Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Moderator: I’m just here to introduce this session and the presidents you are going to speaking here at the session. Just like the ACUPCC is an historic initiative the opportunity to hear directly from your president or presidential representatives of the initiative is a really kind of unique opportunity. I encourage you all to be thinking as we go through their introductions of the kind of questions that you could ask a president a question about sustainability or other issues that you’re facing. That you think about those and pose those questions to these presidents when we come to the question and answer section.

We have four presidents who will be speaking today. I’m going to read through their biographies because they have wonderful, long histories in academia and in sustainability. President Crow, president of our host institution Arizona State University. He became the–Michael Crow became the 16th president of Arizona State University in 2002. He’s guiding the transformation of Arizona State University into one of the nation’s leading public metropolitan research universities. An institution combining academic excellence [cough disrupts 0:01:18] inclusiveness and societal impact of what he terms the new American university.

Under his leadership ASU has established major interdisciplinary research initiatives such as the Biodesign Institute, GIOS, the Global Institute of Sustainability, and more than a dozen new interdisciplinary schools. And has witnessed an unprecedented academic infrastructure expansion near tripling our research expenditures and attainment of record levels of diversity in the student body.

He was previously executive vice provost at Colombia University where he served as chief strategist of Colombia’s research enterprise and technology transfer operations. A Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the US Department of Commerce National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He’s the author of books and articles analyzing science and technology policy and the design of knowledge enterprises.

President Crow received his doctorate in public administration, science and technology policy from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University in 1985. I’m gonna go ahead and just introduce all four presidents and then let them tell you a little bit about the work they’re doing.

We also have President Jan Geller from Scottsdale Community College also right here in the neighborhood. President Geller became the second president of Scottsdale Community College on July 1st, 2008. She came to Maricopa Community College District with 21 years in higher education.

Dr. Geller held rank as associate professor in culinary arts and hospitality and served in management positions from chair to associate dean, interim dean, interim provost and, for nine years, as the Dean of the University of Alaska Anchorage Community and Technical College.

She taught high school and served as a grant writer for six years with the Orange Unified School District in California and continued her professional public service as faculty and external degree program coordinator at California State University-Long Beach. Followed by 12 years as a senior health and human services planner with the municipality in Anchorage.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in family and consumer science from Ohio State University, a master’s in vocational education from California State University-Long Beach and a doctorate in educational planning from Oregon State University.

Our next president is President John Haggard, Northern Arizona University; just a few hours up the road. President Haggard has been president of NAU since November of 2001. After joining the university to serve as NAU provost in June 2000. He leads NAU in his commitment to undergraduate education, a commitment enhanced by the university’s ongoing efforts in research, graduate education and distance learning.

During his term as president Dr. Haggard has guided the university to new heights in student enrollment in Flagstaff and across the state answering the call from the governor’s office and the state legislature to make higher educational accessible and affordable to all Arizona citizens. Dr. Haggard is a member of the Translational Genomics Research Institute board of Governors (TGEN), the Greater Phoenix Leadership Arizona Congress Authority, American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment steering committee, chair of the AACSCU Committee on national education and the Flagstaff Forty.

He is a former member of the Arizona State Board of Education, former chair of the United Way Northern Arizona Board, former commissioner of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, and is past chair of the Big Sky Conference President’s Council. Dr. Haggard has worked at all levels of higher education; professor, chair, dean, vice president and provost. Early in Dr. Haggard’s career he conducted and published articles and books on the theme of economic change and how it affects individuals and institutions.

He was founding editor of The Michigan Historical Review and his work on the investment frontier won a national award from Choice Magazine as well as his book on John Astor, argued for Astor’s role as the first modern American venture capitalist. Dr. Haggard earned his bachelor’s, his master’s and his doctoral degrees from Loyola University in Chicago.

We have out of state representative in President David Schmidly from the University of New Mexico. President Schmidly was installed as the 20th president of the University of New Mexico in October 2007. As president he’s responsible for the University of New Mexico campuses in Gallup, Los Alamos, Taos, Valencia and Rio Rancho as well as the UNM Health Sciences Center which includes a nationally renowned UNM cancer center.

President Schmidly brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to UNM having led Oklahoma State University of assistant CEO and president from 2002 to 2007. In addition to his work at OSU he was previously the president of Texas Tech University after having served as vice president for research, graduate studies and technology transfer and as dean for the graduate school. He also spent 25 years at Texas A&M University including 5 years as CEO on the Galveston campus and 6 years as head of the Department of Wildlife and Fishery Science.

During his tenure in New Mexico UNM has seen major growth in the incoming freshman class in significant accomplishments in the recruitment of National Merit and National Hispanic scholars. As well, the university has seen a renewing sense of purpose surrounding undergraduate and graduate education, diversity, research, creating healthy New Mexico communities as well as economic and community development.

President Schmidly is an internationally respected researcher and scientific author and has been inducted into the Texas Hall of Fame for Science and Mathematics and Technology which recognizes individuals who’ve played a major role in significant scientific accomplishments. As a noted scientific naturalist he has authored nine natural history and conservation books about mammals and more than 100 scientific articles.

Dr. Schmidly earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of Illinois following his bachelor’s and master’s degree from Texas Tech.

This is a wonderful group of presidents you’re going to hear from. I will turn it over to President Crow.

President Crow: Thank you. Can everybody hear me all right? Back there in the back?

Well, why don’t I start by contextualizing what I hope will be an open conversation. [Feedback]

Whatever that was. You hear those noises and you think well, maybe that whole thing about the aliens is correct.

[Laughing]

President Crow: They’re coming in. You’re in the oldest building on our university campus. This is the facility that was the Arizona Territorial Teacher’s Academy before 1900. You’re in the main room of that particular facility. This was an institution built around the notion of teaching; we are a teacher’s college. We grew up from being a teacher’s college. We later grew 15 other colleges beyond our teacher’s college, but we’re a teacher’s college.

Probably all of us in the room in one way or another, if you simplify what we do–this is certainly true for me–when people ask me what I am I always say the same thing; I’m a teacher. I’m a teacher. That’s what I do. There’s other people that are doctors, other people that are lawyers, other people that are business people, other people that are whatever they are. I’m a teacher.

What do teachers do in the 21st century going forward? Well, it’s not like they used to do in the past. You have to be, in many cases at the university level, a teacher has to be capable of creating knowledge and synthesizing knowledge and advancing knowledge. But, I think more important than that, the institutions themselves have to teach. So several years ago ASU became involved in getting the whole President’s Climate Commitment going and Jim Buizer who was on our staff at that time was a fantastic driving energy force both inside ASU and outside ASU to get this whole thing going.

We joined and have maintained our membership and our commitment to climate neutrality, to carbon neutrality, whatever you wanna call it. We joined because we think that and thought then and think now that as teachers we’ve done a poor job. When you see rancorous political debate about scientific knowns and you see people denigrating science and you see people saying, “Oh, that’s not happening, it’s all made up. Global warming has no chance of actually ever occurring.” I’m like uh, that’s wrong.

It may be caused by different things, it may be moving in different directions; there may be all kinds of factors which is certainly the case. It began to sink into me that we’d done a pretty poor job of teaching. I don’t mean teaching just by in the classroom. I don’t mean teaching just by research. I mean teaching as an institution. We joined up with these other colleges and hundreds of other colleges and universities around the country to see if there were ways in which we could teach not only by what we teach, but also by what we do.

Is there a way for us to restructure our own ways in which we consume or use energy or produce carbon or don’t produce carbon? Can we find a way to teach on multiple levels? Can we express as an institution in addition to expressing to our students? Can we basically say well, don’t tell us that it can’t be done, don’t tell us that you can’t build buildings in the right way or you can’t manage all of your solid waste or that you can’t do these things or you can’t lower your carbon footprint. Because if the teachers can’t figure that out who can?

I mean, the teachers are supposed to be the ones who are storing knowledge and synthesizing knowledge and advancing knowledge and figuring out ways to do things. If sitting here in this old Teacher’s College–this old Teacher’s Academy–if whatever we are today 100 plus years later, if we can’t figure it out, who can? Obviously if it’s left only to the “scientists” that’s insufficient. Science is one thing and many teachers are scientists, but science is not enough.

It has to be taught. Why do we need to manage our carbon footprint? Why do we need to manage our path to either sustainable or non-sustainable coexistence with nature? Teachers have to figure out how to get people to learn, how to get people to understand. It’s always important, and I sort of offer this as an opening comment to the panel. When you see people running around saying some of the things that they say about climate futures, or when you see people running around wondering whether or not we should be concerned that we’re not necessarily on the path to sustainability. Or you’ve got 70,000 synthetic chemicals in the water and air media of the planet that are now integrating themselves into us and every other species on the planet, do those things make any difference? We only know if they make any difference if you’ve been taught.

There’s actually no way to derive that understanding on your own. It’s actually we’re sort of past the notion of look at the tree and have someone teach you about the tree. Therefore, you’ll understand all things. We’re just past that. As powerful as that kind of teaching logic can be, the teaching logic of today needs to be that plus how do we deal with global sustainability, plus how do we build our cities, plus how do we express new ways of thinking to have the planet operate with between seven and 10,000,000,000 people or however many people we end up with. How do you teach all of that?

The question I’d throw out for each of the presidents that are up here–and I hope that we can get to questions from you all–is how do you teach sustainability? Or how do you teach about climate change? Or how do you teach about responsible management of the relationship between the built environment and the natural environment. I’ll take whoever wants to go first. Go ahead David.

President Geller: I was–oh, go ahead.

President Crow: David? David, then Jan.

President Schmidly: See if my microphone will work. Can everyone hear? [Feedback] I think I’m the problem with the–here comes a young man, maybe he can adjust this. How’s that? Can everyone hear okay now? Good

I guess what I wanna do is take your excellent introduction and maybe offer a few comments about the role that a university president might make. I mean I, like you, view myself as a teacher. That’s why I got into–why I got a PhD. I never wanted to be a university president; I wanted to be a scholar and a teacher. I became a university president and the question of what role have I tried to play; I obviously can’t teach every student on the campus.

I feel like, as a presidential leader, you can do the necessary things so that the kinds of issues that Michael raised become part of the pedagogy on the entire campus and the way in which the campus operates as an example to the students and to the public for how to exist with a paradigm of sustainability, climate neutrality, carbon neutrality, et cetera, et cetera. When I became president of the University of New Mexico in 2007 we did one of the things that almost all new presidents to do, we engaged in a reexamination of mission, vision and our core principles.

Out of that sustainability emerged as one of the most important core principles on the campus. We began to, in all of our planning and all of our activities; academic and nonacademic, we began to evaluate how do we do this in a way that teaches and fosters sustainability? I see that as one of the major roles of a president.

I would also say presidents, in terms of authority for the most part, have the bully pulpit and not much else. You’ve got faculty senates, staff councils, student government, alumni, the legislature, the stakeholders; go on and on and on. You have to have a lot of help; you have to have a lot of champions on the campus. I’ve been very fortunate in that regard. When this sustainability as a core principle emerged the champions began to emerge.

Bruce Milne here is a professor of biology and he runs our academic initiative for undergraduates and graduate students in sustainability. Bruce holds the Kellogg Chair in Sustainability. Mary Clark in the back of the room is on our–is president of our staff council. She is the sustainability program specialist on the campus. Mary Vosevich–Mary, raise your hand–is the director of the physical plant.Some of our biggest teaching moments have been in how we manage our physical plant. Jason Strauss is the manager of our incredibly successful energy conservation program.

Now, I’ve had a chance to talk with my colleagues up here; we’ve all faced one big dilemma the last few years. We’ve lost about 20, 22 percent of our budget at the University of New Mexico the same time as our enrollment has gone up 15 percent. We’ve had almost no tuition increases. What we found is sustainability can be useful teaching, not only in a paradigm of how to be a better citizen, we have found that sustainability is good business. It’s a good way to contain costs and save money. It’s helped us balance our budget.

Our energy conservation program in a couple of years has saved over $8,000,000. We operate our entire campus in Taos on a solar grid. We are retrofitting our buildings; almost everything we build now is at least silver-platinum. We have donors that have begun to help us donating the money we need to operate some of our new buildings with solar.

Transportation systems; we have tremendously reduced the number of people that drive cars to the campus by entering into a program with the City of Albuquerque where faculty, students and staff get free bus passes. We’re encouraging people to come and go from the campus in ways that are more sustainable. This not only helps the university–we hadn’t given salary increases in four years. It helps every single one cope with the great economic recession.

I think sustainability, yes; it is the responsibility of teachers to teach it. It’s also the responsibility of the university campus to practice it and be an example that students and people beyond the campus can see as a real-world living example of how to operate a sustainable enterprise. I think we made a lot of progress at the University of New Mexico. By no means have we mined all the possibilities; we’ve not achieved that. I feel really good that we have it going on two parallel tracks. The sort of non-academic culture of the institution, the business practices of the institution and, thanks to Bruce’s leadership, the academic aspect of the institution.

Every day you see the students–you can see them, through their actions, they’re learning more and more. I think we are teaching them. Those would be my comments, Michael.

President Crow: Okay, Jan?

President Geller: Well, thank you. I would echo David’s comments absolutely. The short answer to your question is whether you are one, as a president or a VP or a member of the faculty you must–we must model the way. As David says we have the bully pulpit when folks will listen to us. We must be committed to the issues or resolving the issues and the challenges of sustainability. We must be conversant in what that means both theoretically as well as practically. On a college campus, whether it’s a community college or a four-year college or a university, of course that divides into teaching and learning and student services as well, as David mentioned, the facilities spoke. There are many opportunities to apply the principles that we are going to or we do espouse.

I wanna give a bit of a pitch to the–on behalf of the Maricopa Community College District, you all–or many of you may know it’s 250,000 students, about 8,000 employees, 10 fully accredited–and separately accredited–colleges. It’s a big organization. To his credit Rufus Glasper, who is our chancellor, about two years ago signed–he followed the lead of five of the presidents in this system who were early signatories and was committed to the Climate Commitment signed on behalf of the entire district. With that convinced our governing board to adopt a policy statement on behalf of the importance of sustainability.

That cascaded from turning a planning taskforce across the district into a true sustainability action council at the highest level. It translated a lot of intensive, but disparate work that was going on at the colleges into a unified march forward. We really have appreciated being part of the climate commitment.

On the campus level it is a–we all know it’s a 24/7 sort of–the microphone is always on, the camera is always on so folks are always watching what the president and the college leadership are doing. In our language, in our actions, now I was gonna say you could participate in the dumpster dive–that might be a little far out. Whether you are doing things on the campus, you’re participating with your sustainability councils, you’re observing in a classroom, helping support faculty as they develop curriculum or they infuse sustainability principles into the curriculum; whatever the action is, as David says, we must–sustainability isn’t something that is just left to the sustainability coordinator. Ours, Thomas Williams, is sitting here in the audience today.

I think that’s one of the misconceptions; that people think oh, that’s Thomas’s job. Our role is to help convince everyone in our institutions that it’s not a job; it’s a way of viewing the universe and viewing our role within the university. It somewhat different than it has been in the past. The other thing that I think sometimes happens in our institutions is, as leaders, we assume that there’s more or less a uniform awareness, understanding, and knowledge level.

I heard it today in our small group where we were watching the film and folks were saying, “I didn’t know that was true.” There’s always an opportunity to learn, of course. I think, as a leader, we must understand that all of the folks in our institutions are at many different places along a continuum of excellence if you will in terms of sustainability. Our job is to recognize where they are, help them to take that next step and to understand that sometimes getting to the goal is–can be a slow, but an incremental process.

I think that’s one of the things that I think is very, very important for us as colleges and universities.

Not only on our own or within our own institutions but when we go out to our larger communities with our stakeholders, our donors, our communities at large recognizing that those disparities exist there as well. A difference in knowledge, a difference in willingness, a difference in attitude and it is our job to lead those conversations to help those communities become more informed. We have a wonderful role to play and I’m proud and honored to play that role.

President Crow: Okay, John?

President Haggard: Actually, just to talk very briefly about Northern Arizona University; when I became president–

President Crow: Everybody hear John okay?

President Haggard: Everybody hear me?

President Crow: No?

President Haggard: No?

President Crow: Go Flash. We call him Flash.

President Geller: There you go.

President Haggard: It’s on.

President Geller: It’s on.

President Crow: Is that better?

President Geller: Your microphone’s a little low.

President Crow: Okay.

President Haggard: [Distorted] How’s that?

[Laughing]

President Haggard: When I joined Northern Arizona University in 2001 it already had a culture of, across the entire campus–particularly in the academic division–of an interest in the environment and an interest in sustainability. It goes back to original people–actually Tony Cortese, back there, worked with on our campus noticed the Ponderosa bloom which were developing themes that would be inserted in every general studies or liberal arts courses across the campus. That group was actually building a tradition of environmental sensitivity that has been true of the Flagstaff community for generations.

Some of it is where we’re located; in the mountains surrounded by the Navaho Indian Reservation representing 21 tribes part of it is the tradition of the Babbitt. Of course Bruce Babbitt was Clinton’s Secretary of the Interior. There is a deep and abiding culture at NAU about the environment [distortion 0:27:16].

President Crow: Okay, now people can’t hear you very well, John. You’re going to switch to this and you’re gonna turn that one on?

President Schmidly: How’s that?

President Crow: I think you turned it off.

President Schmidly: It’s on. Can you hear me?

[Audience Assents]

President Schmidly: Much better. All right. I was making the point about the nature of the university is environmental sustainability is very much built into the culture of the institution. That gave us some advantages especially when the American President’s Climate Commitment was started. To take what we already had in play and then build from that. While the president has a bully pulpit the president also has the ability to try to keep everything in alignment.

It’s often been said that on university campuses often there are 400 different directions people wanna go. The task is to try to get people focused on a couple of main themes on any campus. There the president can be very influential. We’ve talked about undergraduate residential education as something that drives our institution.

Sustainability is also something that drives our institution. It doesn’t just function on the academic side of the house. It functions–one interesting pattern we went through; we did a new master plan for the campus. It was in the conscious thinking of everybody, this master plan has to reflect a sustainable campus into the future. We began to draw the buildings closer in so it could become a walking campus. We talked about bus routes so students could leave their cars in garages. Then we went on the task of building new parking garages because we knew that the carbon neutrality would eventually become an issue. This was an important part of it.

Our research goes to the heart of the area in which we live. Many of our faculty are working on specific research projects that relate to sustainability; whether it’s related to water, wind and solar energy. We have a very large forestry school that offers a PhD and many of those faculty are heavily involved in making the American forest much safer. They’re actually producing solutions to some of the problems that we face across the climate issues.

Just one last thing is interesting about Flagstaff and I think gives us an advantage; the relationship between the university and the city government, the county government. We have an organization called SEDE which is Sustainable Economic Development. The culture thrives in the whole community. It makes it easier to move in many of the directions we’ve been talking about.

President Crow: I think I’m gonna follow Tony Cortese’s recommendation and try to switch to engaging some of you all now to make certain that–Tony mentioned to me that often folks don’t have an opportunity to talk to the president of their college or the president of their university and they want to. Or there’s some hierarchical constraint or whatever. It’s actually easier than that. You should try it sometime. You know, you’ll actually get an answer. People actually say well, oh yeah what about that idea or this idea?

Why don’t we start with maybe focusing on what you guys would like to know about how we do the roles that we’re particularly assigned. The teachers that are here in these roles as administrators or other things about where we’re moving forward. I could tell you that from my perspective ten years into this job here like NAU–I think like New Mexico, like Scottsdale Community College the culture in the West I think is much more open to the concepts of sustainability than perhaps in the older and more established cities in the East.

I was the founding director of the thing called the Earth Institute at Columbia University a long time ago. Getting that thing going back there was very challenging. Not only in the way that we are working within the university but working with the city and working with the sate and working on the East Coast and so forth. Things have been–there’s more of a culture of openness; more of a willingness to change. We’re from this region, all of is in this–or most of us in this meeting.

I think the hardest challenge for me in advancing all of this has been to add to what already people think is a full plate. This notion that somehow we’re already operating a full entity; our time is already occupied, our ideas have already been produced. The students are here, the financial burdens are here and then finding a mechanism and convincing people that it’s far from full. Because as we move forward we’re going to be changing and morphing and moving in new directions. This notion of the university becoming this sustainability teacher or this climate neutrality teacher through what we do and what we teach, that does require you to maybe think less about some other things and more about these things.

That’s been the biggest challenge for me. Before we go to the questions if each of you could just say very quickly what your biggest challenge has been. So David?

President Schmidly: I think the biggest–let me do this.

President Crow: I think you’re all right.

President Schmidly: Yeah. Can you hear me now?

President Crow: Yeah.

President Schmidly: All right, good. I think the biggest challenge that we faced is getting this whole paradigm across the entire campus community. I mean we have an academic program and we have students that are in that academic program. How do you get the engineering students, the business students–how do you get everyone that comes and goes from the campus to buy into the idea that living sustainably and adopting these kinds of approaches to life is the way to be a better citizen.

That’s really goes back to this bigger teaching concern of it’s not just the students in biology. I’m a conservation biologist. I had no trouble buying into this, okay?

President Crow: Right, it’s what you do.

President Schmidly: Yeah, that’s what I do. The question is how do I get engineering students to do it? How do I get business students to do it? They’re the ones doing the development.

President Crow: Right.

President Schmidly: I think that’s part of the bigger challenge.

President Crow: John.

President Haggard: Well, I think the challenge is to be sure that you involve the stakeholders on your campuses. I’ve been surprised at the direction even that our students on campus have taken. I mean they’re into these ideas in a big way. Particularly in a residential campus they can begin to really press the buttons with their fellow students.

For example they’re the ones who convinced me into what we needed was a green fund. The students then went out and in a sense set that up themselves. Our faculty organized–actually faculty and staff from across the campus are organized into a sustainability caucus who at any given moment at time could have as many as 400 people that are connected to it. They’re connected by email, they have meetings. That drives a very active agenda and, in a sense, I think my job is to get out of the way.

[Laughing]

President Crow: Jan?

President Geller: Thank you. I think I would echo the previous comments. My original discipline has its roots in human ecology. In some ways I’ve come full circle. I think the biggest challenge is the lack of time that we have to devote to what appears to be a unique agenda. Daniel Corr’s is in the audience today; he’s our–at Scottsdale he’s the VP for Academic and Student Affairs. We often use this phrase: it’s not this or this, it’s this and this. The challenge is to help folks understand this is an integrative process where we understand and, as a president, we articulate broadly, deeply and often as they say, what it is to be a campus or an entity that’s focused on sustainability.

Our district has adopted the triple bottom line model for our efforts. It is that more holistic approach. To be on-message, to–frankly, as a president, you provide resources, you call the faculty and staff together and then get out of the way. Because they will–and the students–and they will do what is needed. Really support them and be ready to take risks. Sometimes willingness on one’s own campus to take risks bumps into, in our case, a district lack or diminished willingness on some things. You all know what I’m talking about.

If we’re ever going to really prepare the people that change the world as the old Ace Solutions comment goes, we really must take risks on behalf of trying new things to solve these problems. I think the challenge depends on where you sit to some degree. I think the opportunities far outweigh the challenges. The latter are really of our own making, I think.

President Crow: Okay. Tony, you get the first question.

Moderator: Our handheld mike is now with President Haggard. We’re asking you to not be shy and to please come up and use this podium mike which we have unmuted. We figured out that was the problem. Tony Cortese? You could come up and demonstrate how you come to the mike?

[Laughing]

Moderator: Ask a question, all right.

President Crow: Whoever else would like to ask a question should go up there now so that we can be efficient?

Tony Cortese: This is a great presentation; terrific. You are four committed presidents and we don’t have all the presidents in the colleges and universities around the country that think this way. One of the things that would be helpful is obviously the President’s Climate Control network is designed to bring everybody together and help everybody get to a much better level and help each other. The question I have is what are you doing on a regular basis to ensure that this culture shift is–in essence what you’re talking about is a culture shift.

It’s a very deep culture shift. How are you trying–how are you fostering that other than using the bully pulpit? In other specific ways that you’re having people report to you? Or that you’re making–you’re talking with a board of regents or a board of trustees about it. What are the mechanisms for–I guess for institutionalizing what you’re doing? Because that’s, I think, one of the questions that everybody here has.

President Crow: In our case we created a chief sustainability officer; he happens to be in the room, Ray Jensen over here. That becomes then a corporate officer of the university that has an assigned role. The assigned role with our–within the university’s objectives is to drive us to carbon neutrality by whatever means necessary. Taking care of all of our electricity needs and what are we, a third of our way on to the–

Ray Jensen: Not quite.

President Crow: Not quite. Approaching a third. What percentage then, Ray?

Ray Jensen: Probably closer to 15 to 20 [too soft 0:39:48].

President Crow: Where we are, okay. That means we have 100 megawatts that we produce? Ray and I are going to debate right now.

[Laughing]

Ray Jensen: No, right now–almost 15.

President Crow: Yeah, okay. Fifteen megawatts out of what total?

Ray Jensen: During the day our load is about 40.

President Crow: Forty, so that sounds a lot like a third.

[Laughing]

Ray Jensen: That’s if the sun doesn’t sink.

President Crow: Right. During the day, right. During the day. The objective that Ray has is to drive our carbon footprint to the lowest possible level day and night which makes it harder; which drives that number down. Wanna use batteries; something.

The other thing that we have done in terms of locking it in is that we’ve already made policy shifts about what buildings we will build and what–how we will renovate and what their level of energy efficiency will be and where we’re going and changing our business practices. It’s changing policy, changing practice, changing what we do, but more important than that it’s that we’ve set an institutional objective. That is an institutional objective that’s imbedded across the whole institution. There’s not much more we can do other than that. We’ve made this an objective.

President Geller: Likewise in Maricopa we’ve done something similar with starting at the district level, but I’ll speak most definitely about the college level. Again, we have a sustainability coordinator position. That person actually reports directly to the president. That was done purposefully to send a message. We have a sustainability action council and an inclusiveness council. Again, the triple bottom line, the social justice part of this which is very important, both of those report directly to the president.

They’re full members of our college leadership team. We think that that–that’s one set of strategies that starts to drive that message. We also have fully engaged faculty in both integrative strategies for the curriculum as well as developing unique course work and programs. Again, that’s across the whole Maricopa district.

President Haggard: Just very quickly I’ve described NAU in terms of the sustainability is very much a part of the institution but it is also part of an administrative structure. Like other institutions we have a sustainability director. We have people in every division of the university who report to vice presidents who have a particular role to play. We have committed both to building buildings which are LEED rated to buying cars so that whether it’s an electric vehicle or whatever the fleet of automobiles reflects a sustainable emphasis.

I think that’s how campuses do this is at the highest level you have to have people committed. Then people within each division who are responsible for being sure that they’re tracking the extent to which the university’s good on its word.

President Schmidly: We certainly follow the same sorts of best practices but there is something else I might comment on. I think it’s very important to get the boards of the various institutions to understand what this is about. They are the ultimate policy makers at institutions. Every policy we adopt at the university has to be approved by our board. All of our building requirements for our buildings they have to be approved by our boards.

I think one of the key roles of a university president in this whole process is to make sure the board members are fully aware of why we’re doing this and why it’s important to do it the way we are. Why we have sustainability officers and these various infrastructures that will support it. For example, every board meeting I get up and give the president’s report. Next week or the week after next when I give the president’s report I’m gonna report on this meeting and I’m gonna talk to the board about some of the ideas that came out in this meeting. Some of what the other institution are doing and how our efforts in this area are contributing to the national effort and what it means to the education of our students. I think that’s another dimension of this we have to keep in mind.

President Crow: Okay.

Audience: Thank you. I had a question on almost influence. In all the discussions we had over the last day and in the past it’s people in your position are so incredibly important at a very high level to pull the rope versus trying to push the rope from a sustainability director. Someone who’s really caught fire and the board may be a little sleepy and the president of the college or university might not be quite with the program yet.

My question to you is what are you doing individually on, and what would you suggest people in your position to do to really influence others so they’ll like catch it. Other college and university presidents; what can you do that would almost magnify what you have already learned and multiply that almost exponentially in it’s impact at influencing and infecting other presidents? Because it’s so influential as far as pulling the programs forward.

President Crow: Well, I mean there’s those universities that teach only and those that teach and do and so they’re just not the same. I don’t know, I don’t make fun of them but–a little bit.

[Laughing]

President Geller: Just a little. I think you have to influence with integrity but I do think that there’s no substitute for if you can find those folks that are resistant or that are unsure, if you can get them to your campus, if you can show them the affects of what your policies have been, what your strategies have been; whether it’s electric cars in the fleet. Actually getting to the bottom line also–I think a lot of folks are convinced if you can carry the message that convinces them that there is a suitable return on the investment.

Whether it’s a small project. We have a cardboard bundling disposal process that’s 6,000 bucks upfront; we get 500 bucks every time we ship a batch off. Sometimes four a year so in three years it pays itself off, but it models the way. The other thing I would say is that, again, back to students; students and faculty especially, they tell fabulous stories. It’s very difficult for anyone who has started out as perhaps a classroom teacher and is now a president to ignore or dismiss the story of a student or a group of students who’ve made a difference. They’re one of your most convincing resources, I think.

President Haggard: Just two points very quickly; one is from the position of the president, you’ve established sustainability as one of the major focus points of the university. You have to remember that universities are in constant swirl. There are new people coming in sometime in very high positions that have influential role. You’d have to keep telling the story as new faculty; new students come into the institution.

The other is to use the opportunities when they’re presented. We’re going before our Board of Regents I think it’s this next meeting to present a project in which we’re signing a contract with NORESCO which are going to come in and look at all of our buildings for energy efficiency. It’ll cost us money up front but we know that that money will eventually return to the institution because we will be more energy efficient after they finish the project.

That is going to be a really good story to tell the Board of Regents who haven’t been probably as focused on this particular agenda.

President Crow: Our board works a little bit differently where we don’t have the same kinds of policies relative to buildings and things like that. We just don’t have those same kinds of things. We report to the same board in Arizona.

President Schmidly: You know, one thing I’ve tried to do is I make a lot of phone calls to my colleagues. John which you just talked about we started about two or three years ago and the savings has just been phenomenal. I’ve called every president of any university in the state of New Mexico and suggested they look into establishing a similar kind of program. I’ve done that with colleagues all around the country.

I carry a little briefing document here about how successful our energy conservation program is. When people say hey, I’m struggling to contain costs I pull it out and give it to them because it works. In my own case too, I use my academic work. I wrote my first paper on sustainable development in 1991. I wrote a chapter in a book called Conservations Sustainable Development. I still give presentations at scientific meetings; I still go to scientific meetings. I try to present in the context of my own research and my own teaching this idea as well.

I don’t know that that helps much with other university presidents because there aren’t many other university presidents with my background. I think it does help other academics and young students see that it’s a subject that I’m interested in and continue to talk about.

Audience: Thank you. I’ve watched the developmental program at ASU since–for a very long time now. It’s been very intriguing. One of the things that stands out, I think, is in many cases, certainly in our case; our chancellor understands the notion of sustainability. I think the students really understand the notion of sustainability. I’d be interested in some of your experiences in many cases how do you drag the faculty kicking and screaming with very distinct boundaries in departments and colleges along with anything? Sustainability is one of those themes but certainly there are others.

How can we utilize both the resources and the sentiments within the faculty but move in directions such as this?

President Crow: I think that the best way to move things forward with the faculty is to engage the faculty on an intellectual basis. That is to focus on the intellectual argument about why sustainability should be a value that we should be striving to work toward as an institution. That sustainability should be a theme of our educational foundation that–you make that case.

In our particular case at ASU we have brought in outside speakers to have discussions and debates. We have–I have written a number of pieces making the case for sustainability as an educational or pedagogical objective. That is sustainability as an objective itself to work toward. Why it’s as important as–you know, we have no arguments about teaching about justice. We have no argument about teaching about the importance of the concept of liberty or free speech or any of the other concepts.

What we’ve tried to do in our particular case here at ASU is have an intellectual discussion about sustainability as a value that the institution should hold as a part of its core set of values that its engaged in teaching and doing research about and projecting and living. In our particular case, and I think this would work at other places, in our case that’s not everything that we’ve done, but that’s the basic element of the approach that we’ve taken.

President Haggard: I would comment just very briefly is that you have to, in a sense, encourage not just with a bully pulpit, but you encourage faculty and staff in various areas by really when an idea comes up, let’s say for a new academic program. You’ll be developing this next fall an interdisciplinary PhD around these very topics. Well, somebody’s gotta put money on the table. Because if, in fact, sustainability’s a core mission then you have to put the money up there when the ideas come forward. Then the NORESCO Project is another example of that. It’s gonna cost us money up front but we’re making a statement about how important this really is to the institution.

President Crow: Let me just add to that. A few years ago in the economics department they were interested in expanding the economics department and the central administration, at least in the way we manage our budgets, is responsible for allocating the resources for that expansion. We said well sure, we’re interested in helping economics to become a bigger and a better department, but we have one caveat. Thirty percent of the hires will be in environmental economics.

President Schmidly: Yeah. I’d like to make a comment too. When we were discussing with Kellogg Foundation supporting a faculty chair in the area of sustainability it required quite a bit of matching funds. Most of that was directed out of my office. As a result of that we were able to establish a very nice chair and keep a very excellent scholar engaged in this.

I’ve been president of three universities. I think John you said something earlier that really stuck in my mind. That culture of the institution has a lot to do with how easy it is to move in this direction. I can tell you the three institutions where I’ve been it was much easier in New Mexico than either Oklahoma or Texas. Where you had just a–you have a strong oil and gas–a different mentality.

It’s really not been difficult at all to get the faculty at the University of New Mexico really engaged in this. Much easier at the other two institutions.

Audience: I was wondering if you could speak to how you deal with growth and wanting your institution to grow in the face of climate commitments that aren’t adjusting for growth. That’s something that I’ve heard from kind of our top leaders. That’s an issue that’s really hard to deal with.

President Crow: We’ve added 25,000 students since 2002 and we will add 14,000 more students to our base between now and 2019. That just makes Ray’s job harder because we have to grow and expand the institution and our functionality while, at the same time, figuring out how to lower our carbon footprint. We just make that as a part of our structure. Part of the way that we–I mean it’s–that’s a part of it because the country is growing. Everybody’s growing. The more kids are going to be going to college; more kids are going to be going to community college. All the universities here are going to see growth and they’ll experience growth. You just have to figure it out in that context. It makes it more challenging.

You have to think about every building that you’re building and how you’re doing it and how you design them and what your infrastructure’s going to be. Maybe if you’re even going to even think about building things in the same way maybe you’ll do things–you’ll have different pedagogical models for teaching and so forth. It just becomes a part of the whole thing.

President Geller: I would echo that comment especially that as we all face growth it is challenging our notions about how we use our physical spaces. Some of the colleges are older than others and so it’s not a matter sometimes of only building new. Maricopa’s committed to building–to LEED Silver Standard. Also, your renovations which are more difficult to do in a sustainable way in many ways. It is thinking differently about the use of the space. That’s an entire topic in and of itself.

You all know about online education and the hybrid models that are proving to be very, very effective. It’s not an easy–there’s not an easy answer to that question.

President Haggard: Just to add to your comments, I often say this on campus: the challenge is we’re all going to have more students. We’re likely gonna have fewer faculty per the number of students we have.

President Geller: Right.

President Haggard: We have to maintain quality. Ultimately what happens is we have to rethink the enterprise and often that means rethinking how we offer academic programs. Because otherwise there is no other way to answer all of the issues that are being put on our tables at every university in this country.

President Geller: Can I just say something to piggyback on that. I mean the word collaboration is known to all of us. I think this very challenge really calls all of us to think more collaboratively. Just on behalf of the Maricopa Community Colleges and I know other community colleges as well all across the United States. We’re collaborating more successfully and more thoroughly with the university partners and recognizing that perhaps we have some physical space that’s unused that the university needs to use and so on and so forth. I think whoever said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, I don’t mean to minimize the negative aspects of any crisis, but it is a situation that causes us to be more creative in how we solve our problems and working together.

President Schmidly: In many ways this is our biggest challenge. I mean in public education is as important as higher education is. Globally now we’re all gonna continue to grow. It’s just inconceivable to me that we won’t. Collaboration, networking, sharing best practices; we all are going to be struggling with this. How do we manage this growth in a paradigm of sustainable development?

I think globally we’re gonna be doing the same thing. That’s why higher education is so important in this context. We can be the great teachers in this area and the great examples.

Audience: I wanna thank you all. I just wanted to end with a kind of a question and a thought. It’s clear to me that the paradigm shift that we’re talking about with respect to the way you got to think about education. Just as an example, Michael, I love what you guys did at ASU by getting all your different schools to focus on some of the major challenges that we face and organize their research and organize the education around that. That’s a wonderful new direction.

There are many dimensions to what we’re talking about here. In essence–David, you just made the case that–which I always argue is that if higher education doesn’t find a way to lead, to create a healthy, just, and sustainable society, who’s gonna do it?

President Geller: Right.

Audience: We’re the ones that train all the people that are gonna become the future politicians, the future business leaders, the future presidents. If they don’t understand the broad principles of health, social, economic, and ecological sustainability instead of just thinking of the environmental piece I don’t think we have a chance. A couple of things come to mind; one is that you all know this better than anybody else, that any CEO of any organization that wants to get the organization to go in a different direction talks about it all the time, over and over again. Just like advertising.

It has to be there all the time. It has to be a core value. It has to be repeated. There also needs to be something that is made into the institute–not only into the institutional culture, but with specific ways of trying to get the academic piece and work on it on the operational side. You’re all trying to do that which is terrific. We’re in uncharted territory in that we’ve never had to think about how to live sustainably on this planet at the level that we do now. Because we’ve never been big enough in numbers or in economic prowess to really be the primary determinants of the habitability of the planet for ourselves and every other species. This has never happened.

That’s happening with 25 percent of the world’s population consuming 75 percent of the world’s resources. This shift that we have to make is such a deep one that it–I think it requires a level of collaboration among the colleges and universities that we’ve never seen before. A great start, we think, is the President’s Climate Committee. I think it has to go on regionally.

What we tried to do with this symposium was to bring together many of the schools that are working on these similar problems at various levels of responsibility and pieces and all of that. I was wondering about this; the possibility of the universities in this region actually repeating this. And setting up some sort of collaborative way to think about everything around purchasing renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, faculty development workshops or whatever it’s gonna take. Across the region so that you can become a model not only for sustainability in society but a model for how higher education could lead this effort.

I just wondered what you thought about that idea. Because we think after all the work we’ve done in Second Nature with the President’s Climate Commitment nationally it really comes down to whether or not the schools, not only individually but in the regions where you have similar problems, you have similar cultures, you have similar challenges; if you could come together and do this as a model we could really probably show this as something that other regions of the country can do. Then we can grow this organically very quickly. That was just a thought.

President Crow: David?

President Schmidly: I think it’s a great idea in that Michael said something earlier about we all lived in the West. Yeah, and we got certain challenges because where we are. We also have a cultural understanding that is sort of common. As I mentioned to you earlier the University of New Mexico would be happy to host this group next spring in a similar endeavor.

I think it’s like anything else. It’s a good idea and just try it two or three times it’ll get legs. There are a lot of things we could do collaboratively. I would love to do some faculty exchanges, for example, with your institutions. I’d love to hear more about this Green Fund. There are just a number of things we can do here institutionally through collaboration that would make that very good.

President Crow: I think it’s a very good idea. I mean I think you’re absolutely right. I mean one of the things that I think would be good for some set of universities to come to an agreement to say yes, sustainability is a value that we’re all working toward and we’re going to learn from each other. In fact I gave a talk not too long ago where I was reminded during the talk about this philosopher that had a big impact on me by the name of Phil Kitcher. Phil is one of the most famous philosophers of science probably in the last 200 years.

He’s still alive and still writing and still having a big impact. He wrote a book called Science, Truth and Democracy in which he basically condemned the universities for being overly amoral; not immoral, but amoral. That is without moral purpose; without moral compass. What that meant was that they did science just for the science, not for some objective that they were working toward. Conservation biology, picking David’s field, is an area of science with a stated objective. Whereas most areas of science do not have that and most areas of academia don’t necessarily have that. Some do, some don’t.

This area of sustainability and what we’re doing as teachers and how we’re teaching and why we’re teaching and so forth, I think it would be good for a group of universities to get together and figure out how to embrace that. Meeting next year in Albuquerque that would be great.

Audience: Of course at [inaudible 1:05:37] will be very happy to help you. Think it through and how to support it with some ideas. Honestly, I can’t see how we can get the level of transformation unless we begin to get groupings of colleges and universities to do this. One of the challenges we’ve had with some of the elite universities, I’ll be candid about that. That is that I think–

President Crow: You mean elite in that they don’t let many students in.

Audience: [Laughing] no, I mean what we consider to be–yeah. I think some of the larger research institutions in the country, many of which that have signed the President’s Climate Commitment we get ones that haven’t. I think one of the challenges is many of them think that they are both necessary and sufficient to move society in a new direction.

I think they’re necessary but not sufficient. This needs to be a transformation of the entire higher education system.

President Crow: Many of them are pridefully amoral.

Audience: Yeah. Part of it is because we don’t understand the consequences of what we do. If sustainability is about anything it’s about making the invisible consequences of the way we live on a daily basis visible. I wanna thank you all for–thank you very much for [noise disrupts 1:06:57]. Thank you, we really appreciate it because without the leadership of the presidents, and you’ve been very bold. We appreciate it so much because–and future generations really appreciate it. Thank you very much and thank you for–I hope this was a useful discussion for you as members of the symposium. Thanks very much and we’ll be talking with you soon.

[Applause]

[End of Audio]

The above transcript provided by Landmark Associates.