The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus

A college campus offers an ideal setting for exploring and practicing sustainability.Colleges and universities offer our best hope for raising awareness about the climate crisis and thedire threat it poses to the planet. They provide opportunities for both research and implementation;they have the capacity to engage students, staff, and faculty in collaborative enterprises thatinspire campus transformation; they take the idea of legacy seriously. But most college anduniversity administrations need guidance on the path to sustainability. In The NineElements of a Sustainable Campus, Mitchell Thomashow, a former college president, providesjust that. When Thomashow became president of Unity College, a small environment-focused college inMaine, in 2006, he decided to focus his leadership on sustainability. Drawing on his experiences atUnity, Thomashow identifies nine elements for organizing a sustainability agenda: energy, food, andmaterials (aspects of infrastructure); governance, investment, and wellness (aspects of community);and curriculum, interpretation, and aesthetics (aspects of learning). Thomashow describes, amongother things, how Unity built the first platinum LEED-certified college president's residence inNorth America; installed solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable energy generators all overthe campus; became a center for local food growing; reconsidered the college's capital assets andinvestment strategy in light of sustainability; revitalized the curriculum; and made the entirecampus a canvas for sustainability-inspired public art. Connecting his experiences to broaderconcerns, Thomashow links the campus to the planet, reminding us that local efforts, taken together,can have a global impact.

Mitchell Thomashow is Director of the Second Nature Presidential Fellows Program, which assists colleges and universities in promoting a comprehensive sustainability agenda on campus. From 2006 to 2011 he was president of Unity College, Maine, and from 1976 to 2006 he was Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Antioch University New England. He is the author of Ecological Identity and Bringing the Biosphere Home, both published by the MIT Press.