Minutes November 5, 2008

Campus Sustainability Council
Wed. 11/5/08
Minutes

Attending: Victor Alatorre, Steve Arndt, David Barnhill, Jim Feldman, Ashley Goral, Mike Lizotte, Maureen Muldoon, Cassandra Nagle, Marty Strand

Next meeting: Wednesday, 11/19/08, 3:30-4:30, Facilities Management Conference Room.

Focus groups

Participation of council members in the five focus groups. Asterisks indicate the convener of the group.

Student life:

• Victor Alatorre*
• Cassandra Nagle
• Ashley Goral
• Maureen Muldoon
• Jim Feldman (although he can’t make evening meetings)

Dining services

• Marty Strand*
• David Barnhill
• Cassandra Nagle

Solid waste

• Steve Arndt*

Transportation

• Mike Lizotte*
• Steve Arndt

Curriculum

• Jim Feldman*
• David Barnhill
• Maureen Muldoon
• Ashley Goral

The groups have the following initial tasks:

• Recruit other members
• Review the Campus Sustainability Plan
• Develop short-term goals for this year
• Create an action plan for achieving those goals (some of which might not reach fruition until next year)

Means of recruiting members

• personal invitations
• student governance groups: OSA, USRH, RAC
• campus announcements (one for faculty and staff; another for students—only Steve can do this)
• information on the groups and the contact people will be put up on the sustainability website

The CSC meetings will consist largely of reports from these groups. Each of these groups should be prepared to give a report at our next meeting in two weeks.

Curriculum: current situation:

• We have gotten support to offer another faculty college on instilling sustainability into the curriculum, scheduled for May 2009.
• We also have support to send two other faculty (Christine Roth and Stephanie Spehar) to get training in running such workshops.
• LERT (Liberal Education Reform Team) continues to consider sustainability in its discussions.

Possibility of campus sustainability tours

• We could have campus sustainability tours of solid waste facilities, kitchens, and boiler plant
• Biology 104 at least used to have similar tours

Student life

• Victor mentioned Citizenship Day and other volunteer opportunities.

Unit level liaisons

We want a broad-based network of contacts who are educated about sustainability and able to either answer questions or know whom to ask.

One option is to ask leaders of certain units (e.g., Director of Residence Life) who they would recommend to be assigned to this. This model would likely mean the tasks of the liaisons would be rather minimal. They would be more of a conduit for information about sustainability. Some members felt this suffers from being a top-down model and is too exclusionary. Others saw this as likely to be efficient and effective.

Another model is to ask for volunteers, perhaps call for proposals, or do some educating and see who comes. (Steve mentioned that the Chancellor plans on having an open forum on sustainability in early December.) With this model, liaisons would be doing more active and creative efforts. This is more of a program-based model, and we would need people with passion. Some felt that we can’t wait for volunteers.

One possibility is to start with a pilot program of a few liaisons and expand from there. We agreed that this issue needs more discussion.

Next meeting

We will meet in two weeks, on Tuesday November 19, at 3:30 in the Facilities Conference Room.

Mike asked for us to consider his proposal for By-Laws.

--Muldoon, Barnhill