sustainable practices, solarvoltaic, green building initiative, ISO 14001, EMAS
The issue of sustainability within the university is a fairly recent theme. They have for many years been regarded as simply an institution of education, and not particularly as an urban setting. Because of this viewpoint, universities have generally been able to get away with certain environmental and land use policies that a city or neighborhood may not have been able to put into practice so easily. There is not as intensive of a public review process with the construction of university developments; thus campus planners are not required to put as much of an emphasis on the impacts to surrounding communities. In recent years, sustainability has become much more of a widely observed factor, both in planning and infrastructure. Universities—some more than others—have recognized this fact and have adopted various sustainable practices in order to stay current and contribute to the environmental well-being of our world. In the examination of campus sustainability at UC San Diego, there seems to be a strong correlation between the sustainability institute and campus planning. This collaborative effort is a recently established relationship, which the lack thereof has been a factor in the implementation of sustainable practices in the past.
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Appendix A: Climate Culture “My World” https://climateculture.com
The need for sustainability within the university has been apparent for some while now; however it is just recently that this need has become a larger importance in campus planning. In this paper, the question of what exactly the challenges and obstacles to the implementation of sustainable practices within the university are is investigated. Also explored is the new type of collaboration between the sustainability institute and campus planning departments within universities. This topic is significant to the community because the university’s environmental impact has not only an effect on the university itself, but on all surrounding neighborhoods as well. This research consists of a broad-based analysis of universities throughout the world implementing sustainable practices, with a case study of recent sustainable developments at the University of California, San Diego. The study is conducted with a focus on interviews and scholarly journals, with various newspaper articles to measure the history of sustainable practices both at UC San Diego and the neighborhoods around it. This investigation largely contributes to the literature in this area because although there is much research and information on the endeavors to green universities, there exists no extensive study on the true reasons as to why sustainable solutions are not effectively implemented to their full potential.
The need for sustainability within the university has been apparent for some while now; however it is just recently that this need has been seriously addressed in campus planning. This paper investigates the various approaches to sustainable practices within the university, and further examines the specific challenges and obstacles to the implementation of these practices. Also explored is the new type of collaboration between the sustainability institute and campus planning departments within universities. This research consists of a broad-based analysis of universities throughout the world implementing sustainable practices, with a case study of recent sustainable developments at the University of California, San Diego. The study is conducted with a strong focus on interviews and scholarly journals, using various newspaper articles to measure the history of sustainable practices both at UC San Diego and the neighborhoods around it. This investigation has realized the importance of such sustainable practices as ‘green’ building, using the ISO 14001 and EMAS standards, the practicality of using photovoltaic and wind technologies, and using LEED certified buildings.
Universities in the United States are increasingly working towards improving their sustainability through a number of methods and approaches. The competition between colleges has evolved from not only a contest to be the finest in education, social, and professional aspects, but also to be a leader in sustainability, as the recognition of this issue becomes ever more popular. Organizations such as the non-profit Sustainable Endowments Institute work to analyze and assess each university’s sustainable attributes to produce a report card on their achievements.
This makes it very accessible and straightforward to compare sustainable projects that universities are involved with, publishing their greenness to the general public. This encourages universities to attain a higher grade on their “Green Report Card”, while at the same time allows for the colleges to see what other campuses are doing to be sustainable. The focus of the grading system is on policies and practices in nine main categories: administration, student involvement, endowment transparency, investment priorities, shareholder engagement, climate change & energy, food & recycling, green building, and transportation. The highest overall grade currently attained is an “A-”, which 26 out of 332 universities were able to achieve. The University of California at San Diego is a strong example among universities in terms of sustainable practices. The newly established Sustainability 2.0 initiative is a great sign of the university’s growing effort to enhance not only efforts to be sustainable, but to be more transparent and public about its various practices. The different initiatives that Sustainability 2.0 focuses on at UC San Diego include: climate, green building, clean energy, smart grid, fuel alternatives, transportation alternatives, waste diversion, water, and education. The implementation of sustainability practices is a challenging task due to the many fiscal and political obstacles, as well as lack of public participation. However, the opportunity of a university to adopt sustainable practices is incomparable to any other institution because of the level of comprehensive management it has over itself.
Working as a student intern at the Physical Planning Office of UC San Diego, I will be closely observing the dynamic of the collaboration between my department and the sustainability institute. My employment as intern here is approximately a year, beginning in April of 2009 and will terminating around the end of March in 2010. I will be working an average of twelve hours a week at this office, in which time I will have the opportunity to be exposed to different facets of campus planning. I will be working especially closely with Robert Clossin, a Senior Planner at the Physical Planning Office. This will allow me to understand his personal role in the planning of the campus in terms of sustainability, as well as his interactions with various other players in the field. Also, I will be involved in various committees such as the Open Space Committee, as well as taking part in meetings for these committees. This will provide me with a real-time coverage, which is extremely helpful to supplement my research because it give me the chance to compare my research findings of sustainable practice implementation within the campus planning department to what actually occurs in reality. The drawbacks to this approach are the time-consuming factors and selectivity of the observation due to the fact that I am only able to sit in the meetings at UC San Diego. The dynamic and or process may be completely different at other universities, so I will keep this in mind as I compare my observations with the research findings.
I will also be performing in-depth personal interviews with the faculty, including but not limited to: Director of Physical Planning, Brad Werdick; Senior Planner, Robert Clossin; Landscape Planner, Todd Pitman; Marine Sciences Executive Secretary, Raeanon Hartigan; and Director of Environmental Planning, Cathy Presmyk. This series of interviews will be targeted on answering questions about implementing sustainable practices in campus planning, focusing directly on the UC San Diego case study topic. It should prove to be insightful, confirming predictions of formed out of my preceding research. In addition to the interviews with the staff of the Physical Planning Office, I will be conducting interviews with key players in the sustainability institute at UC San Diego. Some of those who will be interviewed are: Director of the Sustainability Solutions Institute (SSI), Paul Linden; Director of Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO), Tony Haymet; Advisory Committee on Sustainability (ACS) Chair and Sustainability Coordinator, Richard Carson and Maggie Souder; campus energy consumption, building systems, and equipment specifications manager, John Dillot; and UC Office of the President Sustainability Specialist, Matthew St. Clair. I understand that this is an ambitious amount of interviews to conduct extensively, but I would like a broad range of sources to acquire an all-encompassing insight on the dynamic of the research and implementation of sustainable practices at UC San Diego. The greening of the campus is the collaborative effort of many players and departments, so it only makes sense to draw resources from a broad-based pool of participants in order to fully understand this process. This interview process will begin with my sending of emails to request interviews and, depending on the availability of faculty, should be largely completed by early February of 2010.
Other methods of research conducted consist of scholarly journals and newspaper articles pertaining to the subject of sustainable practices within the university. I use these sources as a foundation for my research because it is required to fully understand the content of the interviews. This draws upon literature examining college campuses around the world, especially in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. A few journals I pull from in my research are the Journal of Cleaner Production, the International Journal of Sustainability in High Education, and Sustainability: The Journal of Record. The Journal of Cleaner Production is an interdisciplinary journal which draws from the areas of industrial applications, environmental management initiative, legislation, policy and regulations, and educational, training and learning in order to promote and encourage the innovation and implementation of cleaner production for more sustainable societies. The International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education is a highly acclaimed and reliable academic journal; the only one if its kind to “specifically focus on the subject of sustainability and sustainable development at universities” (International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education information). All of these journals are peer-reviewed and highly reliable. These sources are useful because they lay a strong groundwork for my research and interview questions. Unlike interviews and personal observations, they are stable and can be reviewed frequently as needed. They also are beneficial sources to my research because of the broad global coverage that they provide, which cannot be obtained from my case study of UC San Diego. The newspaper articles also provide a long span of history of sustainability and its challenges within the university and community. This information proves to be priceless because it is extremely important to the understanding of how sustainable practices have been implemented, as well as the evolution of green technology. In addition, newspaper articles and editorials can be very insightful in the community’s reactions and observation of the university’s sustainable practices.
1) The geographical focus of my research is in California, specifically the University of California, San Diego and its surrounding neighborhoods.
2) Key spatial factors are transit stops, multi-use buildings, and bike routes.
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