The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus

by Mitchell Thomashow, Anthony Cortese (Afterword)

Overview

A former college president offers a framework for sustainability on campus, describing initiatives that range from renewable energy to a revamped curriculum to sustainable investment.

Colleges and universities offer our best hope for raising awareness about the climate crisis and the other environmental threats. But most college and university administrations need guidance on the path to sustainability. In The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, Mitchell Thomashow, a former college president, provides just that. Drawing on his experiences at Unity College in Maine, he identifies nine elements for a sustainability agenda: energy, food, and materials (aspects of infrastructure); governance, investment, and wellness (aspects of community); and curriculum, interpretation, and aesthetics (aspects of learning). He then describes how Unity put these elements into practice. Connecting his experiences to broader concerns, Thomashow links the campus to the planet, reminding us that local efforts, taken together, can have a global impact.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262321587
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	02/28/2014
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	473 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mitchell Thomashow is the author of Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist, Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change, and The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus (all published by the MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Sustainability Leadership and Higher Education 1

1 Energy 21

The Jimmy Carter Solar Panels 21

Perceiving Energy 23

Energy Is Paramount 26

Climate Action Planning 28

Energy and the Campus 30

The Campus Energy Landscape 33

Renewable-Energy Networks 35

Entropy and Infrastructure 36

Energy as Metaphor, Metaphor as Policy 39

2 Food 43

Three Campus Meals 43

Perceiving Food as a Naturalist Would 45

Eating Well 48

Food and Campus Culture 49

Food Action Planning 51

The Campus Food Landscape 53

Food as Curriculum 55

The Food Network 57

3 Materials 59

The Greenest Cleaning Materials 59

The Magic Marker 61

Consumption, Abundance, and Simplicity 63

Ecological Footprints 66

"Green Chemistry" 67

Three More R's 69

Sustainable Design in Practice 72

Sustainable Design and "Green" Materials 73

4 Governance 75

The Sustainability Inbox 75

The Challenge of Good Governance 77

Leadership and the Sustainability Ethos 80

Change and Transformation 82

Mission and Vision 85

The Senior Leadership Team 86

Community Networks and Partnerships 88

Innovation and Accomplishment 90

Words and Deeds 91

Temperament and Disposition 93

Urgency and Patience 95

Boldness and Compassion 96

Innovation and Tradition 97

Autonomy and Authority 98

The Sustainability Outbox 99

5 Investment 101

What Is Sustainable Investment? 101

The Varieties of Capital 104

Campus Eco-Capital 105

What Is an Endowment? 107

Sustainable Endowments 108

An Ecological Endowment 109

A Campus in Ecological and Economic Space and Time 110

Climate Action Planning 111

Ecological Cost Accounting 113

Campus Eco-Finance 115

Modular Budgets for Multiple Scales 117

Revolving Loan Funds 118

The Campus as Sustainability Incubator 120

The Campus as Regional Sustainability Hub 122

A Thriving Sustainability Marketplace 123

6 Wellness 125

Wellness as Human Flourishing 125

Fitness and the Campus 127

Community Vitality 129

Sources of Stress 131

Sustaining a Health Campus 132

Ecological Resilience and Community Vitality 134

"We All Live Here" 135

Restorative Environmental Design 137

The Necessity of Service 139

Networks That Matter 141

Sustainability, Character, and Life Practice 142

Reciprocation and Gratitude 146

7 Curriculum 149

Too Many Majors 149

Curricular Transformation 152

Strategic Curricular Innovation 155

Sustainability and Curricular Politics 156

Co-Curricular Sustainability 158

Learning by Doing 161

The Campus as a Sustainability Design Studio 162

Social Capital and Ecological Intelligence 164

An Adaptive Sustainability Curriculum 165

The Future of a Curriculum and the Interpretive Campus 170

8 Interpretation 173

All Visitors Are Students 173

What Is Interpretation, and Why Is It Necessary? 175

Evocative Interpretation: Rules of Thumb 177

A Campus Is an Ecological Place 179

The Way of Natural History 182

Deep Space and Time Embedded in the Present 183

Interpreting Global Change 184

Buildings as Extensions of Human Awareness 186

Buildings as Teachers 187

Campus Sustainability Tours 189

9 Aesthetics 191

The Art of Stewardship 191

Art Enhances Biospheric Perception 193

Why Imagination? 195

What Is Creative Sustainability? 198

The Campus Canvas 201

From Graffiti to Goldsworthies 202

A Sustainability Aesthetic 205

Are Wind Turbines Beautiful, or Ugly? 207

Can Art Change the Way We See the World? 209

Afterword (by Anthony Cortese) 211

Notes 215

Bibliography 227

Index 233

What People are Saying About This

Kathleen Dean Moore

This is a trail-blazing book that should be required reading for university leaders at every level. It's that important. The ideas in The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus can transform universities, and universities can lead the cultural and structural transformations that are essential to a thriving future.

Endorsement

Colleges and universities are idea factories that impact all aspects of our collective ability to adapt to and invent the future. Sustainability of the linkage between our designed environment and our inherited natural environment must be ensured for our future success. Thomashow, in The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, provides a great blueprint on how colleges and universities can use their campuses as the teaching platform to make sustainability a core value and a core outcome for all of our planning and thinking. If we can design our colleges and universities to instill these values and ideas then we will see a greatly improved chance of a sustainable future.

—Michael M. Crow, president, Arizona State University

From the Publisher

There are other books on greening our colleges and universities, but this latest is the best. Thomashow's The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus is wonderfully comprehensive, clear, and useful. His writing style is efficient but quietly elegant, so the book is actually a pleasure to read. What a huge difference it would make if all of America's higher education campuses read this book and pursued the good advice in it!

—James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy and former dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

This is a trail-blazing book that should be required reading for university leaders at every level. It's that important. The ideas in The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus can transform universities, and universities can lead the cultural and structural transformations that are essential to a thriving future.

—Kathleen Dean Moore, co-editor of Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus is essential reading for those engaged in campus sustainability. It is an insightful, holistic, and thought-provoking book that eloquently integrates the myriad complex elements and immense opportunities of campus sustainability. Mitch Thomashow artfully weaves his personal sustainability narratives for a compelling read which demonstrates an integrated and purposeful approach to campus sustainability.

—Heather A. Henriksen, director of the Office for Sustainability, Harvard University

Colleges and universities are idea factories that impact all aspects of our collective ability to adapt to and invent the future. Sustainability of the linkage between our designed environment and our inherited natural environment must be ensured for our future success. Thomashow, in The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, provides a great blueprint on how colleges and universities can use their campuses as the teaching platform to make sustainability a core value and a core outcome for all of our planning and thinking. If we can design our colleges and universities to instill these values and ideas then we will see a greatly improved chance of a sustainable future.

—Michael M. Crow, president, Arizona State University

Michael M. Crow

Colleges and universities are idea factories that impact all aspects of our collective ability to adapt to and invent the future. Sustainability of the linkage between our designed environment and our inherited natural environment must be ensured for our future success. Thomashow, in The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, provides a great blueprint on how colleges and universities can use their campuses as the teaching platform to make sustainability a core value and a core outcome for all of our planning and thinking. If we can design our colleges and universities to instill these values and ideas then we will see a greatly improved chance of a sustainable future.

James Gustave Speth

There are other books on greening our colleges and universities, but this latest is the best. Thomashow's The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus is wonderfully comprehensive, clear, and useful. His writing style is efficient but quietly elegant, so the book is actually a pleasure to read. What a huge difference it would make if all of America's higher education campuses read this book and pursued the good advice in it!

Heather A. Henriksen

The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus is essential reading for those engaged in campus sustainability. It is an insightful, holistic, and thought-provoking book that eloquently integrates the myriad complex elements and immense opportunities of campus sustainability. Mitch Thomashow artfully weaves his personal sustainability narratives for a compelling read which demonstrates an integrated and purposeful approach to campus sustainability.

Editorial Reviews

Overall I found Nine Elements an inspiring read. For those already familiar with the field it may not offer startling new solutions to achieving sustainability overnight, but it does provide nuanced insight into how we might undertake the journey in an accessible and engaging way. At a time when we still need many more university leaders who vocally champion sustainability, it is particularly significant that someone in Thomashow's position has added his weight to the growing body of voices calling for profound sustainability transformation, in universities and beyond.—Jon Emmett, London School of Economics Review of Books—

From the Publisher

Overall I found Nine Elements an inspiring read. For those already familiar with the field it may not offer startling new solutions to achieving sustainability overnight, but it does provide nuanced insight into how we might undertake the journey in an accessible and engaging way. At a time when we still need many more university leaders who vocally champion sustainability, it is particularly significant that someone in Thomashow's position has added his weight to the growing body of voices calling for profound sustainability transformation, in universities and beyond.

—Jon Emmett, London School of Economics Review of Books

Reviews

Overall I found Nine Elements an inspiring read. For those already familiar with the field it may not offer startling new solutions to achieving sustainability overnight, but it does provide nuanced insight into how we might undertake the journey in an accessible and engaging way. At a time when we still need many more university leaders who vocally champion sustainability, it is particularly significant that someone in Thomashow's position has added his weight to the growing body of voices calling for profound sustainability transformation, in universities and beyond.

London School of Economics Review of Books - Jon Emmett