Report to Faculty Assembly from the
Campus Sustainability Committee
November 14, 2008
First Campus Sustainability Summit--a success along with first report to the campus prepared by
the Sustainability Office.
Saturday is America Recycles Day. We encourage everyone to
try, for one day, to achieve a zero waste stream. Recycle
everything you discard. Purchase any items with a view toward
using them up OR finding a way to recycle.
See article on recent AASHE Conference on curricular issues in sustainability in academe at
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/12/sustainability. Committee will pursue an integrated lecture and film series on sustainability during the
spring semester looking at every other Thursday with a lecture at noon and two weeks later, a
film in the evening. We have raised a small amount of funding for the speakers who will all be
local.
Career information. Information on projected new jobs in the green industry has been shared
with the Career Office in Student Success and also with the one in the College of Business.
Members are encouraged to forward articles on green careers to these two offices.
Social justice. By our next meeting, we plan to have a statement for all communication from
our committee reinforcing the fact that sustainability involves social justice as well as concerns
about the environment and the economy.
Tracy Gonazalez-Padron is moving forward with starting a student NetImpact chapter on
campus. Net Impact is a global network of leaders who are changing the world through
business. http://www.netimpact.org/
Heller charrette reinforced importance of preservation of the landscape, the view corridors, the
backdrop, etc. Suggestion that information be shared on leave no trace for visitors.
Fountain corridor project. Last night was the Colorado Springs report on the completion of
the two year planning phase. Project looks at the region in terms of the watershed. This
bioregional approach is a useful and way to help folks think about the local environment and
their impact.
Green meeting guidelines from the AASHE conference could/should be adopted by our
campus.
Tom Wolkow in Biology has added research in biofuels to his agenda.
UCCS Radio is featuring a new program, every other week, Wednesdays at 3:00 pm on
sustainability. Program is entitled, “Green, the new red, white and blue.” Volunteers are
sought for this 30 minute interview program to discuss various aspects of sustainability, etc.
UCCS garden. A number of groups interested. Beth El looking for a healing garden, SEAS
students home to start a vegetable garden. Can we start now to identify a number of sites to
collect compost
SUSTAINABILITY CALENDAR 2008/2009
Statewide sustainability events calendar http://www.casba.info/calendar/events/index.php
November 15 American Recycles Day
http://www.nrc-recycle.org/americarecycles.aspx
November 20, 2008 5:30 Armstrong Hall, CC, 14 E Cache la Poudre Lecture: Kirk Johnson: "Deep
Time Climate Change and its Relevance to Our Understanding of Global Warming" The Southeastern
Colorado Renewable Energy Society presents this live Webinar featuring speaker Kirk Johnson in real time from the CRES
meeting in Golden, CO. Johnson is the vice president and chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He is best
known for his research on fossil plants, which is widely accepted as some of the most convincing support for the theory that an
asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Since 1997, he has supervised the Denver Basin Project, a
multidisciplinary NSF-funded effort to understand and interpret the paleontology, geology and hydrology of the rocks beneath
Denver. This work led to the discovery and analysis of a 64 million-year-old tropical rainforest in Colorado. His research also has
taken him to Alaska's Bering Sea, the Brazilian Amazon, the Canadian High Arctic, the rainforests of New Zealand, the Gobi
desert, India, China, Patagonia and the American West. He currently is working on research projects in Patagonia, Manchuria,
Wyoming and Denver, and is involved in the initial stages of designing a new Hall of the Earth at the Denver Museum of Nature
& Science. Sponsored by Southeastern Colorado Renewable Energy Society.
November 20-21st, Southern Colorado Sustainable Communities Conference. Crowne Plaza Hotel
http://www.southerncoloradosustainability.net/ February 5, 2009 National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions http://www.nationalteachin.org/
February 11-13, 2009 Rocky Mountain Sustainability Summit: Forging Solutions at Colleges and
Universities, University of Colorado at Boulder http://ecenter.colorado.edu/rmss2009/cfp