Sustainability and Strategic Planning
Jeremy Bean & Rob Andrejewski
Penn State Sustainability Institute

Tuesday December 17 @ 2:00 pm
Foster Auditorium, UP / Media Site Live
As part of our strategic planning efforts this year, the University has asked that the Libraries and all units address sustainability planning. The Libraries have taken environmental sustainability very seriously in recent years, expanding our recycling efforts and forming “green teams” to help us reduce our environmental impacts. But how should the Libraries think about Sustainability as a strategic issue?  What are the unique contributions we can make to the University’s sustainability efforts?

Please join us on Tuesday, December 17 at 2pm in Foster Auditorium (or via MediaSite Live) for a discussion of sustainability planning at Penn State.  Jeremy Bean and Rob Andrejewski of the Penn State Sustainability Institute will provide background on the University’s efforts and how other academic colleges are integrating sustainability into their programs.  Discussion will focus on how the Libraries can define and address sustainability in our own strategic plan for 2014-19.

Jeremy Bean is the Assistant Director for Sustainability Planning and Operations within the Sustainability Institute at Penn State.  His primary responsibility is to facilitate sustainability planning across all areas of the university.  His work helps to deepen the understanding of sustainability and draw forth unique contributions to sustainability that are supported by the mission of the unit.  Jeremy also works to identify strategic educational assets that can be created to support the mission of the University in a way that creates collaboration and builds capacity for change.  The most exciting part of his work is getting to meet and work with many diverse and amazing individuals.

Rob Andrejewski is Associate Director of Engagement at Penn State’s Sustainability Institute. Rob develops processes to engage the campus community on sustainability-related topics, facilitates sustainability planning, and manages student programming. Rob regularly leads discussions on sustainability, behavior change, leadership, and a host of projects happening at Penn State. Rob received his PhD from Penn State in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management (RPTM), where he is now an affiliate faculty member. He is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, a dynamic network of more than 500 of the nation’s top emerging environmental leaders.

Notes from the discussion are here.

At the Library Faculty Retreat on November 20, faculty and staff began the strategic planning process by engaging in a lively and productive discussion on the future direction of the University Libraries. The discussion started off with a brainstorming session on the ideal academic library, followed by an exploration of the challenges we face in achieving that ideal. The final portion of the retreat was devoted to discussing and identifying the single most important thing we need to address in the next five years.

The ideal library was conceived as a collaborative, learning centered space that functions as the hub of academic life. This perfect library is easy to use, welcoming, and innovative, and focuses on preserving information for the future while providing essential services to the campus community. Challenges in creating and sustaining the ideal library of the future focused on the changing nature of libraries and the world of information, including maintaining the professional identity of librarians, protecting library space, articulating the value of libraries, and defining the meaning of a library. Other challenges included staffing and human resource issues, such as loss of expertise through retirements, developing skills in staff, and calcified administrative structures and roles for librarians and staff.

The final discussion on identifying the single most important thing to be addressed in the near future elicited suggestions related to access and discovery, staff development, information literacy, outreach, workplace culture, space planning, and preservation. The suggestion receiving the highest number of votes (27) was integrating information literacy into the curriculum. Other top vote getters related to staffing, human resources, and workplace culture, such as organizing staff and budget competitively, leveraging human resources and succession planning, and building a flexible support structure. Access and discovery emerged as major themes in the discussion, prompting suggestions to improve content delivery systems and discovery of digital resources. Other important themes included outreach and communicating the library’s value to the campus community.

We have prepared a bulleted summary of the major themes that emerged during the retreat, which includes the results of voting on ideas for the “most important thing.”

The Strategic Planning Steering Committee will be using the discussion and notes from the retreat to identify topics to investigate further for strategic planning.  After the first of the year we will be appointing some subcommittees to carry out some of this work, and we are also planning additional forums on various strategic planning topics.    We continue to welcome your ideas, so contact us or comment below.

Read the complete notes from the Retreat.