Tag Archives | AASHE

NWF Campus Ecology Program

By on January 16, 2013 in Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kelly Wenner

Campus sustainability can sometimes feel like an isolated endeavor. However, there are groups that exist such as Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and Second Nature that attempt to bring campuses and their sustainability pursuits together. Another one of these groups I recently found is through the National Wildlife Federation. Their group, named Campus Ecology, was started over twenty years ago and works with colleges and universities to improve their overall green educational programming and onsite sustainability.… Read the rest

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Degrees of Sustainability

By on November 26, 2012 in Sustainability in Business, Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kelly Wenner

We have been reading a lot about how sustainability should factor into the college experience.  The Princeton Review now has a yearly guide of green colleges, and the Review also reports that students care considerably about a college’s sustainability elements when considering colleges to attend.  Interestingly, it is not always the first-time college student that is concerned with how a college curriculum addresses sustainability.  A Q&A session at the Net Impact conference shed light on another type of student: those who have already graduated and are professionals with non-sustainability related degrees whose companies or industries are invested in sustainable business practices.  To go further with this concept, Green Biz conducted an additional survey in partnership with Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, part of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.  This survey aimed at identifying general career-related needs as well as sustainability-specific needs of a potential field of Executive Master’s candidates.… Read the rest

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Campus Sustainability: It’s About People

By on October 24, 2012 in Book/Resource Reviews, Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kelly Wenner

In the April 2012 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education there was an essay entitled “Campus Sustainability: It’s About People” that caught my eye.  In the article, the writer, Dave Newport, Director of the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, comments on the state of environmentalism, and how campus sustainability is the newest vision the movement has encountered.

Pulling ideas from the essay “The Death of Environmentalism” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (President and Chairman, respectively, of “paradigm-shifting think tank,” The Breakthrough Institute), Newport surmises that for environmentalism to become more than a passing fad it needs to focus on people, and become less “eco-centric.” Newport continues to describe campus sustainability efforts as having a three-pronged approach: environmental protection, fiscal equity, and social justice.  He notes the importance of the growth of organizations like The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).  Even the Princeton Review now assesses how “green” a campus is in its annual ratings.  However, with all of this growth in campus sustainability efforts, the focus is mainly on conservation, neglecting the other two facets of a true environmentalist effort.… Read the rest

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Campus Highlight: Warren Wilson College

By on August 10, 2012 in Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kelly Wenner

Every so often, it is nice to look at the sustainability efforts of other college campuses to evaluate and analyze their successes and failures.  For this article, we will briefly look at sustainability at Warren Wilson College located in Asheville, North Carolina.

Sustainability is a way of life at Warren Wilson.  As home to an Environmental Leadership Center since 1996, the campus has reflected the mission of the center to “act as responsible caretakers of the earth.” The curriculum at Warren Wilson combines study, work and service in an effort to support this mission.… Read the rest

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The Campus Sustainability Movement

By on March 22, 2010 in Environmental Protection

By Wesley Holmes

As APUS has grown and expanded it has consistently embraced an environmentally conscious business model. The decision to achieve LEED Gold standards of performance for the new Academic Center is a continuation of this sustainable philosophy and representative of a collective movement among colleges and universities across North America to make our educational institutions more environmentally sound and economically sustainable. A quick Google Scholar search of “greening our academic institutions” reveals that the idea of colleges and universities taking a lead role in environmental sustainability emerged in the early 1990’s and has been steadily gaining in momentum over the past two decades.… Read the rest

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