Moving Campus Sustainability Forward through Collaborative Student-Faculty-Staff Projects

For more than a decade, campus sustainability has gathered substantial momentum at many of Consortium’s member institutions. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators, many affiliated with natural and applied sciences, have provided inquiry and leadership along a number of campus sustainability initiatives. These activities encompass the development of courses, curricular projects, modules, case studies, student-faculty research projects and building/facilities/operations projects. Richly steeped in the context of faculty-student-staff collaboration and networking, this workshop, to be held on the St. Olaf College campus, provides a timely forum through which to explore best practices in campus sustainability at each member institution.

Campus sustainability efforts are parts of inherently complex cultural, social and environmental systems and involve diverse sets of constituencies as well as constraints. This workshop has three overarching goals: 1) to exchange and celebrate the best practices in campus sustainability forged through student-faculty-staff collaborations at MCMS member institutions; 2) to create a network of students, faculty and staff who will provide encouragement and support for continued movement toward sustainability at MCMS member institutions; and 3) to inspire one another to address environmental opportunities through judicious exploration of collaborations within and around the institutions’ varied ethos and curricula.

The workshop will explore questions about the benefits and challenges of creating and sustaining student, faculty and staff collaborative partnerships aimed at campus sustainability. We will discuss how we, as students, teachers and staff, can be effective in bringing about positive change at our institutions. We will consider how collaborations infuse and give rise to curricular innovation as well as encourage interdisciplinary thinking. We expect that participants will leave the workshop with an agenda for action at their own institution.

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