Bringing sustainability to CofC

I got an email recently from one of the people that attended the first Green Business Networking event. Charlie Sneed of the South Carolina Green Foundation forwarded an article from Grist listing the top 15 Green universities, with the College of Charleston NOT being one of them. My response was that we've made some progress but have a ways to go. One major success was the founding of the Sustainability Committee, which was wonderfully championed by Burton Callicott. In fact, if you've received the latest issue of The Portico, you'll see that the cover page article is all about the Sustainability Committee featuring Burton's smiling face. (The Photoshopped CFL looks kind of funny, but I guess it's better than one really hanging over his head from a wire like a bad 1950's sci fi flying saucer.)

That's one great step forward, but we need to do even more. That's going to take effort from everyone. There are two potentially good opportunities to infuse sustainability into the College. One is the Strategic Planning Focus Groups that are beginning tomorrow. As per the official message:

"The College of Charleston is embarking on a strategic planning process that will define our core values and purpose; identify our academic, co-curricular, and community priorities; and guide us on our path to become a world-class institution. As a part of this process, we are seeking input from members of the College's faculty."

Although this appears to be open only to faculty, it's an opportunity for those of us that have a desire to see sustainability as one of the College's core values. So those of you like me that would like to see the status of sustainability improved at the College, volunteer to be part of the focus groups. As I've learned at the School of Business and Economics meeting today, response so far has been "tepid". So there shouldn't be much of a problem of getting into one of the focus groups.

And speaking of the SBE meeting, as some of you have probably heard, the Dean will be ending his term this summer. This means that at some point the search for a new dean will begin. My hope is that we can find someone that believes in the importance of sustainability. As a junior faculty I neither have experience with the dean search process, nor the influence to have much impact on the process, but I will certainly try to make sustainability a point of interest in searching for a new dean.

Of course if you're not a faculty member you're probably wondering what you can do (if you've even read this far). On that I'm not too certain and I hope that we'll have some commentary with suggestions. I would imagine that businesses and organizations in the area, as potential employers of CofC graduates, you should have some input into both processes. Likewise students should have some input since we're all pretty much here to provide you with an education and help you find a job (or at least prepare you for one). So I would think that if a great number of non-faculty started inquiring about how they can have a say in the processes of strategic planning and finding a new Business School dean that you might actually get one.