The 2010 Sustainability conference organized over 100 participants from

multiple departments of the member institutions to affectively build a community

of peers and share a collective knowledge base around sustainability. Prior to

the conference, each institution had to complete a baseline inventory of how

they are addressing sustainability in 5 major areas of operating a college or

university.

 

Using guided templates with specific prompts in the areas of:

Operations
Finance/Procurement
Student Engagement
Academics
Sustainability Planning

each institution came prepared to the workshop to share with their peers how they are achieving sustainability.

 

These templates were created by representatives of the SMHEC Sustainability

Taskforce. They used both the Illinois Campus Sustainability Compact and the

AASHE STARS Tool. See the PowerPoint for an overview of the workshop,

its design, implementation and outcomes. And see the workshop evaluations for

 a summary of feedback from the participants and sponsors. Also, see the

Template Categories to understand more about the templates used to gather

 information. Lastly, see the Poster document featured at the AASHE 2011

Poster Sessions.

 

The 2011 Sustainability Conference will be held on October 20-21, 2011 at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Il. This conference will continue the work that was started at last year's conference; developing a community of peers, collecting baseline data and developing individualized plans for each
institution. This year's keynote speaker is George Bandy of InterfaceFLOR. Representatives from the National Wildlife Foundation's Campus Ecology project will work with the student representatives to inspire and empower their sustainability efforts.

 

 

Sponsors for this year's conference include:

Platinum - Sodexo

Gold - Demonica Kemper Architects

Silver - Chevron, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, LCM Architects, Wight & Company

Bronze - BLDD Architects,  FMG Architects, Legat, Summit Energy