The Sustainable University

In my Environmental Assessment and Milieu Management course, we are now reading a book entitled The Sustainable University.  In this book published just last year in 2012 by James Martin and James Samuels, these authors make the case for higher educations' role and challenges in advocating sustainability.  Colleges and universities have been at the forefront of efforts to preserve our natural resources for our future generations.  The research and education around sustainability on colleges and universities have been second to none.  However, this book provides a lens for those who are currently or plan to lead any college or university in the future.

Today, there has been several hundreds of university presidents who have signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment.  However, there are a great many university leaders who have yet made this commitment.  This book outlines four biggest challenges for presidents and other university leaders to face along with solutions to address these challenges.  The four challenges are:

• Effectively institutionalizing sustainability thinking
• Developing an efficient, flexible system of sustainability benchmarks
• Implementing an accountable university budget mode
• Engaging the Board of Trustees in the campus sustainability agenda

This publication outlines solutions that tackles these four challenges with the goal of ultimately educating but equally important, preserving our earth's resources for the generation that follows us.  The purpose of higher education goes beyond the classroom!  This is student affairs!

Tapped: Have You Thought About How You Drink Water?

This week, I had a surprising opportunity to watch TV for leisure.  However, my brain and guilt forced me to watch something that I would consider educationally relevant to school or work.  So, therefore, I chose to watch a documentary called Tapped (2009).  This documentary examines the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil.  It was a facinating documentary to watch and to see how the bottled water industry began to thrive and grow.

I have always thought of the idea of purchasing water as incongruous.  I grew up on a farm in a small country town in Mississippi.  We didn't buy water.  We were just a few years removed from having to pump our own water from ground wells.  I've actually had the opportunity to use a ground pump well and even an "outhouse". Therefore, buying bottled water has always been a foreign concept and practice in my family growing up.  So, seeing this documentary has made me appreciate my upbringing a little more and have reaffirmed my practice of drinking self filtered water instead of purchasing water from water bottled companies that affect so many local people where they have plants/distribution facilities.

I encourage you to watch the documentary. You will not regret giving up that hour and ten or so minutes for this worthwhile piece that truly challenges our contemporary culture of thinking.

Is water a right or is it a commodity?

Four Frames of Environmental Theory

During the first week of classes, I had the pleasure of touring the historic and preserved North Campus at the University of Georgia.  The tour was a part of a class activity for the Environmental'''' course.  It was fascinating touring north campus through the lens of the authors Strange and Banning (2010) through the four frames of environmental design.  These four frames are physical, human aggregate, organized, and constructed.  Environments on college campuses are created within these four frames.  As we toured north campus, it became evident how the physical environment was constructed with buildings, fountains, gardens, etc.  Immediately upon seeing north campus, I always thought of "college" when I'm there.  The historic buildings, green space, etc gives the true collegiate feel when I'm visiting.  The human aggregate was best understood by the long traditions that have continued to be passed down.  For example, we saw countless students walking around the famous UGA Arch.  The organized environment that I took notice of was which departments were in which building and even which departments were housed on North Campus in relation to other parts of campus.  The constructed environment was also discussed as some classmates talked about how they feel when they are on campus or even when game day comes and the campus is conveniently packed with 100,000+ people moving around the campus and the city of Athens.

This will be an interesting class and I'm looking forward to the continued conversations around how college environments affect student learning and development.