Sustainability News

By leaving Minnesota to attend Arizona State University, junior Ally DiSera gave herself the opportunity to achieve a well-rounded sustainability education from the School of Sustainability — something she couldn’t find closer to home. “Sustainability is a human issue,” she said, so finding a program that touched on the social pillar of sustainability as well as environmental and economic pillars was important to her.

DiSera is currently pursuing dual degrees: a BA in sustainability and a BS in global supply chain management. Read the Q&A below to see how DiSera is making the most out of her time at ASU and how she plans to apply sustainability to her future career.

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This month Marco Janssen, a professor in the School of Sustainability and director of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment, started his two-year term as president of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. Founded in 1989, the IASC is devoted to bringing together multi-disciplinary researchers, practitioners and policymakers for the purpose of improving governance and management, advancing understanding and creating sustainable solutions for the commons, common-pool resources or any other form of shared resource.

The founding president of the IASC, the late Elinor Ostrom, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. The study of the commons has extended beyond the traditional natural resources to applications in digital environments, health, urban space and space exploration.

ASU Now asked several Arizona State University professors about how our relationships with each other, the world around us and ourselves can make us happy. One faculty member they interviewed was Scott Cloutier, assistant professor in the School of Sustainability.

At ASU, Cloutier leads the Sustainable Neighborhoods for Happiness project and has developed the “Sustainability Through Happiness Index,” a tool that allows planners to engage with neighborhood residents and collaborate to better understand and implement changes that will create happy places to live.

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Amanda Ellis, executive director of Hawaii and Asia Pacific in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was part of a panel discussion at the 2019 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland. In the discussion, titled “Women Leaders and the SDGs – How can women achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals?,” Ellis showcased the WE Empower U.N. SDG Challenge, a program that celebrates extraordinary women entrepreneurs advancing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Photo: Ellis (third from left) poses with the other panel speakers Márcia Balisciano, head of sustainability at RELX Group and board member of the Ban Ki-Moon Centre for Global Citizens; Sanjeev Khagram, dean of Thunderbird School of Global Management; and Alyse Nelson, president and CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership.

Congratulations to Arizona State University School of Sustainability alumna Debbie Namugayi, who in early 2019 started work as Eastern Kentucky University’s new sustainability manager. Namugayi earned her master's degree in sustainability in 2014, and has a history of connecting sustainability with higher education through prior positions at Bucknell University and the University of Maryland.

On top of accomplishment, Namugayi recently acted as the master of ceremonies for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2018 conferences.

Photo courtesy of Amanda Cain, Eastern Kentucky University

Maryam Abdul Rashid took a big risk enrolling in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Coming from Malaysia, she said people back home questioned her prospects about what her future might be. But she took the leap anyway.

"I forever feel blessed to have been given the chance to travel 9,021 miles just to come to school here," Rashid said. "Coming here to ASU and the School of Sustainability was one of the best decisions I have ever made."

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At Arizona State University, successful results often come from collaborative action, especially when making events more eco-friendly. Thanks to ASU students and the work of two ASU sustainability leaders, Colin Tetreault and Lesley Michalegko, the NCAA Women’s Collegiate Triathlon National Championships that took place at Tempe Town Lake on November 4, 2018, was a more sustainable endeavor.

Tetreault is an instructor in the School of Sustainability and Michalegko is a program manager for University Sustainability Practices. Through mutual effort and the support of students, they made the NCAA triathlon a place where functionality met sustainability. They found ways to reduce waste, save money, and increase the fan and competitor experience while simultaneously driving revenue.

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Sarra Tekola, a PhD student in the School of Sustainability who is a first-generation college student, is a recent awardee of the distinguished Ford Foundation Fellowship. The Ford Foundation awards research-funding fellowships to both predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers.

Tekola took advantage of ASU’s support of Ford Fellowship applicants via the Graduate College's Distinguished Graduate Fellowships Initiative, developed in partnership with the Office of National Scholarship Advisement at Barrett. She attended information sessions and writing workshops, in addition to other rigorous pursuits in the process of strategically writing, reviewing and revising — and then redoing the whole process over again and again, until her Ford application was perfect.

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C. Tyler DesRoches, an Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability, is part of a research team that recently won a €10,000 (approximately $11,400 grant) from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science to develop a new research project entitled “Philosophy of Sustainability Science.” The primary purpose of this project will be to develop a systematic and philosophically sophisticated understanding of sustainability science, legitimize it as a field of science and propose effective strategies for its development.

DesRoches explained that a philosophy of sustainability science will answer many questions, including: “What, if anything, is distinctive about sustainability science? What makes sustainability science different from other scientific practices? What is the role of values, particularly ethical values, in sustainability science? Is ethics essential to sustainability science? Finally, sustainability scientists are keen to promote interdisciplinarity, but is scientific integration always a good thing? What conditions must be satisfied for successful interdisciplinary exchange?”

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On Thursday night at the Barrett & O'Connor Center in Washington, D.C., Arizona State University hosted a panel that discussed how society can transition to a carbon economy — as in, pulling carbon from the air and making money from it in an effort to fight climate change.

A financier, a businessman, a policy expert and the inventor of a carbon-capture machine discussed the opportunities and obstacles involved in turning waste into capital at “Hacking for Carbon: Building an Innovation Pipeline for the New Carbon Economy.”

Panelist Klaus Lackner, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Anne Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, has been thinking about how to manage carbon since the 1990s.

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Saurabh Biswas, an Arizona State University School of Sustainability PhD candidate, knows that energy, poverty and sustainability are intricately intertwined. He has been investigating these dynamics for years and developing strategies to help marginalized communities undergo sustainable transformations using decentralized energy technology and cooperative structures.

Biswas is part of a team at the Center for Energy and Society’s Grassroots Energy Innovation Lab that recently won a seed grant from the Global Consortium for Sustainability Outcomes. The team, led by senior sustainability scientist Clark Miller, will use the funding for their project “Off-Grid Renewable Energy to Create Social Value and Community Development.”

Learn more about Biswas and this important project in the Q&A below.

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Hailey Campbell has lofty goals and the work ethic to achieve them. She knows what it means to have multiple irons in the fire and doesn’t shy away from getting involved with the sustainability community.

Campbell, currently a junior in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, aims to make the world a better place by providing sustainability education and fostering collaboration between people making decisions that impact the future.

Keep reading to learn about the many adventures Campbell has pursued at ASU and beyond.

Question: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?