By
Tom Kelly
The
University of New Hampshire Office of Sustainability Programs
(OSP) was established in 1997 with a multi-million dollar endowment
from an alumnus to develop a university-wide education program
linking sustainability to community life. OSP's initiatives work
to integrate the principles and practices of sustainability into
all facets of our land grant mission including teaching, research,
campus culture, operations and extension. All initiatives involve
collaboration with faculty, staff and students as well as local,
regional, national and in some cases international partners. From
a transportation demand management policy for the campus and a
graduate curriculum in Public Health Ecology to a Citizen Panel
on genetically modified food and a documentary on internationally
renowned potters Ed and Mary Scheier, OSP collaborates with partners
that share the common goal of improving community life through
education. Our mission is to unite the UNH community in the common
purpose of educating all graduates to advance sustainability in
their civic and professional lives.
As
one might expect, any unifying effort within an organization and
community as complex as a university of 12,000 students, 900 faculty
and 3,000 staff faces the formidable challenge of fragmentation.
In our experience, reconciling the tensions of freedom, responsibility,
diversity, and unity within an organizational structure built
around the separation of disciplines and functions demands an
integrative vision and framework. To be successful, that vision
and framework must establish and maintain intellectual, pedagogical
and organizational integrity while pursuing four intermediate
objectives: ensuring inclusive participation, linking core community
functions to our educational mission, ensuring well-grounded programming,
and maintaining strategic networking within and beyond the university.
This
article will focus on the integrative vision and framework that
guide our work, and the concrete form it takes in the structure
of the OSP and the projects that result. As will be seen, our
overall approach is cultural and therefore long-term. We are currently
completing our sixth year in what we see as a ten-year undertaking
to achieve the first plateau of sustainability in a much longer
journey. The goal of the article is to share the approach and
experience of OSP without claiming to have discovered the
model for sustainability in higher education. On the contrary,
we are humbled on a daily basis by the vastness of our mission
and responsibilities and we endeavor to take our work very seriously
without taking ourselves too seriously.
Towards
an Integrative Vision and Framework: What is Sustainability?
As reflected in the wide range of legal, scholarly and popular
writings on the subject, sustainability is a social reform project
that envisions a reorientation of the entire international community
towards the balancing of economic viability with ecological health
and human well-being. Such a vast social change agenda brings
with it significant questions as well as challenges. Primary among
these challenges is clarifying the language, meaning and authority
or legitimacy of sustainability as a compelling basis for institutional
reform. What sustainability means, what its commonly held values
and basic conceptions are, and how they relate to higher education
in general and UNH in particular underpin any discussion of creating
well-grounded programs that purport to model sustainability.
As
Director of the OSP, I am asked almost daily, "What is sustainability?"
This is also a question that I ask faculty, students, staff and
other professionals representing a range of disciplines in meetings
and presentations. The most common responses fall into the categories
of "environment, natural resources and recycling." Beneath
these responses I sense a broadly held perception that sustainability
is essentially about environmentalism moving into the mainstream
of society; a greening of institutions like universities and corporations.
This resource-based view of sustainability leads to conceptions
like the World Bank's organization of societies into human, environmental
and financial capital-the values of economic theory stretching
just far enough to admit environmental externalities. For the
majority of groups I talk with, it seems to make good sense; and
the response is "sure, let's be more efficient and not pollute
the environment."
In
a contemporary sense, the principles, practices and science of
sustainability grow from an international consensus on appropriate
actions to advance the health and well-being of the world's diverse
communities in the face of unprecedented threats. This consensus
emerged from rigorous debate and discussion within the international
scientific community as well as through international political
frameworks under the auspices of the United Nations. These principles
as articulated in Agenda 21 and related documents point to institutions
and culture as the object of critical reflection and reform that
extends well beyond natural resources. But the challenge of conveying
the breadth and depth of such a social reform project within the
highly fragmented setting of a university, not to mention the
international community, is formidable.
One
way that we have tried to address this challenge is to reframe
the question from "what is sustainability?" to "what
is it that sustains you, your family and community?" When
I raise this question with students and colleagues, "love,
beauty, relationships, meaning and identity" are quick to
emerge as common responses. Variations of "community services
and jobs" as well as "clean air and water" normally
follow. This is a view of sustainability where nature and culture
are inseparable, locked in a dance of coevolution. From this perspective,
the arbitrary separation of economics from ecology, culture and
community well-being may serve narrow financial and disciplinary
ends, but it is ultimately dysfunctional for sustaining community
life. Similarly, the arbitrary separation of the present from
the past also undermines sustainability because it devalues our
heritage and cuts us off from knowledge about who we are, our
place in the world and how the contemporary world we inhabit came
to be.
Sustaining
families and communities has been a preoccupation of human culture
reaching back to antiquity. From this perspective, sustainability
is not a new idea or aspiration and has always entailed constructing
and organizing knowledge in its broadest sense. What is new is
the context in which we are collectively pursuing sustainability:
humanity now constitutes a geologic force that has transformed
the atmosphere, hydrosphere and cultural landscape on a global
scale. Collective decisions related to everything from energy
and material consumption to healthcare and the arts reverberate
around the globe. In the face of this enormous complexity the
critical task of sustainability continues to be integrating knowledge
in all its forms into cultural institutions in order to establish
patterns of collective life that sustain us now and generations
into the future.
Over
the past six years, OSP has worked to integrate fragmented knowledge
residing in disparate disciplines, professions and practices into
a form that allows us to bring it to bear on community life. The
integrating framework that is so fundamental to our effort is
rooted in a public health outlook that emerged over the last decade
from efforts to understand the relationship of climate change
and variability to public health.
As
illustrated in Figure 1, the framework presents health outcomes
as the result of interactions of the climate system with ecological
and social systems. Health outcomes are understood in their broadest
sense to include the health of ecosystems and communities. Climate
includes physical and chemical climate on short as well as long
time scales so an ozone event in summer is part of the climate
system as is record cold temperatures or drought. Obviously, climate
both impacts and is impacted by social systems and ecological
systems, which as noted above, are assumed to be inextricably
linked.
Figure
1.
All
of our programming is derived from this framework and is organized
around four initiatives that flow directly from it: Biodiversity
Education (incorporating ecosystem health), Climate Education,
Culture and Sustainability, and Food and Society. The latter is
associated with health outcomes as the food system is a powerful
integrator of biodiversity, climate and culture in which everyone
feels they have a direct stake.
Who
Are We Educating? or What are Human Beings?
In order to complete the vision and framework, we need to place
it within the values, structure and dynamics of the university
community. Towards that end, we need to clarify some basic assumptions
about education, beginning with "who are we educating"
or "what are human beings?" If we assume that human
beings, and therefore learners, are the rational, maximizing individuals
of economic theory often referred to as homo economicus,
then we build a market-based educational system where education
is a commodity, students are customers and universities are retail
establishments to be branded in the name of differentiating their
product to capture more market share. In this approach to education,
students are consumers of education, a product that is to be converted
into purchasing power in the global market place. Efficiency becomes
the guiding principle and "outsourcing" a sound strategy.
When followed to its natural conclusion, we end up "outsourcing"
the soul of the university.
If,
on the other hand, we assume that human beings, and therefore
learners, are cultural beings concerned with meaning, purpose
and knowledge (what constructivist pedagogy calls meaning makers),
then we build a culture-based educational system where common
concerns, aspirations and experiences are purposefully woven into
the fabric of daily life. Of course the purposeful weaving of
the fabric of daily life is nothing less than politics
in the classical sense, which is understood to be the highest
art form because it determines our conception of and commitment
to the common good. In this approach to education, students are
citizens in an educational community that they shape and are in
turn shaped by. The resulting culture of the university constitutes
a powerful educational force that models how life is lived in
pursuit of virtue or the good life and the common good. In simple
terms, then, we are working to build a community-based educational
program that links all members of the community with the principles
of sustainability in the classroom, on the campus and in the broader
community. We call this the Sustainable Learning Community.
The
Learning Community
Learning community is a term with a variety of meanings within
higher education. We are using it in its broadest sense to acknowledge
the straightforward and educationally profound fact that the community
teaches. For our purposes, the learning community approach assumes
that everything is curriculum and everyone is an educator. Education
is assumed to result from the community experience of the learners,
not simply what takes place in the classroom.
Within
our framework, we represent this as a continuum of curriculum
along which the classroom, campus and broader community are the
traditional sites of teaching, research, campus policies and extension
activities related to the mission of the land grant university1.
The goal of the sustainable learning community is to integrate
and embody knowledge across this continuum to create a coherent
learning environment or what we think of as an "ecology of
learning" where all learners (students, faculty, staff, visitors)
are engaged. This approach is represented as a continuum of curriculum
within our framework which links community-based learning to the
scholarships of integration, pedagogy and application as discussed
by Earnest Boyer and colleagues in their 1990 publication Scholarship
Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The purpose
is to acknowledge and respect the art and science of teaching
and learning across the continuum.
This
conception of the learning community extends the traditional model
of learning from the interaction of student, teacher and course
content to include the interaction between learner and place.
While place includes the classroom, it also includes the entire
campus, and the community. As with sustainability and the good
life, the educational significance of the community has been appreciated
for several thousand years. The ancient Greek philosophers observed
that "the polis teaches." So we proceed from the assumption
that the university community teaches the good life.
The
Sustainable Learning Community
In a sustainable learning community, the community teaches us
to value and nurture that which sustains us because the good life,
in the context of sustainability, values the rights and needs
of current and future generations to flourish. Accordingly, the
balancing of economic viability with ecological health and human
well-being should be evident in how we define and provide for
the basic needs of our community. From this perspective, core
university functions that traditionally are viewed as providing
logistical support for the academic mission become an active and
intentional part of the curriculum. Everything from orientation
for new students and employees to the construction, operation,
and maintenance of buildings and landscapes and public art should
be consistent with the principles of sustainability. Those working
in the area of sustainability in higher education will be familiar
with this approach through a variety of sources such as David
Orr's "crystallized pedagogy," what others have called
"place-based" education, and what I referred to as the
"shadow curriculum" in a 1995 article in The Declaration.
In
terms of the cultural approach we are developing at UNH, there
are three points I would like to make regarding the sustainable
learning community. First, it is important to acknowledge that
sustainability in higher education is such a recent development
that there is no way to judge what, if any at all, its ultimate
impact will be on the evolution of the institution. Second, the
contemporary context of sustainability has given rise to a rediscovery
of facets of extremely sophisticated ancient and modern knowledge
about the philosophy and practice of education, including the
significance of the community in the education of citizens. It
is not simply that there is nothing new under the sun; from a
cultural perspective, we need to ask ourselves why such knowledge
and wisdom was either not incorporated, or why it failed to take
hold within the contemporary university. Without this understanding
we are undermining our attempt to establish sustainability as
a fundamental value within the culture of higher education and
thereby increase its chances of being sustained across generations
of educators to come. Third, because the sustainable learning
community requires the purposeful reordering of the intricate
web of ecological relations that comprise the institutional or
community life of the university, it must be understood within
its proper context of higher education reform.
Sustainability
is about purposeful reform
Clearly there are many significant challenges to the goal of establishing
a model of the sustainable learning community, which is why to
date there are no examples of such university models. As a reform
program, sustainability must understand its place within the broader
reform movement and determine how its commonly held values and
basic conceptions relate to other currents of reform. Institutions
of higher education, including research universities, have been
criticized repeatedly for a failure to provide an adequate and
meaningful education and have been considered in a state of crisis
for some time. This criticism has come from highly respected and
reputable sources including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching and policy study groups such as the Wingspread Commission
on the Future of Higher Education and dozens of commissions at
the state, federal and international levels. Notwithstanding such
criticism, higher education remains largely on the trajectory
that led cultural historian Jaques Barzun, in 1968, to forecast
its steady decline to a "stump of something once alive."
As Earnest Boyer and his colleagues noted in their 1990 publication
Reinventing Undergraduate Education, "for the most
part fundamental change has been shunned: universities have opted
for cosmetic surgery, taking a nip here and a tuck there, when
radical reconstruction is called for."
Higher
education reform is a fact of life. Global economic restructuring,
demographic change and technological development are reforming
all of society's institutions. Accordingly, the question for institutions
of higher education is not whether or not to reform, but whether
to reform purposefully or passively, and if purposefully, towards
what end? Sustainability is a social reform movement that is seeking
to change the way we learn about and conduct our professional
and civic lives. Therefore, sustainability could and should be
a driving force within higher education reform, but in order to
establish such a role, it must extend well beyond its natural
resource and "greening" campus operations outlook.
As
noted above, higher education reform has a rich history and literature,
as well as important thinkers and activists that are often invisible
within the sustainability and higher education community. The
work of the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching
propelled by one of the United States' leading educational reformers,
the late Earnst Boyer and continuing under his successor Lee Shulman,
represents an extremely rich and important current in higher education
reform that can only be seen as separate from sustainability reform
by imposing the very kinds of arbitrary boundaries that fragmented
our contemporary universities in the first place. Sustainability
in higher education has established itself as a specialization
with its own journals, meetings and gurus; in our view, this runs
directly counter to its ultimate purpose and goals. For this reason
we established OSP as a university-wide program, not a center.
Our intermediate objective of ensuring inclusive participation
is advanced by dissolving boundaries, not erecting them. At the
same time, the programmatic integrity (intellectual, pedagogical
and organizational) referred to at the outset requires us to define
our terms and manage boundaries carefully. Our experience to date
suggests that programmatic integrity is well-served by making
our framework, and the grounding for that framework, explicit
and therefore open to both debate and acceptance.
Putting
the Framework to Work
As noted above, our work is organized around four principle educational
initiatives: biodiversity, climate, culture and sustainability,
and food and society. Each of the four educational initiatives
has a working group comprised of faculty, staff and external partners
ranging from NGO and state agency representatives to practitioners
in related fields. As also noted above, the principles, practices
and science of sustainability reflect an international consensus
on appropriate actions to advance the health and well-being of
the world's diverse communities in the face of unprecedented threats.
As an educational program, part of our effort is to localize such
international principles and practices so that they are experienced
and internalized by all members of the community. In this way
it is assumed that their will and ability to practice and advocate
for sustainability at the local, regional, national and international
level will be established and strengthened.
Below
is a brief description of each of the four initiatives and representative
projects. While this should provide an idea of the specific projects
we are developing, it does not represent them all, and more importantly,
it does not convey the connection across the four initiatives
that is a critical aspect of this work. It should be reiterated
that the four initiatives are developing in parallel; accordingly,
they share a common language and compatible goals. A sustainable
learning community will only take form when the goals of all
four initiatives goals are achieved and integrated.
Biodiversity
Education Initiative
The goal of the Biodiversity Education Initiative (BEI) is to
establish UNH as a biodiversity protection campus. The
international political and scientific community has identified
biodiversity as a "common concern of humankind" and
therefore, an issue of critical importance to sustainability.
Adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, the Convention on Biological
Diversity calls upon the international community to conserve biological
diversity, practice sustainable use of the components of biodiversity
and share the benefits arising from the commercial and other utilization
of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way. One of the goals
and strategies of our initiative is to localize the actions of
relevant international conventions, or be explicit about why we
choose not to. In this case we are taking the Convention on Biological
Diversity as a basis for actions of a biodiversity protection
campus which include the following:
1.
Maintain biodiversity and ecological integrity on UNH lands
including the main campus;
2.
Develop tools for assessing, evaluating and managing biodiversity
and ecological integrity;
3.
Develop ecologically-based approaches to landscape design and
management;
4.
Create mechanisms that support professional development (teaching,
research, and outreach) of UNH faculty/staff in the disciplines
of biodiversity and ecological integrity;
5.
Educate students in all fields about the relationships of human
activities and biodiversity and health;
6.
Be recognized as a biodiversity protection community model.
As
with the other three initiatives, our conception of a biodiversity
protection campus is one that integrates the ethics, science,
technology and policies of biodiversity protection into our community
identity and practices. As a result of these efforts, students,
faculty, staff and administrators from all colleges are expected
to increase their knowledge and effectiveness in advancing biodiversity
protection in their civic and professional lives. This educational
outcome will result from integrating the why and how
of biodiversity protection across the teaching, research, policy
and extension activities of the UNH land grant university mission.
Current projects including the following:
Sustainable Landscape Group: Sustainable landscapes sustain
community, ecological health and beauty. OSP supports a half-time
faculty landscape architect as well as part-time designers who
work with the Biodiversity Working Group (which includes the
campus planner), academic classes, student interns and others
to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem health principles into
design, installation and maintenance policies for the campus
landscape. Pilot projects include a memorial garden at the student
union and a wetland restoration as part of a broader restoration
of the campus's principle aquatic ecosystem.
Campus
Tree Inventory: This is the first phase of a broader ecological
inventory project to describe, monitor and manage the campus
ecosystem health. The goals of the tree inventory are to further
educate the campus community about its trees and their role
within biodiversity; to manage trees and the urban forest through
health assessment and maintenance recommendations; to assist
with landscape design and to establish environmental, historical,
cultural and financial value. Outreach efforts include the tree
inventory website, the publication of the self-guided tour of
trees, and associations with academic courses.
Master
Plan Update: UNH is currently updating its campus master
plan. The efforts of the BEI have resulted in the development
of a campus landscape master plan as part of this process. The
planning process has drawn directly from the campus tree inventory
and pilot projects, and has characterized the next phase of
UNH's evolving landscape as the "sustainability period."
The key to progress is close communication and coordination
with UNH Facilities (includes Campus Planning, Grounds and Roads),
senior administration and the BEI working group. Through this
collaboration we are ensuring that the results of the long-term
ecological inventory and management project inform the university's
land use policies.
IDID
Conference/NH Forum: The BEI cosponsored a regional meeting
on Integrated Design and Integrated Development on 21-22 March
2003 that brought together several hundred design, engineering,
architecture and landscape architecture professionals from across
northern New England. In addition to workshops and exhibitions,
keynote speakers included David Orr and ecological designer
John Todd. This is part of a long-term commitment that includes
a sustainability section in the NH Forum monthly newsletter
which serves these same professional communities.
BEI
Working Group: The working group has recommended to the
administration that a clear institutional mechanism be established
to ensure full integration of scientific, practitioner and aesthetic
knowledge residing in the faculty into our campus landscape
design and management. Because the BEI Working Group represents
faculty and staff from key departments, including Facilities
and UNH Cooperative Extension as well as external partners it
can bridge the existing committees dealing with landscape policies
and can therefore serve this institutional function.
Climate
Education Initiative
The goal of the Climate Education Initiative is to establish UNH
as a Climate Protection Campus that integrates the ethics, science,
technology and policies of greenhouse gas reductions into its
community identity and practices. As a result of the Climate Education
Initiative, students, faculty, staff and administrators from all
colleges will increase their knowledge and effectiveness in advancing
emission reductions in their civic and professional lives. This
educational outcome will result from integrating the why and how
of greenhouse gas reductions across the teaching, research, policy
and extension activities of the UNH land grant university mission.
Actions
of the climate protection campus include the following:
- Reduce
CO2, and other greenhouse gas emissions, as well as criteria
pollutants as defined by the EPA such as SO2 and NO2;
- Reduce
potential climate change and thereby improve air quality;
- Research,
develop and demonstrate innovative solutions to energy challenges;
- Research
climate and air quality prediction, and public health issues
related to climate change;
- Educate
students in all fields about the relationship between human
activities, climate and health and appropriate civic and professional
actions;
- Educate
public health students to address the risks associated with
climate change and variability;
- Develop
a community model for the state and region.
Pursuing
the goal to integrate the classroom and campus and link our local
community to the world, OSP is engaged in an educational collaboration
with UNH partners including: the Climate Change Research Center
(CCRC) of the UNH Institute of Earth, Oceans and Space; the Campus
Energy Office; the Transportation Policy Committee; and Facilities
Design and Construction. In addition, OSP has formed a partnership
with Clean Air - Cool Planet, a regional nonprofit organization
working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the Northeast.
Projects include the following:
Global
Environmental Change: A unique general education course
on Global Environmental Change in collaboration with UNH's Climate
Change Research Center. Faculty and staff from across the university
as well as external stakeholders are involved in teaching students
about the complexities of global change. After studying the
latest trends and findings in climate and earth system science,
students undertake the "search for sustainability"
in which they link science and public policy through negotiating
greenhouse gas reduction policies at UNH in order to meet or
exceed the goals of the Kyoto Protocol.
Climate and Health Teaching and Research: A vigorous collaboration
on climate and health issues is resulting in novel teaching,
research and outreach activities such as the following: an integrated
assessment investigating the link between climate and public
health in New England in collaboration with UNH Climate Change
Research Center, the UNH School of Health and Human Services
and many external partners. In addition, Climate Change and
Health and Disease Ecology are core courses in the
Public Health Ecology track of the Master's of Public Health
program in the School of Health and Human Services. Climate
Change and Health develops an understanding of the climate
system and the impact of climate change on public health. Disease
Ecology explores the epidemiological significance of the
processes linking the climate system with ecological and social
systems that influence the interaction between humans and disease
agents.
Transportation
Demand Management Program: A Transportation Demand Management
Program (TDM) for the University in coordination with surrounding
towns and agencies in the Seacoast region. The proposed TDM
reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions linked to
global climate change by increasing access and mobility through
public transportation and other alternative modes while reducing
the number of single occupancy vehicles on campus. Alternative
modes include bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure such as
the UNH Yellow Bike Cooperative, car and van pooling, affordable
housing and telecommuting.
Sustainable Building, Design and Construction: An ongoing
initiative that builds on existing university resources to support
research, pilot projects, professional development, and revision
of university design/building standards. In addition to direct
application on campus, the knowledge generated by this project
is being shared with New Hampshire schools, state offices and
professional associations. UNH is pursuing LEED certification
on a marine science building that is currently under design,
and is conducting outreach in collaboration with state and federal
agencies such as the Department of Energy's Rebuild America
program and Clean Cities.
Promise of the Sun Exhibit: "Promise of the Sun,"
an interactive, museum-quality educational exhibit in UNH's
Memorial Union Building, links a demonstration solar array on
the roof of the student union to a panoramic exploration of
the cultural, technological and political aspects of energy
choices. The exhibit involves faculty from across the university
representing disciplines such as mechanical engineering, classics,
art history, history, environmental policy and space science
and is seen by thousands of visitors daily.
Greenhouse
Gas Inventory: In 2000 we developed and completed a greenhouse
gas inventory for our campus. Through a partnership with Clean
Air Cool Planet (CACP) and the UNH Campus Energy Office, we
developed a methodology to complete an inventory of our campus
emissions each year from 1990-2000. That methodology is already
being shared with other campuses across the New England Region
through our CACP collaboration. With the completion of the inventory,
we now have the basis for linking greenhouse gas reduction policies
to our total emissions profile, and will be setting emission
targets and timelines to develop and implement a strategic plan
to meet those targets.
Culture
and Sustainability
The goal of the Culture and Sustainability Initiative is to establish
UNH as a cultural development campus that integrates the
ethics and policies of conserving and developing our cultural
and natural heritage into our community identity and practices.
The goal of cultural development is the flourishing of
human existence in all its forms and as a whole. As argued by
the World Commission on Culture and Development, development embraces
not only access to goods and services, but the opportunity to
choose a full, satisfying, valuable and valued way of living together.
Ensuring that citizens in all sectors of the economy and all professions
share an understanding of the role of cultural creativity and
diversity in human progress presents a significant educational
challenge: how do we as a community teach that diversity, plurality
and unity support creativity and social cohesion which in turn,
support human development now and in the future? This is the most
fundamental and challenging aspect of our work.
As
noted earlier, sustainability is concerned with shifting the patterns
of community life to reflect the principles of sustainability.
We sometimes think of culture as being analogous to a landscape
in that it is experienced as a totality of interactions, and behavior
patterns derived from beliefs that are institutionalized in our
approach to art, work life, family, government and education.
This landscape is also where our heritage is developed, conserved,
or lost. It is helpful to draw from the excellent work of the
UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
which is concerned with the tangible and intangible heritage of
culture and nature. UNESCO's approach to cultural development
and the role of heritage as the basis for identity and creative
inspiration provides a sound framework for assessing the culture
of our educational community.
Accordingly,
the Culture and Sustainability Initiative strives to unify the
effort linking the university community in actively conserving
and developing cultural and natural heritage both tangible and
intangible. Tangible heritage is understood to include architecture,
public art and public spaces as well as ecosystems. Intangible
heritage includes our history, sense of place, rituals and practices
that reflect our shared commitment to principles of diversity,
unity and plurality in our civic community.
In
working to create a cultural development campus, it becomes
clear that such an effort must be strongly grounded in the humanities
and arts. This is not how sustainability is commonly thought of
within the university. For example, our collaboration with the
arts is often greeted with genuine surprise if not skepticism,
but that response is usually based more on the unexamined assumption
that sustainability deals more with the science and policy of
natural resources than on genuine critical thinking. But in fact
the arts is fundamental to our cultural approach to sustainability.
In
Book III of The Republic, the great Athenian philosopher
Plato reasons that "those properly educated in the arts will
quickly perceive and deplore the absence or perversion of beauty
in art or nature." This provocative idea points to a practical
question: What if we were to commit ourselves as a university
to properly educating our students in the arts? In Plato's sense
we would be ensuring that every graduate, from all colleges, regardless
of major, would quickly perceive and deplore sprawl, polluted
rivers and seas, and contaminated air in addition to hunger, poverty
and discrimination.
Notably,
Plato goes on to say that the person properly educated in the
arts would not just delight in beauty, but would nourish beauty.
And to nourish is to take action; therein lies a most powerful
force for engaged citizenship. Indeed, the third century philosopher,
Plotinus, argued that beauty is not confined to what we see and
hear, though that is where it often begins, but that dedicated
living, achievement, character and intellectual pursuits are themselves
beautiful. In other words, a virtuous life is itself a thing of
beauty. Thus understood, beauty resides at the heart of genuine
education and therefore sustainability. I find this to be a compelling
argument that leads me to conclude that the proper question is
not "why would sustainability be involved in the arts,"
but indeed, "why wouldn't sustainability be involved in
the arts?"
Culture
and Sustainability (CAS) projects include the following:
Arts
and Society: A unique general education course exposing
students to the highest levels of achievement in the fine and
performing arts through live performances at the region's finest
cultural institutions. In addition, this collaboration with
the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Arts and Society
Program results in 1500 students, faculty, staff and alumnae
attending performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston
Ballet, and Boston Lyric Opera, as well as multiple visits to
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Scheier
Project: A collaboration with the University Library, independent
film maker Ken Browne, and the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester
New Hampshire, the Scheier Project celebrates the life and work
of two of UNH's most distinguished faculty members, Ed and Mary
Scheier. The Scheiers taught pottery at UNH for twenty years
while becoming internationally renowned studio potters whose
works are in major museums throughout the world. The documentary,
"Four Hands One Heart," has been aired on more than
100 PBS stations across the country and is used in a range of
courses including Arts and Society and Freshman English.
UNH
Commission on the Status of Women: Now in its 25th year,
this commission is coordinating with parallel commissions on
racial diversity, gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and multicultural
student affairs to advance tolerance, inclusion and equity for
all members of the UNH community. OSP collaborates on policy
and programming including a Vital Sign series on health.
UNH
Committee on Campus Aesthetics: In collaboration with faculty,
staff and students from across the university, the Committee
on Campus Aesthetics has developed draft guidelines for public
art as a first step toward a plan for increasing public art
on the campus. Efforts include a series of campus consultations
and forums on public art and its importance to our educational
mission.
Symposium
on Eating as a Moral Act: A joint project of the Culture
and Sustainability and Food and Society initiatives in collaboration
with the UNH Center for the Humanities and Center for New England
Culture. This collaboration resulted in the UNH Center for the
Humanities awarding the 2003-2004 endowed lecture series to
the OSP for a symposium on "Eating as a Moral Act: Ethics
and Power from Agrarianism to Consumerism" A call for papers
will be issued at the end of May for a symposium to take place
in March 2004.
CAS
Working Group: A working group comprised of faculty and
staff representing the departments of Anthropology, English,
Sociology, Music, Art and Art History and others is developing
a concrete vision and action plan.
Food
and Society Initiative
The goal of the Food and Society Initiative is to establish UNH
as a civic agriculture campus that integrates the ethics,
science, technology and policies of sustainable agriculture into
its community identity. As a result of this initiative, students,
faculty, staff and administrators from all colleges will increase
their knowledge and effectiveness in advancing food security at
the community, regional, national and international levels through
their civic and professional lives.
The
result is a unified initiative linking the entire UNH campus and
community that works to:
- Improve
the health and well-being of community life through teaching,
research, campus practices and extension that supports sustainable,
community-based food systems;
- Increase
the procurement of locally and regionally produced foods for
the dining halls and support sustainable methods of agriculture,
including organic production;
- Reduce
vulnerability of local and regional farmers to destructive competition
resulting from globalization and consolidation within the food
and farming system;
- Research
the health and economic benefits of traditional breeding techniques
to enhance nutritional and medicinal value of regionally-appropriate
crops;
- Research,
develop and demonstrate innovative solutions to agricultural
and food system challenges in our region from production and
soil health to procurement nutrition, food security and composting;
- Educate
students in all fields about the relationship between individual
and collective food choices, health, rural and community quality
of life and ecological health;
- Develop
a civic agriculture community model for the state and
region.
The
FAS Initiative was conceived to integrate knowledge from all relevant
academic disciplines as well as knowledge from across the food
system to improve the health and well-being of community life
through teaching, research, campus practices and extension that
supports sustainable, community-based food systems. Above all,
we are seeking to build a university model of civic agriculture,
which sees food and farming as an engine of local economies and
fundamental to the fabric of community life. Grounded in the philosophy
of civic agriculture, the goal of the FAS Initiative is to build
a sustainable campus food system at UNH.
Ongoing
FAS Initiative projects include:
Farm-To-School:
A collaborative effort between UNH, the New Hampshire Coalition
for Sustaining Agriculture, the state Department of Education,
and a food purchasing cooperative representing 14 of the state's
school districts. Projects include a three year program linking
the state's apple growers to schools, including faculty development
to support integration of food and farming into the curriculum
and culture of participating schools. OSP also cosponsored the
Northeast Regional Farm-To-School Conference with colleagues
at Cornell in December 2001 and is engaged in ongoing collaboration
with UNH Hospitality Services to support local and regional
agriculture, including development of a campus community farm.
Citizen
Panels on Food and Farming: In an effort to increase civic
discourse around food and justice, OSP conducted a New Hampshire
Citizen Panel on Genetically Engineered Food and is currently
conducting a New England Citizen Panel on the future of our
food and farming system. The Citizen Panel culminates in a public
consensus conference that forms the basis for the panel's findings
and recommendations. The consensus conference on genetically
modified foods took place on February 7-9, 2002 on the UNH campus,
and featured 13 New Hampshire citizens in moderated discussion
with seven experts to develop recommendations for managing genetically
engineered foods. The New England consensus conference took
place June 16-17, 2003.
Soul
of Agriculture Annual Northeast Conference: A collaboration
with the Humane Society of the US, the Center for Respect of
Life and Environment and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture
Working Group, the Soul of Agriculture is an international initiative
to reconnect communities and their food supply while exploring
the moral and spiritual questions behind our food and farming
system. The annual Northeast conference brings together farmers
(including those involved in community supported agriculture,
organic and biodynamic agriculture, season extension, medicinal
herbs, as well as women farmers and new or starter farmers)
with educators, chefs, food service professionals, NGOs and
others.
Food
Waste Composting: A collaboration between OSP, UNH Hospitality
Services and the UNH Kingman Research Farm, the compost project
has been diverting food waste from UNH dining halls since 1998.
In 2001, this collaboration, which includes educational programs
in the dining halls, expanded to include a local grocery store
and high school. The composting project will also be part of
a sustainable manure management program being developed for
the UNH dairy program.
Food
and Society Working Group: In an effort to promote increased
awareness of issues related to food and society, OSP has established
a FAS Initiative Working Group. The purpose of this group is
to guide and support the activities of the FAS Initiative. Members
of this group include representatives from the departments of
Natural Resources, Animal and Nutritional Sciences, Plant Biology,
Education and Philosophy, as well as Cooperative Extension,
Hospitality Services, Health Services, Seacoast Growers Association,
the Coalition for Sustaining New Hampshire Agriculture, faith
communities and others.
Conclusion
We often talk about how to make the whole greater than the sum
of its parts. This is normally expressed as an aspiration related
to synergy and other creative concepts. But when it comes to sustainability,
in the world as it actually exists, the whole is always greater
than the sum of its parts: whether we recognize it to be so or
not, or whether we conduct our professional and civic activities
accordingly or not. The University of New Hampshire is a community
that is greater than the sum of its parts. With a population of
more than 20,000, UNH constitutes a major ecological and economic
force in its immediate region. In addition, as a land grant university,
UNH constitutes a powerful cultural force that reaches out both
geographically and into the future through its graduates. The
sustainable learning community approach presents a viable alternative
to the growing trend towards a corporate university model that
educates consumers rather than citizens.
References
Barzun, Jaques, The American University: How It Runs, Where
It Is Going, New York 1968: Harper& Row, p. 241.
Boyer,
Earnest, Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research
University, "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint
for America's Research Universities," p. 6.
Endnotes
1 U.S. land grant universities were founded primarily to
serve their states through teaching, research, extension and outreach.
Tom
Kelly, Ph.D has been the director of the UNH Office of Sustainability
Programs since its founding in 1997. He was the founding director
of ULSF in 1995 at Tufts University where he ran the Environmental
Literacy Institute and worked with universities in Brazil, Colombia
and the UK on faculty development and institutional reform in
support of sustainability.
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