Envisioning and Visualizing Sustainability at Colby-Sawyer

摘要

Sustainability is inherently an interdisciplinary field, and yet—within the often-territorial boundaries of academia—meaningful cross-pollination can be challenging to achieve. With a bit of effort, the principles and practices of sustainability canbe seamlessly integrated into course work, providing a different lens through which students can examine topics and become more informed global citizens.In 2006-2007, the colleges first real foray into sustainability was led by a group of third-year students in the Department of Environmental Studies' Community-Based Research Project class. These students formed GreenROUTES (Redirect Our campUs Toward Environmental Sustainability), and they conducted the first-ever campus sustainability assessment, which they then documented to provide strategies for reducing the college's environmental impact across several sectors: energy, transportation, food, wasteand consumption, water and biodiversity, and curriculum and investment.1