A transformative university?
It bodes well when the leadership of the university is singing your favourite song.
Two weeks ago, the President of UBC shared the Executive’s priorities for the upcoming year (http://president.ubc.ca/letters/). One of the three “potentially transformative goals” is for UBC to accelerate its efforts as a living laboratory for sustainability. Specifically, this year the UBC leadership commits to:
• Sharing all that UBC learns in researching, testing and implementing initiatives in social, economic and environmental sustainability
• Further improving the effectiveness of the University’s sustainability efforts by promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing resources.
These commitments show the priority UBC gives to its sustainability goals and provide a highly supportive institutional environment for the UBC Sustainability Initiative.
So how can others get this kind of support from their institutions’ leadership? To get insight into another institution, I’d recommend spending some time with an excellent article written by Leith Sharp, who founded and directed Harvard University’s Green Campus Initiative from 2000-2009 (http://sspp.proquest.com/archives/vol5iss1/editorial.sharp-print.html). Sharp’s article provides a rich depiction of the manifold institutional challenges involved in making operational sustainability an integral part of all university activities.
At UBC we aspire not only to exceptional operational sustainability but also to forging a significant and deep connection between operational and academic sustainability.
In a 2009 editorial in Building Research and Information (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rbri), Michael Kelly, Chief Scientific Advisor at the UK Department of Communities and Local Government, said: “The Higher and Further Education (HE/FE) sector has an important capacity to act as an exemplar to the rest of society on how best to meet the challenge of climate change, in terms of both adaptation and mitigation, on its own estates.” (Building Research & Information, 37:2,196-200). Expanding from climate change to sustainability, this is exactly the thinking that underlines our ‘campus as a living laboratory’ theme.
We have the high level institutional commitment and support to create transformative change at UBC. Now it is up to us to make it happen.