Social Sustainability Month:
Creating Cross-Campus Partnerships for
Holistic Sustainability
Heather Spalding, Sustainability Leadership and Outreach Coordinator
Masters Candidate, Leadership for Sustainability Education
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
At a glance: PSU
Sustainability Leadership Center
Holistic sustainability
Social Sustainability Month (SSM) over time
Partnerships and planning structure
Outreach
Evaluation process
Framing exercise
Time for questions
At a Glance: Portland State
• Founded in 1946
• 23,000 undergraduate students (30k total)
• More than ½ of students from Portland
metro
• Average age: 27
• “Let Knowledge
Serve the City“
Sustainability Leadership Center (SLC)
•
•
Proposed by students in 2009
A partnership between the Enrollment
Management & Student Affairs (EMSA)
Division and the Institute for
Sustainable Solutions
Positions include:
• 1 full time Coordinator
• 1 half-time graduate assistant
• 6 part-time student staff positions
• A variety of internship positions
Initiatives:
• Sustainability in student life
• EMSA goals and assessment
• Annual events
• Visioning
• Field trips in the Portland community
SLC’s Core Programs:
Student Sustainability
Leadership Council
Sustainability
Volunteer Program
EcoReps
Holistic Sustainability
“A lens with which we seek to recognize and understand our interdependence
with all living systems in order to strive toward environmental health, economic
balance and social equity. It encompasses a worldview and actions that respect
and honor our home, Earth.”
Some things “we” sometimes forget…
•
•
•
•
Role of power and privilege
Traditional ecological knowledge
Value of multiple perspectives
History of displacement
SSM Over Time: 2010
• ~18 events, ~300 individual participants
• Selected events:
–
–
–
–
Democratic Yoga
Blue Gold
The Future of Food and Seed
From Colonialism to the Globalization of Western
Patriarchal Gender Constructions
– Collaborative Research as Healing: Integrating
Ethnoecology and Spirituality to Revitalize Native America
– Indigenous Peoples and Sustainability in the Himalayas
and the Great Basin
SSM Over Time: 2011
• 27 Events, 600+ individual participants
• Created program evaluations
• Integration with SLC task forces
–
–
–
–
–
–
Social Costs: Who Pays for the Stuff You Just Bought?
Healing Our Lands, Healing Ourselves
Race and Sustainability
Interpersonal Neurobiology of Social Sustainability and Change
Cider pressing at PSU community orchard
100 mile luncheon
2012: “Toward Community Wellness”
•
•
•
•
12 events
Creation of event templates
Tied to learning outcomes and values
Creation of weekly and annual themes
•
•
•
•
Cultural
Personal and Interpersonal
Environmental
Socioeconomic and Political
• One event proposed by each SLC volunteer task force
– Restoring the PSU Oak Savanna (Garden)
– Thanks Giving (Food Systems)
– Communicating Sustainability in a Post-Greenwashing
World (Communications)
– Theater of the Oppressed (Cultural)
Partnerships and Planning Structure
• Women’s Resource Center
– EcoFemme Task Force
• Sustainability Leadership Center
– Task forces
– Student staff
• Student groups
• Faculty partners
– Sociology
– Anthropology
– Ecological Economics
Evaluation process
• Evaluation forms at each event
• Measure learning outcomes of SLC and WRC
• Debrief after month ends to plan for next year
Examples:
Did the event consider the intersections between social,
environmental and economic issues? (Circle one: Yes / No)
Did it address or consider multiple perspectives or solutions to a
current problem or topic? (Circle one: Yes / No / Not sure)
Outreach Methods
Exercise: Framing Campus Events
Resources:
• Awakening the Dreamer Symposium
(Pachamama Alliance)
• Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings
for a Sustainable Future (Nelson 2008)
• Understanding the Social Dimension of
Sustainability (Dillard, Dujon, King 2008)
• Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh
(Norberg-Hodge, 1993)
Questions?
Contact: Heather Spalding
hspaldin@pdx.edu
503-725-5598
ecowiki.pdx.edu