Below is the first installment of a four-blog mini-series, reposted from the Sustainability Education blog of Living Routes Director Daniel Greenberg. Stay tuned for the next three installments, which will be published in the AASHE blog over the next three weeks.

Contrary to common opinion, I believe studying abroad – anywhere – promotes sustainability. But we need to go further. With climate change and peak oil looming, I believe all study abroad programs, not just those with a sustainability focus like Living Routes, need to adopt higher standards of sustainable practices. But what do these standards look like?

From ’08-’10, I had the privilege of Chairing the Subcommittee on Sustainability Standards for The Forum on Education Abroad. Our mission was to review their Standards of Good Practice and Code of Ethics documents and suggest revisions through the lens of environmental and social responsibility. In this blog mini-series I will flesh out four identified strategies, using Living Routes as a case study:

• Program Design and Management
• Student Learning
• Staff Training and Office Management
• Promotion

Let’s start with Program Design and Management. The question we are asking here is:

“How does a study abroad organization consider the safety and welfare of the staff, community, and local environment in the design, management and termination of its programs?”

We came up with five main ideas:

1) Solicit local community and institutional input and integrate local values and practices into program design and management when appropriate.

For example, site directors might explore using Appreciative Inquiry and principles of Public Participation during program development to identify and incorporate local norms, such as community celebrations honoring our relationship with the natural world or common practices of reducing, re-using, and recycling precious resources.

With Living Routes, the whole point of our programs is to integrate students within communities that model sustainable values and practices. Whether it is getting around on bicycles, exchanging goods in the local free store, or taking time to express gratitude before a meal, students learn about sustainability by living it.

2) Utilize local experts, instructors, and other community resource individuals and groups when practical.

It's vital that directors prioritize community engagement and involve local stakeholders at all levels when designing programs. There are too many stories of universities buying up tracts of land to create satellite campuses with little to no local input in their design.

Living Routes is proud to almost exclusively hire local faculty and staff to manage our programs. These local experts know the community and culture better than anyone and their salaries remain in-country, further supporting the local economy.

3) Seek out opportunities to utilize goods and services that are locally-sourced and environment-friendly and strive to work with vendors who are socially, environmentally and economically responsible.

From transportation to supplies, from accommodations to food, directors can make informed purchasing decisions that support the local economy and environment. How about committing to purchase only Fair Trade products when available? With food in particular, there are lots of resources about how to buy local and develop sustainable food purchasing policies. Let’s challenge our students to maintain a 100 Mile Diet and support organic producers! It is also useful to develop a vendor code of conduct (e.g. Fairmount Minerals or SAP) so practices can be maintained even with staff turnover.

Ecovillages’ commitment to living well and lightly typically translates to being local and health-conscious. For example, students on Living Routes programs generally eat organic produce from farms within or associated with their host communities and residences are typically made out of local materials such as keet, earth bricks, or – at Findhorn in northern Scotland – out of recycled whisky barrels!

4) Have a defined system for regularly evaluating and reducing its programs’ harmful environmental and social impacts.

Ask for student feedback about program impacts in end-of-program evaluations. Begin to audit program CO2 emissions and mitigation efforts. Include environmental and social impact criteria in regular site reviews. Sustainable Travel International’s Checklist and the University of Washington’s Exploration Seminar Program Policy on Sustainability, Responsibility and Conservation are good places to get ideas.

Living Routes has a well articulated Carbon Consciousness strategy that I will describe in more detail in a future post. In 2007, we also began asking students to respond to pre-, post-, six-month post- and two-year post-surveys that explore students sustainability-related beliefs and behaviors. Our intention is to discover the long-term impact of our programs on students lifestyle choices.

5) Use resources to strengthen collective assets such as local schools, libraries, health programs, or land and water conservation projects.

What are programs giving back to the communities that support them? Not only do such support build strong working relationships, they are excellent opportunities for students to engage in service learning and work side-by-side with local residents. For examples of potential projects, check out the Geotourism Challenge and the Community Toolbox.

At Living Routes, we have commissioned solar cookers and supported local students to join our programs in Senegal; helped develop an electric rickshaw prototype in India; built a recycling shed in Mexico and an EcoCentre in Peru; and planted trees just about everywhere we go.

These are just a few ideas for how to design and manage study abroad programs that take their social and environmental impact into account. What did I miss? What are you doing on your programs that you would like to share with others? This is all a work in progress, so please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments. Thanks!

In my next post, I will explore ways study abroad programs can further incorporate sustainability into their curricula and student learning opportunities.

In community,
- Daniel

This is the second article from Brad McAllister, one of this month’s guest bloggers. Brad's first article about the sustainability “groundhog” cycle that keeps campus from advancing sustainability is available here.

“You Stay on Your Side of Campus and I’ll Stay on Mine”

There is a sense of academic segregation on many of today’s campuses. Business students tend to be on one side of campus and science students tend to be on the other. Public policy/non-profits are somewhere in-between and students of the arts are housed in a completely different place. On larger campus settings the students may not even share the same library, let alone the same social circle and extracurricular scene.

Looking through the lens of sustainability, this is cause for concern. A central tenet of sustainability is collaboration, which includes multidisciplinary integration of holistic systems thinking. In other words, its about getting a bunch of heads with different backgrounds, skills and priorities around a table to develop a solution for the common good. However, on today’s campuses most students, faculty and staff don’t have regular opportunities to learn from and support the intellectual growth of their fellow peers.

This missing piece appears when new alumni enter the workforce lacking multidisciplinary problem solving experience. Considering its impact on sustainability, imagine how a lack of collaboration experience can cause business to perform unsustainably. This simple skill is becoming increasingly desirable as corporations, SMEs and governments are prioritizing sustainability and looking for solutions from the next generation employee base.

So how do you go about breaking down this barrier? Whether you’re a student looking to catalyze your peers or staff tasked with integrating sustainability on campus, the process is the same.

First: Conduct an Inventory to find out what collaboration already looks like.
Reach out to your Student Development office and get a list of the student groups currently registered on campus. Determine what their membership looks like in terms of majors and academic years. Look for those who seem to be attracting students from various backgrounds. Ask the more diverse groups how they are attracting students. Are they using service-based projects or are they relying on social events? If you have the resources, inventory specific courses that are multidisciplinary in nature. This inventory process will also help you in achieving a few STARS points under the Curriculum credit category.

Second: Identify Gaps - In your inventory process you should discover some major silos. For example you might find an environmental advocacy group made up of environmental science students trying to engage a local company. Likely lacking in this group is a MBA candidate with the ability to navigate the real world concerns of a profit driven company. Similarly you might find a group focused on “green” entrepreneurship but doesn’t have a member from outside the business school. On the other hand, you may identify collaborative opportunities that work. Dive into the successful programs and uncover what works. I can’t tell you exactly what they are. Each campus culture is different.

Third: Share with them what you have learned, by going to them - Resist the urge to set up a single meeting and invite all the student groups that you are targeting. Turnout will be spotty at best. You must go to them, one at a time and on their grounds. Begin by asking for 15 minutes on the agenda at one of their meetings. Use this as an opportunity to redefine sustainability as the triple bottom line, making a clear case that it includes environmental, social and economic dimensions, and the reasons it is important to them (i.e. career skills, legacy and the coolness factor). This is your chance to inspire.

After the meeting be sure to follow-up. Students are notorious for not following up. Once you have secured a few leaders from each of the groups then set up a meeting to get the groups (or just the leaders of the groups) around the table together. Facilitate the discussion but don’t lead it. Paint a picture of the opportunity and then let the students’ creativity run with it.

To summarize, it’s a three-step process. First, inventory. Second, identify gaps. Third, share what you have learned by GOING TO the students.

Now that you have a better understanding of what the playing field looks like its time to call the right plays. This begins with proper and effective messaging, which happens to be the topic of my next post. Check back next week.

-Brad McAllister is the Co-Founder and Director of WAP Sustainability Consulting in Chattanooga Tennessee. Brad is also an Adjunct Professor of Sustainability at the Institute for Sustainable Practice at Lipscomb University.

About 60 leading researchers, program managers, and others gathered in Washington, DC, last Thursday and Friday to discuss new fundamental CSE research opportunities that will meet important enabling needs as the nation and world seek long-term sustainable technologies and behaviors. Thistwo-day meeting, co-sponsored by NSF’s CISE Directorate and the Computing Community Consortium, sought to go beyond routine uses of information technology to identify high-risk, high-reward research directions in sustainability that may not yet have received adequate attention or funding.

The workshop comprised three sessions with plenary talks followed by breakout discussions and report-backs, as well as a fourth session that served as an integration/wrap-up period.  The NSF’s Tim Killeen helped set the stage at the outset by describing the Foundation-wide, multi-year Science, Engineering, and Education of Sustainability (SEES) initiative.  Thursday morning breakouts focused on IT areas, such as cyber-physical systems, human-computer interaction, big data (including security and privacy), modeling and simulation, etc.  That afternoon, participants looked at application domains, i.e., energy, transportation, environment/climate, etc.  And the next morning, three topics served as the basis for the breakout groups:  the data deluge; transparency of models; and systems integration.

Some key highlights:

- We learned about several large-scale projects that are meeting with success because computer scientists have been brought together with application domain experts rather effectively.  For example, Carla Gomes (Cornell) described her Expeditions project on computational sustainability broadly; Vipin Kumar (U of Minnesota) presented on his Expeditions project on climate modeling; and Dave Waltz discussed his Con Edison-funded work on machine learning and the electric grid.

- We also heard from application domain experts who clearly articulated the role of basic computing research in their areas.  For example, Michael Meyer(Georgia Tech) — a transportation systems engineer — gave an excellent overview of the transportation system, including where we are today, where we could be in the future, and how IT research is critical for facilitating/enabling this transition.

- And Bill Tomlinson (UC-Irvine; author of “Greening for IT”) gave a fabulous talk coupling technology with basic human needs, such as happiness and safety.

Several new ideas emerged from the discussions, such as the sustainability of sustainable data; the breadth of the sustainability space and the richness of the computational problems; and the challenges particularly in transportation.

The organizing committee hopes to have a final report describing the sustainability space — and particularly the role of CSE research — in about a month’s time.  Stay tuned!  In the meantime, check out the workshop website which includes the full agenda, speakers’ slides, and two-page white papers from many of the participants, along with a wealth of other info.  And we’ll have videos of the plenaries and breakout report-backs posted shortly, too.

Special thanks to my fellow organizing committee members for putting the workshop together on a short time fuse:  Bob Sproull (Oracle; chair); Randy Bryant(CMU; co-chair); Doug Fisher (Vanderbilt); Carla Gomes (Cornell); Krishna Kant(Intel & NSF); Bill Rouse (Georgia Tech); Prashant Shenoy (UMass-Amherst); andDave Waltz (Columbia).  And thanks also to everyone who contributed their time and ideas as participants!

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)

After several weeks of editing text and updating code, and countless discussions with Technical Advisors, AASHE launched STARS 1.1 on February 9th. This version of STARS includes what we call “minor substantive changes.” This means that a few credits have been restructured (OP credit 6: Food and Beverage Purchasing, for example), but we have not added or deleted credits or changed the points allocated to specific credits. We have also attempted to clarify many of the credits and corrected grammar, mechanics, and formatting issues.

The release of 1.1 highlights two of the fundamental principles of STARS that I think are extraordinary strengths of the program. One is a belief in a process of continuous improvement, with a willingness to seek out feedback. We recognize that STARS is not perfect and even if it was perfect, it would become imperfect over time with changes in technology, values and beliefs. Many of the changes we have made to STARS come from concerns, questions, and suggestions that were raised by STARS Participants, Technical Advisors and our Steering Committee. Thanks to everyone that has participated in the process. As a bit of encouragement to those who haven’t participated thus far, please feel free to share your thoughts about STARS by emailing us at stars@aashe.org.

The other principle that seems to make STARS stand out is transparency. Not only can you look at a record of the changes we have made to the system, you can also download the complete STARS Technical Manual and a Credit Checklist and determine how many points you would earn in STARS – without paying a dime. Of course, to earn a STARS Rating and gain access to the Reporting Tool (which, by the way, is an awesome way to track your data) an institution would need to first register for STARS. However, the resources that are available to anyone with an interest and an internet connection are impressive. (You might also want to check out the STARS Reports of the institutions that have already submitted for a Rating.)

As excited as we are about the changes we’ve made for STARS 1.1, we know we still have a lot of work to do! In the STARS Technical Development Process (which is, of course available online), “major revisions” are the next level of change after “minor revisions.” If you have made a suggestion for credit improvements and haven’t seen it implemented, it may be that the change was deemed too significant for the minor revisions in STARS 1.1 and that we are working to include your suggestion in STARS 2.0. Although we will likely make administrative changes and possibly even another set of minor changes before we are ready for “major” change, we are thinking about what those major changes might look like. In fact, less than 24 hours after we released STARS 1.1, we were brainstorming for STARS 2.0. (Don’t worry. We don’t expect to release this version of STARS for quite some time.)

I would like to congratulate AASHE and the STARS Team for the progress we have made so far and the exciting changes to come. Good work!

The below article was reposted from the Advancing Education for Sustainability blog published by Second Nature. The article is written by Jim Elder, the Director of the Campaign for Environmental Literacy.

Winter brings the beginning of the annual federal budget battles, and we are again seeking help and leadership from college and university presidents. You were instrumental in convincing Congress to create and partially fund a new grant program for sustainability in higher education (the University Sustainability Program, or USP), and now it is time to move the ball the last few yards over the goal line and get USP funded as a standalone program.

Nearly 300 ACUPCC presidents endorsed the original bill proposing USP, a major factor leading to passage of that bill in 2008. Last year, 150 presidents signed on to letters to Congress requesting that this new program be funded.

These letters were organized by state, and led by Rick Torgerson (Luther College), Diane Harrison (CAL State, Monterey Bay), Kevin Reilly (UWisconsin System), Marvin Krislov (Oberlin College), Ronald Thomas (U of Puget Sound), Mary Cantor (Syracuse University), and Thomas Purce (Evergreen State). These presidents led the process to garner signatures from other presidents in their state, demonstrating to their members of Congress the broad support and need for this kind of funding. We are particularly grateful for their leadership.

As a result, Congress made the USP one of six priority funding areas for the Department of Education’s $28 million Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education’s Comprehensive Program in FY2010. Subsequently, the Department of Education funded five sustainability proposals totaling over $4 million, a tremendous step in the right direction.
As Second Nature’s partner, the Campaign for Environmental Literacy (CEL), has been leading the USP campaign since the beginning. CEL believes that 300 signatories to letters from key states this year could, even in this difficult political and economic climate, convince Congress to fund USP as a $25 million stand alone program.

So if you reside in MT, IL, NJ, MS, TX, RI, HI, AR, OH, AL, KY, GA, or LA, please consider leading a support letter from your state by contacting Ulli Klein at Second Nature (uklein@secondnature.org or 617-722-0036 ext. 206). We will provide you with draft letter templates, background materials, and any other support you might need. Our target is to get letters out to key members of Congress in March.

With your help, this concerted effort can finally realize the full potential of the University Sustainability Program, bringing much needed new funding for sustainability to campuses across the country.

Brad McAllister, one of this month’s guest bloggers, is a partner and managing director at WAP Sustainability. He holds a B.S in ecology from the University of Georgia and an M.S in environmental science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Brad is an adjunct professor of Enterprise Sustainability at the Institute for Sustainable Practice at Lipscomb University and a member of the Climate Project.

In this time of heated political discourse and animosity it’s always comforting to find an agreement that we can hang out hats on. Just was the case a few days ago when both Punxsutawney Phil and Staten Island Chuck emerged to declare, even as the heartland and northeast braced for another winter blow, that spring was on its way. Agreement was even found on the international stage as Canadians Shubenacadie Sam and Wiarton Willie both concurred with their American counterparts. Rejoice, rejoice! Nature has spoken spring is around the corner!

For many, Groundhog Day also brings to mind images of a 1993 comedy by the same name. The film starred Bill Murray as a dejected, self-centered, and down-right rude meteorologist forced to relieve, day-after-day, February 2nd in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The cycle was only broken when Murray’s character allowed himself to see what the small town and its residents had to offer.

So what does this have to do with sustainability in higher education and on college campuses? Many professionals trying to implement sustainability in a university setting feel that they are in a groundhog cycle; reliving the same experiences and not making progress in their fight to create a more sustainable campus community. For all their good intentions and work, progress just doesn’t seem to happen.

Does any of the below sound familiar?

• You’ve scheduled a meeting to discuss the state of sustainability on your campus and all anyone wants to do is talk about what the definition of sustainability is?

• Despite best intentions, you’ve experienced deadlines pass you by, (including, perhaps, GHG inventory and Climate Action plan deadlines required by the American College & Universities Presidents’ Climate Commitment?)

• You’ve delivered presentations to student groups who look like they would rather be in an organic chemistry or finance class.

• You’ve received commitments and confirmation of financial resources only to find that the resources have been reallocated.

When these and other roadblocks repeatedly happen they become much more than hiccups, they become serious obstacles is seeing a sustainability vision to fruition. I can assure you that these issues are not only specific to the campus setting but occur throughout government and industry as well. The good news is, like Murray’s character, campuses are finding ways to break this cycle.

Take for instance, the University of Colorado at Boulder's recent achievement of STARS GOLD status or Duke’s Corporate Sustainability Program and Carbon Offset Initiative.
Numerous other institutions are also finding ways to break the cycle. Here in Tennessee, Lipscomb University has seen success with its Institute for Sustainable Practice by offering degrees and certificates in both sustainable business and science.

Over the next month we will be breaking down the Groundhog Cycle that many campuses find themselves in by using insights uncovered from our sustainability experience in government, industry and higher education. We will cover a variety of topics including:

• Effective engagement by removing barriers of departmental segregation.

• Purchasing and the power of life cycle thinking in the supply chain.

• Success Stories from the world of effective messaging.

• Building momentum from the local community and business leaders.

• The Integration of Sustainability and Traditional Curriculum.

• The Power of Sustainability in Higher Education

Be sure to check back with us. We hope you’ll read, enjoy, and by all means, let us know what you think by commenting or emailing the authors directly.

AASHE is gearing up for the fourth edition of its semi-annual Global Edition! From building solar cars in Palestine to adopting fair trade campus policies in New Zealand, the AASHE Bulletin: Global Edition covers the continued strides made by college and university campuses around the globe toward sustainability. Institutions from more than 15 countries were represented in the August 2010 issue and AASHE would like to hear what your institution has been up to since then.

We invite press releases and news article suggestions for inclusion in the upcoming issue, slated for a late-February release. Topics include green buildings, climate and energy initiatives, new educational programs, waste reduction efforts and more. To submit an item for consideration, email a hyperlink to the news story or press release that is posted online to bulletin@aashe.org with the subject line, “global edition.” The deadline for submissions is Feb. 21, 2011.

Please review the Global Edition Submission Guidelines before sending articles.

(S non-lab) GEP

Th 4:30PM - 7:00PM

Engineering Building Rm. 104

Dr. Ana Prados

This course will utilize NASA Satellite Imagery, newly created visualizations, and analysis and decision-support web-tools to provide a First Year Seminar (FYS). The course will provide students with an opportunity for early exposure to the Earth Sciences by learning how earth satellite monitoring is currently utilized in environmental and societal applications. The course structure will be a combination of in-class lectures, directed web-based hands-on activities, and student presentations, and will be taught at a computer lab on campus. In-class time will be divided evenly between lectures and hands-on computer exercises.

The course curriculum will primarily rely on NASA imagery and tools to teach 1) basic earth system science principles, climate variability and atmospheric chemistry and 2) Environmental and societal implications of climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and air pollution. Students will form 2-person teams to produce a total of 10 Student presentations to be provided throughout the semester. Students will choose (and/or will be assigned) one of the lecture topics and then utilize the concepts and tools learned in the course to deliver a Case Study at the local or regional level in the U.S or internationally. A Case Study uses imagery and analysis tools to explain current or past environmental conditions and provides a discussion of at least one environmental (e.g. crop damage, acid rain, biodiversity loss) and one societal (e.g. health, economics, flood damage, etc) aspect.