Class Descripion and Projects Desired

Professor Michael Schoon of ASU’s School of Sustainability is teaching a class in the upcoming spring semester (Jan-May 2015), SOS 321 in which he will be having small groups of SOS students research sustainability issues from a governance and policy perspective. He would like to engage with several, local communities on a limited basis and have these communities submit their “real-world” issues for analysis by the students. The course description for SOS 321 and the engagement opportunity timeline and commitment is outlined below.

Your community is invited to review the opportunity below and consider posing a sustainability issue to this class. If you are interested or have questions, please email Anne Reichman at anne.reichman@asu.edu and I will be happy to assist you. Professor Schoon would be happy to help communities develop issue submittals if they feel they need assistance. Sustainability issues need to be identified by mid-January 2015.

Thanks so much for considering this opportunity!

Spring 2015 Session (January-April 2015)

SOS 321/Community Engagement Opportunity:

SOS 321 is looking for several, local communities to pose sustainability-related research questions, both general and specific in nature, to the class so student workgroups can research and propose policy and governance options back to the communities. The community sustainability challenge should include the following:

1) Must be a specific challenge for your community (Past examples include how to reduce recycling contamination by residents, how to dispose of brine removed from groundwater, and how to plan for and mitigate the urban heat island effect.);

2) Provide practical educational research opportunity for students (Students have great insight into current sustainability science and introductory skills in policy and governance theory; however, they do not, in general, have specific technical skills or advanced training on urban policy or planning.)

3) Building on the previous point, our goal is to leverage the sustainability training, the creativity and critical thinking skills, and the vitality of our students in a way that helps their municipal partners to solve real-world problems.

SOS 321 Course Description - Policy and Governance in Sustainable Systems:

Policy and Governance in Sustainable Systems (SOS 321) is a class that requires integration of theory and practice, exposing students to sustainability issues in governance and policy analysis. Using two lenses, institutional analysis and policy analysis, students will apply a broad understanding of sustainability governance to a specific issue in the city and/or region. By partnering with municipalities in the Phoenix Metro area, students will conduct policy and institutional analyses on suggested real, local environmental issues for these participating communities. This class provides students a unique opportunity to integrate theory and practice, while identifying solutions to real, local problems.

Community Participation and Engagement:

The following is a suggested schedule for the spring 2015 course. Details will be fine-tuned with your community prior to participation:

Early to mid-January: Project ideas are submitted, discussed and finalized with the cities and the course teaching faculty.

Mid- to end of January: City officials will visit the class and briefly present information on the sustainability challenge and/or topic which is requiring research or that is being faced locally.

In February, students will prepare a Code of Stakeholder Engagement that specifies how, how often, and when students will engage with their city project partners.

February – April: Students will work in small teams (4-5 students) to research and provide answers/solutions back to their city project partners.

Early April: Student teams will present a preliminary version of their findings to the project partners. Each project will have 3-4 student teams presenting their solutions as part of a mini, in-class competition. Following feedback from their project partners on their presentations, students will submit a final project overview with executive summary to their project partners by the end of April.

Check out recent interviews with DCDC researchers Dave White and Ray Quay.

November 30, 2014

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Arizona Water Supply: How Worried Should You Be?

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Phoenix Channel 12 News, Sunday Square Off with Brahm Resnick discusses Arizona's water future with his panel including DCDC director, Dave White, policy analyst Jocelyn Gibbon, and 12 News' Dr. Matt Pace.

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Phoenix Channel 12 News, Sunday Square Off with Brahm Resnick discusses Arizona's water future with his panel including DCDC director, Dave White, policy analyst Jocelyn Gibbon, and 12 News' Dr. Matt Pace.

Arizona Water Challenge: Myths, reality of how to conserve.

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Resnick and Kyl discuss how the State must act now to ensure a sufficient water supply in the future.

November 20,2014

Steve Goldstein interviews Ray Quay on KJZZ.

The Role of Irrigation in Arizona

This week, Phoenix has been the host city for the Water Resource and Irrigation Conference. Irrigation has been a method for bringing water to Valley homes for decades.

Nancy Grimm, senior sustainability scientist and director of CAP LTER, is a member of the Royal Society working group that informed a recent report on climate change resilience. The report advises that communities take steps to prepare for extreme weather events, which are expected to increase in frequency. Recommendations include financial system changes and ecological, ecosystem-based adaptations along with large infrastructure projects.

“We need to make sure that large-scale engineering isn’t making us too complacent,” Grimm said in an article released by the Ecological Society of America. “In the developed world we have been heavily reliant on some key large scale pieces of engineering, which have been pushed to their limits during recent events. By using a combination of engineering and more natural approaches we can make sure that we accept occasional small ‘failures’ while limiting the detrimental impact of a large, catastrophic event.”

A recent article, published in The Journal of Environmental Education, details the findings of a study produced by the ASU Wrigley Institute's Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program. The study, conducted by School of Sustainability doctoral graduate Benjamin Warner and senior sustainability scientist Monica Elser, includes a comparison of 59 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools.

The article, titled "How Do Sustainable Schools Integrate Sustainability Education? An Assessment of Certified Sustainable K-12 Schools in the United States," provides an analysis of the differences between schools that are certified as sustainable, as well as suggests strategies likely to promote whole-school sustainability.

Right now, political-types from virtually every country in the world are gathering in Peru to talk about climate change. They're working toward a major international agreement about how every nation will pitch in to address global climate change. It's kind of a big deal.

If you're not quite ready to sit at the international table, maybe you just need a little help understanding the jargon. Here are six vocabulary lessons to get you ready for the big negotiations.

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During the first two weeks of December, representatives from virtually every country in the world will gather at a United Nations convention to talk about climate change. They're developing an international agreement, slated to be signed in 2015, that will determine how we will mitigate climate change as a global community.

Global climate policy expert Sonja Klinsky, an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, answers questions about climate change mitigation.

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CBO and partners from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Mission:Wildlife and the University of Maryland were awarded support from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) to develop new decision tools for recovery and spending decisions in endangered species conservation. The research team is comprised of an international group of decision scientists, ecologists and agency personnel. The team will apply structured decision-making approaches in the context of the new Species Status Assessment process being developed by the FWS. SESYNC will support a series of workshops focused on the development of a decision framework for endangered species recovery action prioritization and recovery budget allocation.

Over the course of the last 15 weeks, the School of Sustainability senior and graduate students have been applying their textbook knowledge to real world scenarios. Several municipalities and other government agencies from across Arizona have presented these students with current projects. The students have been studying and implementing these best practices with their public sector clients, and will be presenting their findings. If you are interested in seeing what these innovative students have found in their research, please RSVP to Dr. Nalini Chhetri at Nalini.Chhetri@asu.edu.

Date/Time: Dec 4, Thursday: 4:30PM to 7:30PM, Dec 5, Friday: 8:30AM to 11:30AM

Location: ASU’s Tempe Campus, Wrigley Hall, Room 481

See the list below for a schedule of these presentations:

Presentations, Day 1, 12/4/14, 4:30PM-7:30PM

City of Scottsdale, Green Building Program, 4:30

Maricopa County Flood Control District, Demonstration Gardens, 4:50

Arizona Department of Transportation, Redesign of Transportation Corridor, 5:10

City of Goodyear, Demonstration Garden on Superfund Site, 5:30

City of Goodyear, Wetland Waste Water Treatment Project, 5:50

Presentations, Day 2, 12/5/14, 8:00AM-11:30AM

Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, National and International Best Practices in Feedstock Regionalization, 8:00

Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, Financial Impacts of Regional Feedstock Aggregation 8:20

Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, Best Practices in Feedstock Diversion and Contamination Reduction, 8:40

Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, Financial Impacts of Energy-Use Disclosure Ordinances 9:00

Luke Airforce Base, Water Remediation Study, 9:20

City of Mesa, Low Impact Development at the Mesa Urban Garden, 9:40

City of Tucson, Low Impact Development, Business Case, 10:00

City of Mesa, Evaluating the Feasibility of a Permanent Household Hazardous Waste Facility,10:20

If you missed Joe Arvai's seminar last month, click HERE to see video of his talk online.

Ray Jensen is ASU’s Associate Vice President for Integrated Business Relationships and an advocate for disability services, equity and inclusion. In this essay, Jensen advocates for a new, collaborative model to address disability issues, with the goal of improving global sustainability through inclusion.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By Ray Jensen

Note: December marks eight years since the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted at the United Nations headquarters in New York. In this essay, Ray Jensen advocates for a new model to address disability issues, with the goal of improving global sustainability through inclusion.

The romantic biography of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, was released this month. Its focus is on the relationship of this extraordinary man and Jane Wilde, who weds Hawking and for as long as she is able, embraces the challenges of his life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). From the trailer, it seems that Hawking received, not a death sentence, but a prison sentence when he was a young man, and gradually was translated into a person with a disability. Sometimes it happens that way.

For other people with disabilities, the point of entry is birth, athletic injury, auto accidents or the violence of war. However it arrives, it is usually unexpected, always unwanted, and often the beginning of a journey that can tax the emotional, financial and relational health, not only of the individual with the disability, but of their family and loved ones.

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In an effort to improve sanitation infrastructure in Lagos - the second fastest-growing city in Africa - Nigerian leaders turned to ASU and the City of Phoenix’s Resource Innovation and Solutions Network (RISN). The partnership has resulted in a hub at Sustainability School Lagos called RISN Nigeria, which harnesses the knowledge of academics, practitioners, consultants and students to inform waste management in Lagos.

RISN Nigeria is the first international hub of the Resource Innovation and Solutions Network, a partnership between ASU’s Global Sustainability Solutions Services - a program of the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives - and the City of Phoenix’s Reimagine Phoenix program. RISN convenes stakeholders from across the world to collaborate, propose real-world projects and grow a global network that solves resource management issues.

A new course called Creating Living Buildings - offered through ASU’s School of Sustainability and taught by Senior Sustainability Scientist Mick Dalrymple - imparts the principles of the Living Building Challenge.  The challenge was established by the International Living Future Institute based on a philosophy that buildings are functionally embedded in ecosystems rather than separate from them.

“We want to inform the next generation of green building professionals on the Living Building Challenge and what Living Buildings are,” said Dalrymple, also a practice lead for the Global Sustainability Solutions Services. "Buildings consume natural resources, contribute to climate change and impact human health and productivity. Instead of thinking of green buildings as being less bad, we should think about how buildings can do more good, and that’s the philosophy behind the Living Building Challenge.”

Join us tomorrow to learn about summer opportunities at United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Recruiters from the USFWS will be on campus at ASU to highlight their Summer 2015 Directorate Resource Assistant Fellowship Program.  The Program is designed for seniors (beginning in Fall 2015), or 2015 graduates who will be attending graduate school beginning in Fall 2015, or graduate students who have completed their first year of graduate school.

There will be 60 positions spread across the US in a variety of different venues.  And, best of all, Fellows may be eligible for a permanent position with the USFWS.

Bring your resume and join us for pizza

Wrigley 308

Noon – 1:00,  Thursday November 20th

USFWS DRA Fellowship

The Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives is the newest of 23 internationally renowned members belonging to Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) – a nonprofit committed to improving life through the development and implementation of USAID-funded programs focused on energy, water, agriculture and economic development across the globe.

When we think about the main sources of greenhouse gases, we don’t typically consider dirt as being one of them. But, it’s true. Just by plowing their fields, farmers have released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

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With a mission of reaching consensus for wise water policy and lasting solutions in Arizona, the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy was officially launched Nov. 14. Made possible by a $1 million gift from the Morrison family and named after retired U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, the Kyl Center will convene a diverse group of stakeholders to collaboratively address many of the state’s water challenges.

According to Kyl, the center will not be a competitor of existing water centers or efforts, but rather a collaborator and partner in finding new ways to address challenges for our growing state. It will serve as a forum for public evaluation and education, as well as an alternative to litigation for more expeditious resolutions of outstanding issues. Sustainability scholar Grady Gammage, Jr., a senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute, is part of a team providing leadership until a full-time director is found.

Presenting a paradigmatic shift in the way a university can act as a force for good, Arizona State announces its first official charter. The comprehensive document focuses the university’s mission on the inclusion and success of all its students, and on a fundamental social responsibility to the communities ASU serves.

ASU President and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist Michael Crow describes the document as an expression of “the reason for the existence of the institution,” and one that re-imagines the role of a major university in the 21st century.

“We can make our universities produce master learners more dedicated to the breadth of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our democracy,” he says. “If we can do that, we will have had a major impact on the outcome of humanity.”

Video »

With the goal of eliminating water contaminants that present challenges to communities worldwide, sustainability scientists and engineers Kiril Hristovski and Paul Westerhoff will work as part of a new national hub for research and innovation. The hub - funded through an EPA grant and known as the Design of Risk Reducing, Innovative Implementable Small System Knowledge (DeRISK) Center - will develop and test advanced, low-cost methods of reducing, controlling and eliminating common contaminants.

“The ultimate goal is to develop novel and sustainable technologies for photocatalytic water treatment that can move us closer toward using sunlight to convert nitrate and other contaminants to innocuous end-products without addition of any chemicals," said Hristovski, who will lead the ASU team. "Nanomaterials will play a central role in this research endeavor.”

In its new phase within the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family continues its tradition of advancing affordable, safe and sustainable housing. It does so by empowering students to build sustainable communities, both through two School of Sustainability courses and a new fellowship program.

When it opened in 2005 with a generous gift from philanthropist Jerry Bisgrove, the center acted in a consulting capacity. Since this time, it has partnered with an array of communities – urban and rural, small and large – throughout the state. Now, it utilizes those partners to provide students with an opportunity for the practical application of classroom concepts. In addition to supplying welcomed assistance to participating partners, Stardust fellows gain valuable networking opportunities, insights and inspiration.