledge cards [to your politicians]. Become a significant constituency with your congressman or senator. Say, ‘We really care about your vote on this and want to know your position on this,” she said. “But you need something like that rather than coming to them as an individual representing something that would please the four people in your environmental club.”
If the Summit was a microcosm of what we can expect from our sustainability leaders of tomorrow, the world can be full of hope for the restoration of healthy ecosystems, community engagement and a sustainable economy. During the Open Space session, where students discussed topics with each other that weren’t on the agenda, more than 25 student-initiated topics were covered that included eliminating bottled water on campus; college students as protectors for future generations; rural economics and climate change; and creating summer initiatives for community sustainability.
Conversation snippets overheard during the Open Space session:
“Talk to your dining services. Say, ‘hey, we want to lead a campaign to eliminate bottled water.’”
“Perform outreach with the wider community like nonprofits, elementary schools, internships. Think outside the box. Some places you wouldn’t think of being an environmental company may be interested in collaboration and education.”
“Most of us wear our seatbelts. Why? Because we’ll get a ticket. It’s the authority issue. It’s expected. How do we apply this way of thought to sustainability efforts to help these become the norm?”
We all have a voice indeed.
The full list of Open Space session topics: