There's nothing like the energy of hundreds of young sustainability advocates gathered in one spot. The enthusiasm is palpable, the conversations full of momentum, and the resulting collaborations carry the power of change. AASHE is inspired year after year by the students who attend our conferences. This year, we hope to attract more than ever. With this in mind, here is a snapshot of what students can expect at AASHE 2012:

"I just wanted to say that I loved the conference, and feel fundamentally changed for the better because of it."
-- AASHE 2011 student attendee

• AASHE 2012 Student Summit
  One of the largest gatherings of sustainability student scholars in North America, this year's day-long summit will feature peer-to-peer presentations, workshops and activities designed to enable students to bring sustainability initiatives back to their campuses. From sharing best practices to learning innovative new tactics, this summit attracts sustainability novices and die-hards alike.

• Student Summit Keynote Speaker Billy Parish
  Named a "Climate Hero" by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of Utne Reader's “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” Billy Parish will share his experience of dropping out of Yale University to start the Energy Action Coalition. Now one of the largest youth advocacy organizations in the world working on the climate crisis, the coalition is comprised of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice organizations.

Parish is also co-founder and president of Solar Mosaic, a solar investment marketplace, and co-author of Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money & Community in a Changing World.

• Discounted Hotel Option
  We realize that students are on a budget! Within walking distance of the Los Angeles Convention Center, the student hotel is $99. Faculty members who are coordinating travel arrangements for students, or planning to attend with a group of students, are able to stay at this hotel too.

• L. Hunter Lovins Opening Conference Keynote
  How can we "kickstart capitalism to save our economic ass"? During her "Innovation in Higher Education: Leading the Change" keynote, Lovins will outline ways that higher education institutions can take a lead role in creating the next generation of thought leaders by including sustainability as part of their campus management programs, curriculum and offerings.

• Tree Campus USA Community Service Event
  Join community volunteers and local college students for a day of planting trees at the Los Angeles Valley College campus. Besides getting your hands dirty for a great cause, you'll meet lots of conference attendees and get a tour of the college's sustainability initiatives. Volunteers will receive a free Tree Campus USA t-shirt, hat, gloves and boxed dinner.

• Blue Cow Kitchen Dine-Around
  Curious about the sustainable food scene in L.A.? Dine with fellow conference attendees at Blue Cow Kitchen, a New-American restaurant that supports farms, ranches, fisheries and artisans that are guided by the principals of sustainability. $50 per person includes tax, tip and a three-course meal.

Also check out the AASHE's Resources for Students on the AASHE website!

For more information and to register for the conference, visit the AASHE 2012 website. Registration ends October 8.

Have you been searching for provocative perspectives and innovative educational initiatives that push the limits of higher education sustainability?

New this year, the AASHE 2012 Advanced Track: Sustainability Unbound will challenge the content, design, delivery, place, purpose, intent and future of sustainability education with a host of presenters and facilitators including Second Nature Presidential Fellow Mitchell Thomashow and University of New Hampshire Chief Sustainability Officer Tom Kelly.

Participants in this track will spend mornings attending concurrent conference sessions and afternoons reflecting on ways to advance and escalate the transformation of sustainability education. These discussions will take apart current assumptions and beliefs to reconstruct the campus and curriculum in a way that prepares students for the road ahead.

Not sure if this track is for you? Consider the following discussion topics:

• If higher education were to take a leadership role in preparing students and providing the information and knowledge to achieve a just and sustainable society, what would it look like?

• How will the education of all professionals reflect a new approach to learning and practice, building a pedagogy that embraces education for sustainability?

• What will colleges and universities look like if they operate as fully integrated communities, modeling social and ecological sustainability in its interdependence with the local, regional, and global communities?

• What are the essential actions that will advance sustainability over the next five years to accomplish this vision? How can we facilitate action and move it forward?

For more AASHE 2012 bonuses including networking and community service opportunities, visit the conference website. Hotel discounts end September 22 and registration ends October 8 so register soon! For any conference questions, contact conference@aashe.org.

Yes, Los Angeles is famous for celebrity sightings, traffic and smog. But its lesser known sustainability achievements are what drew AASHE to the City of Angels for this year's conference. Take a look at a few reasons why L.A. is a great place for a national sustainability conversation:

• L.A. is home to more than one million college students

• Thanks to the recent LEED Gold certification of the University of California, Los Angeles' Clinical and Translational Research Center, the University of California system has hit a milestone of 100 LEED-certified facilities.

• Through the Mayor’s Office of Energy, Environment and Sustainability, L.A. met the Kyoto targets for reducing greenhouse gases four years ahead of schedule; has taken over 2,000 dirty diesel trucks off the road; met the first target of getting 10 percent of energy from renewable sources; and put into place a far-reaching green building program.

• L.A.'s Green Business Program works to increase sustainability among businesses. Partners include the Mayor’s Office, Los Angeles Community College, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, Green Globe, and Green Seal.

• The LEED Gold-certified Los Angeles Convention Center was recently welcomed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a national Green Power Partner, and is now a qualified member of the EPA’s national WasteWise program.

• The host hotel for conference attendees, Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, was the first L.A. hotel to earn Green Seal Silver Certification, and was acknowledged by the Mayor’s Office for leading the way in sustainable hotel practices.

• 6 STARS Participants and 5 AASHE member institutions are located in the L.A. area

For more reasons to visit L.A. for AASHE 2012, visit the conference website. Hotel discounts end September 22 and registration ends October 8 so register soon! For any conference questions, contact conference@aashe.org.

What will 21st Century colleges and universities look like when...

• Sustainability is the curriculum?
• Students leave institutions of higher learning with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to meet challenges wrought by climate change?
• Communities are seamless collaborators with higher education?
• Students enter business, politics, industry and social venues knowing they can solve 21st Century problems?

AASHE Education Manager Cynthia Thomashow, University of New Hampshire Chief Sustainability Officer Tom Kelly and Middlebury College's Maria Alessandra Woolson will explore opportunities for these outcomes in the brand new AASHE Curriculum Convocation on October 14 during AASHE 2012.

Specifically, this interactive and participatory workshop will look at:

• Do pedagogical approaches cultivate the kind of thinking and action necessary for meeting 21st century challenges?
• What shape does learning take when it fully integrates the social, economic and environmental consequences of personal and professional decisions?
• How do we prepare and support students to be agents of change?

Registration for AASHE 2012 ends October 8 and hotel discounts end September 22! For more information or questions, contact conference@aashe.org.

Stay in the AASHE 2012 loop by RSVPing to our event pages on Facebook and LinkedIn: Find hotel roommates, learn about impromptu networking opportunities, ask questions, and much more!

Recent research summarized in a Greenbiz blog by Robert Kroop suggests that college and university endowments are no longer leaders in environmental, social, and corporate-governance (ESG) investment. A report from the IRRC Institute and Tellus Institute entitled Environmental, Social and Governance Investing by College and University Endowments found transparency of ESG investments to be poor despite the proliferation of sustainability survey tools. The results were based on aggregate data from multiple survey datasets, including data from public STARS reports.

The September STARS blog highlights data in the Investment subcategory of STARS to provide context to the report’s findings. The institutions highlighted in this blog provide evidence of best practices in sustainable investment - an area that has proved challenging for many institutions.

Sustainable Investment
The Investment subcategory in STARS awards up to 17.5 points for investment decisions that promote sustainability. Average available points earned are lowest in the Investment category when compared to all other STARS subcategories by a significant margin. (The second-lowest subcategory is Energy, at 20.5 percent of available points earned)

The chart below and on the left displays average available points earned in the Planning, Administration & Engagement (PAE) category, which includes Investment and four other subcategories. The chart on the right displays average available points earned for each of the six credits within Investment.

Source: STARS Average Scores dashboard visualization
Note: Total point value is represented by the size of each slice. Average available points earned is indicated by the radius of the colored fill of each slice.

Investment Credits
STARS data support the finding in the ESG report suggesting that there may be a lack of transparency for investment among college endowments. As shown in the table below, only 34 percent of institutions indicated that they make snapshots of investment holdings available to the public. In addition to this, 60 to 70 percent of STARS-Rated institutions did not pursue PAE credits 16, 17, and 18, and several institutions stated that the information was not available, particularly if the endowment was managed by an independent Foundation.

On average, institutions earn .69 out of 9 points for PAE 18: Positive Sustainability Investment, making it the Investment credit with the lowest rate of average available points earned. Nonetheless, three institutions earned maximum points by investing 30 percent or more in sustainable investments. These included Okanagan College and Simon Fraser University (both in British Columbia, Canada) and Haywood Community College in North Carolina.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas came close to earning full points for PAE 18, with 25 percent of its total investment in sustainability investment funds.

Visitors to the AASHE website can access case studies, publications, and related finance and investment resources in the Sustainable Investment and Financing section of the AASHE Resource Center.

With significant room for improvement among colleges and universities in the area of ESG investment, STARS and other survey tools can help motivate institutions to increase investment transparency. As institutions develop and improve tracking mechanisms for positive sustainability investments, we hope to see marked improvement in Investment scores.

With the development of STARS 2.0 under way and a public comment period set to start in the coming weeks, members of the public will have the opportunity to provide feedback on improvements to STARS that may encourage transparency of ESG investment among colleges and universities. Readers can provide feedback on sustainable investment and other topics at any time by emailing stars@aashe.org.

AASHE is pleased to announce that L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS), will kick off the AASHE 2012 Conference & Expo as the featured keynote speaker.

In her "Innovation in Higher Education: Leading the Change" keynote, Lovins will outline ways that higher education institutions can take a lead role in creating the next generation of thought leaders by including sustainability as part of their campus management programs, curriculum and offerings.

"In a field that did not exist when I went to school," says the Bainbridge Graduate Institute professor and Time Magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet, "most of the thought leaders are still among us, and are making it up as we go forward. This may challenge academic traditionalist but it excites students. Unleashing this creativity will create the future for higher education."

Also dubbed a "Green Business Icon" by Newsweek in 2009, Lovins has co-authored nine books including Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins and Paul Hawken, and her latest, The Way Out: Kickstarting Capitalism To Save Our Economic Ass, released in April 2012.

Lovins' areas of expertise include natural capitalism, sustainable development, globalization, energy and resource policy, economic development, climate change, land management, and fire rescue and emergency medicine. She developed the Economic Renewal Project and helped write many of its manuals on sustainable community economic development. She was a founding professor of business at Presidio Graduate School, one of the first accredited programs offering an MBA in sustainable management.

Don't miss Lovins on Sunday, October 14 in Los Angeles! For more information and to register for the conference, visit the AASHE 2012 website. Registration ends October 8.

Written by Dallase Scott and Lea Lupkin.
Dallase Scott is a Sustainability Program Manager for GreenerU and currently manages Babson Colleges Sustainability Office and Programs.
Lea Lupkin is a Sustainability Program Coordinator for GreenerU and has provided STARS support for Babson College’s Sustainability Program.

If you recently completed STARS, you may be basking in the idea of not having to do it again for another few years. You might be reading the title of this blog, taking a long sip from your reusable mug and scratching your head wondering, “Why would you do STARS again so soon?”

We wondered that ourselves some days.

Yet our second STARS journey, just 16 months after our first, has proven to be an immensely effective campus-wide community-building tool for sustainability at Babson College.

Giving New Eyes to Old Problems
Babson’s sustainability journey is bit atypical. The college signed up for STARS, and then hired GreenerU to start and grow both the Sustainability Office and sustainability programs on campus. STARS was one of our first tasks.

As an outsider, we approached the process with an outsider’s eyes, and we strongly believe that STARS is a great tool precisely because it gives a fresh perspective to campus community members that have been working on sustainability issues for years.

As a new office, we wanted to optimize the STARS reporting process both as a vehicle for benchmarking and as a vehicle for development of cross-campus relationships. We took the value of the data collection seriously, and in turn our collaborators felt valued and energized to contribute. In many cases, STARS gave disparate community members a platform to showcase their efforts and receive recognition. The process developed strong relationships that the office maintains today.

Seizing the Moment
We earned STARS Silver in January 2011, and we gained momentum. We wanted to seize the moment. That semester we invited the campus community to Sustainability Town Hall meetings to share the results of our efforts and to seek input. We invited the entire community to advance Babson’s sustainability efforts by participating in targeted task forces—one for each of the three STARS categories. The task forces were not to get caught up in the never-ending cycles of typical campus committees; they were time-limited and focused on achieving one or two specific tasks.

The task forces selected their projects for the year and worked together to achieve them. In several cases, we were able to unearth STARS-worthy efforts that were already up-and-running or in development. Identification of worthy tasks provided project managers with extra motivation to compete these tasks in time for the report. Through the process, task force members gained insight into the relationship between their work and Babson’s sustainability efforts. Many offices discovered that their efforts are integral to the achievement of deep sustainability commitments at Babson.

Growing A Community of Change Agents, One STARS Point at a Time
Through the work of our task forces, the overall score for our most recent report was 6.75 points higher than that of our previous report. We are proud of that figure. But we are even more proud in having developed a community of individuals across the campus that are becoming literate in campus sustainability. These community members understand the significance of their role on campus, and see how their skills and actions will help Babson to become a leader in sustainability.

Are we reporting to STARS again this year? The answer is no. We recognize that our next set of tasks won’t easily fit into the course of a year this time around. But, will we continue to use STARS as a framework to set goals and hit milestones? The answer, resoundingly, is yes. Our goal for our next STARS submission is to engage more individuals on our task forces to contribute to the achievement of STARS Gold.

Babson likes a challenge. We are, after all, the number one school for entrepreneurship. I guess it’s in our DNA.

This installment of the AASHE Sustainability Student Diary series features the University of Oslo's (Norway) Maryam Faghih Imani, who attended the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference this summer. In this blog, originally published in the university's sustainability blog, Grønt UiO beta, Imani details her experience as a Nordic Sustainable Campus Network delegate at the conference. We hope to see questions and feedback in the comments area! Submit diary entries of your own for consideration to bulletin@aashe.org.

UC Davis hosted the annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference on [June 18-22]. While other Norwegian delegates on this tour decided to attend the International Sustainable Campus Network Symposium, I packed and went to Davis where the temperature was almost 40° Celsius. I met the rest of Nordic Sustainable Campus Network Delegates from Sweden at the conference and we had some exciting days together.

UC Davis is highly profiled as a sustainable university in California. They have received four sustainability awards last year, reduced their waste up to 60 percent, [are] designated a gold-level "Bicycle Friendly University," awarded Platinum LEED, and a lot more recognition and activities that make visiting their website and the university truly worthy.

I had two main questions on my mind when I was on my way to the conference:

1. What sustainability approach do universities in California have which make them different from our universities?
2. How do students contribute in sustainability affairs?

With these questions in mind, I have attended three to four days of conference including preliminary sessions, parallel sessions of panels and presentations, a campus tour, visiting community projects, even visiting a sustainability art exhibition, sustainability awards ceremony and a picnic at the park where we enjoyed meals from the farmers market. I have tried not to miss a chance to open a conversation with other participants from universities all over California and some beyond. This led to many insightful conversations.

In a nutshell my answers to the above questions are:

1) Sustainability teams in Californian universities – and maybe American universities in general – are doing a great job at branding their university as sustainable. They do that by implementing high standard such as LEED, STARS, etc., which requires a lot of hard work and careful planning.

In addition to that, they have built a good bridge between universities and communities for sustainability projects. One of the examples was West Village, a Zero Net Energy Community. All the buildings are energy-efficient, using solar panels and have water conservation system. By offering such accommodation alternatives, the non-sustainable housing market has started to become less attractive. Currently there is a great demand for staying at the West Village housing due to sustainability features [that] save the environment as well as individual’s pocket.

What amazed me was how universities on their own initiatives take responsibility for reducing their impacts and contribute to create a sustainable society. One contrast between these universities and some of the Nordic universities – which I have studied the sustainability affairs of – is that the universities in California have not waited for the government to come up with a set of criteria, law and regulation for sustainability in universities.

In Nordic universities on the other hand, it is common to hear in some of meetings, seminars and workshops that they long for government to request particular actions from them, introduce regulations and of course allocate specific budgets to work on sustainability. In another word, voluntary approach for sustainability has not mainstreamed among Nordic higher education institutes yet.

2) Students’ involvement is definitely one of the main driving forces and essence of Californian universities sustainability projects’ success. The majority of sustainability awards which Californian universities have received have been due to students’ projects and achievement. I say no more but suggest you to have a look at the UC Santa Barbara project for reducing [the] use of plastic, which has succeed in creating a plastic free campus, and to watch the video for promoting energy efficiency at the California Polytechnic State University campus. May it be inspirational for our students at UiO and other Nordic universities.

How often does an international conference that you’ve always wanted to attend come to your very own back yard? Luckily for me, this was the case with the 2012 International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) Symposium in Eugene, Oregon this summer. With the theme “The Power of Partnerships,” the event focused on the importance of expanding sustainability initiatives beyond traditional campus boundaries to incorporate local and regional efforts.

ISCN itself exemplifies the importance of partnering:

• The initiative is supported and directed by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), while its Secretariat is managed by Sustainserv.
• ISCN strives to build on and complement initiatives at local, national, and multi-national levels such as the work of EAUC and AASHE.
• “Members” comprise nearly 40 signatory institutions (all of which are leading research universities) to a sustainable campus charter. Signatories commit to setting targets toward three shared charter principles, and to regularly and transparently report on their progress.
• ISCN provides a “global forum” in which signatories exchange information, ideas, and best practices for achieving sustainable campus operations and integrating sustainability in research and teaching.

The 6th annual ISCN symposium – the first in North America - demonstrated this global forum in action as well as the “partnerships” theme. The event was co-hosted by the University of Oregon, held in UO’s impressive LEED Silver Lillis Business Complex. With approximately 100 participants, there was an intimate atmosphere even in plenary sessions. Among the many highlights for me were:

• Keynotes by David Orr and Jason McLennan (Living Building Institute)
• Plenary speakers Leith Sharp, Mark Orlowski, and others from around the world.
  (Note: most of the plenary talks are posted on the symposium website, along with the conference agenda, speaker bios, and an attendee list.)
• Dinner and an awards ceremony in a sustainability-oriented winery, complete with a bicycle-powered band.
• Working groups that met several times throughout the conference to advance three topics: “building performance,” “campus-wide planning and target-setting,” and “integration of research, teaching, and facilities.” See the website for reports from each working group.
• Delicious, locally sourced meals (including lunch in the patio of Lillis Business Complex)
• A luncheon plenary talk in a special suite atop UO’s Autzen Stadium, with pedicab transportation available to and from the Stadium for those who desired
• Many great opportunities for me to connect with AASHE members and others from around the globe, and learn about their initiatives, successes, and challenges

During dinner at a sustainability-oriented brewery, I was honored to speak to the group about AASHE and its growing international outreach and partnerships. I mentioned events happening that same week at the Rio+20 Summit where AASHE and more than a dozen international partners:

• Organized an official U.N. side event: Aiming Higher: Unlocking Higher Education’s Potential for Sustainable Development.
• Promoted and endorsed the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative
• Prepared and endorsed the People’s Sustainability Treaty on Higher Education

I’m still processing everything that I learned from this symposium. It was, as one participant put it, like a “mini-AASHE conference,” from the buzz of excitement to the lively workshops, to the inspiring awards (be sure to read the winning entries on the website).

Despite being presented with the chilling facts of our civilizational crisis and the insufficient societal response to date (“glacial” would be too fast to describe the pace of change), a clear sense of hope pervaded the meeting. From David Orr’s Oberlin Project and U Oregon’s Sustainable City Year Program to the growing number of living buildings rising on college campuses and elsewhere, to China’s and India’s admirable efforts at (re)developing campuses in sustainable ways, the conference was largely about finding solutions by working in partnership. I came away with a list of collaborative ideas for AASHE, iSCN, and our international partners, and look forward to following up in coming months.

Many thanks to Bernd Kasemir, ISCN’s program manager, as well as Debra Shepard and Matthew Gardner at Sustainserv/ISCN Secretariat, for the excellent work they do in organizing these annual symposiums (and for the complimentary registration extended to AASHE). My highest compliments also to Steve Mital and other staff at U Oregon who took care of our every need, and made us all want to come back soon to their lovely, emerald campus.

For the past two decades we have been talking about the need to reorganize higher education as part of the sustainability transformation. Much of the early discussion centered on the need to break down the academic disciplinary silos and from those discussions we saw the emergence of interdisciplinary departments, split appointments, and later, integration of knowledge from multiple disciplines into diverse learning settings. Similar discussions were taking place on the operations and administration side of the campus where even deciding where a sustainability staff position should reside was difficult because there were as many logical places as there were aspects to sustainability. In fact, these positions became especially important in demonstrating the need, not only to break down the silos within each of the areas but the need to break down the barriers between operations and academics to create a unified community.

It is in this context that AASHE emerged as an important proponent for ending the silo structure in higher education. But like so many organizations that start small and grow, as AASHE staff began taking on more specialized responsibilities (producing newsletters, planning events, developing specific programs), silos began to emerge. Among the 25 AASHE staff dispersed around the country we began to see a failure to optimize the knowledge and skills of the group. I realized that as Executive Director, I had helped create these silos that we called departments and that it was my job to dismantle them if I wanted to contribute to a sustainable AASHE. So began the process of reorganizing the AASHE staff so we could meet four very important goals.

First, we wanted to take advantage of the skills and knowledge of the staff. Given the wide range of experiences and training of the staff I was convinced that our problems weren’t a lack of talent – we have an incredibly talented staff who come from various sectors of higher education (from sustainability coordinators to institutional researchers to faculty), from other non-profits, and from the for-profit world. What we needed was a structure that would allow staff the flexibility to move among the various initiatives and projects where their skills and knowledge would be used in the best interest of AASHE and would allow them to maximize their professional development.

Second, we wanted to improve our internal communications so there would be better exchange of information among staff. As a virtual organization, we sometimes face challenges in ensuring that we all know what we need to know about what the rest of the organization is doing. We needed to restructure in a way that would ensure we could solve this problem.

Third, we had identified a few holes in our structure that needed to be filled (e.g. marketing) and needed to find ways to move the appropriate talent around while maintaining the quality of the services we provide. On the other hand we found some areas where we have duplication of activity in various departments and we needed to reduce that duplication to free up staff for other work.

Finally, we needed to create a more nimble organization that could more quickly respond to the needs of the members. We recognize that the future will require all organizations to be adaptable and that to be adaptable it is necessary to create structures that allow staffing to shift relatively quickly. Our approach is to not add and subtract staff but rather to move them among various projects that fit their knowledge and skills sets.

So several months ago, I began conversations with the staff about a reorganization. At our staff retreat a number of proposals were developed and they were later reduced to a few which were vetted with the staff until we finally had a single proposal that I presented to the Board of Directors for their review. The board supported moving forward with the reorganization and we have now completed the initial phase of the process.

Instead of 7 departments we will have three work areas (Operations, Information Technology, and Programs). Each of these areas is led by a Director who is a member of a Leadership Team consisting of the three directors and the executive director. The Leadership Team is responsible for ensuring that the organization is following the strategic plan approved by the Board of Directors. They are also charged with ensuring that their work areas do not become silos and that there is cross-area coordination and communication on projects. Directors are also responsible for the assignment of staff within their work area to ensure that skills and knowledge are optimally used to meet member needs. My role of executive director will significantly shift from internal management to external relations and the Board of Directors has revised my job description to reflect that shift.

Reorganizations are not easy on the people in an organization. They require rethinking what we do, how we do it, and who we do it with. They involve shifts of power, responsibility, and authority in a variety of directions. They typically create unease, unhappiness, concern, and disappointment in their early stages. But when done well, they create a more vibrant, effective, exciting organization to be a part of. I want to commend the staff for the support they have given to this process and their willingness (sometimes eagerness) to embrace a new structure for working together to both serve and lead our membership. I am very proud of them. I appreciate the support that the board has given us and I look forward to the new ways AASHE will be able to work with our members.

Our new organization chart can be found at http://www.aashe.org/files/aashe_organizational_chart_8.7.12.pdf .
We will begin shifting to this new structure during the month of August and hope to be fully converted by September.