Recently I attended a lecture hosted by the Sustainability Institute that was titled “Institutionalizing Sustainability at PSU”. The main point of this talk was to discuss the ways that we as a community at Penn State can make sustainability more of a focus and get more people involved in making this happen. The speaker of this talk, Paul Shrivastava, started off by defining sustainability as “meeting our needs without jeopardizing future generations’ needs”, which is a growing issue that we are facing. With the rate that climate change is damaging the planet, we are putting future generations at risk of having a future.
There were 17 goals to institutionalizing sustainability that were discussed and a few of them are to end poverty, end hunger, ensure healthy lives, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, achieve gender equality, and to ensure the availability of clean and sanitary water. In terms of Penn State as a school, Paul described PSU as a big, complex, mature ship that needs to be turned around in order to have it focus more on sustainability. In order to actually make a difference, Penn State needs to be more systematic about its efforts and extend its reach to every college, campus, and unit. Paul mentioned that some of the goals of implementing sustainability that we associate with third world countries such as hunger and poverty are more common than we think. Sustainability has been a topic of focus for Penn State for over 2 decades, but now is a very crucial time for us to take action. One of Paul’s goals is to embed sustainability in every college so that even when people in positions of power leave the campus, the ideas will still remain.
Specifically at University Park, there are 8 colleges (such as the Smeal College of Business), that are “owning sustainability” by developing their own ideas. Each college is managed by the Sustainability Institute. Within each group, there is a champion, a charter, and a council. One of the ways Penn State is trying to institute sustainability is by having “living labs”. Living labs serve as an opportunity to engage students with research and show students why research is done. One project, the Student Farm and Sustainable Food Systems program, not only grows farms but it also grows leaders as well. A lot of programs on campus are student oriented and they stress the importance of education outside of a typical classroom setting.
To close the talk, Paul discussed Penn State’s sustainability focus for 2018-2020. A point that he made was that more students need to be engaged in implementing sustainability if a change is going to occur. Some ways to make this happen is to have sustainability literacy courses offered at PSU, projects, internships, and volunteering opportunities. The most important step is student activism, student voices need to be heard and they have proven to be very effective.
