University President Commitment Highlights

UC San Diego Sustainable Transportation Plan (2009)

Commitment By: University of California, San Diego
Partners: San Diego Metropolitan and North County Transit Authorities; San Diego and California Clean Cities Coalition; San Diego Area Governments; California Energy Commission; California Environmental Protection Agency; California Air Resources Board; Honda Motor Corporation; Caterpillar/Solar Turbines; DesignLine International; U.S. Department of Energy
Estimated Total Value: $6,500,000
Geographic Scope: United States of America

In 2009, the University will be the first university in the country to deploy CNG hybrid bus technology that will nearly eliminate CO2 emissions from campus shuttle routes. To support this effort, UC San Diego will construct an alternative fueling infrastructure and transit hubs integrating renewable sources of energy and expanding the support of varying modes of alternative transportation. Over the next five years, UC San Diego plans to invest $25 million toward improved services and infrastructure that will offset 5,000 metric tons of carbon. The Campus Shuttle Service currently carries more than 4 million passengers per year on its 10 different routes and fleet of alternative fuel buses.

This commitment is part of the larger UC San Diego’s Sustainable Transportation Plan, designed to lower campus green house gas emissions and change the transportation pardigm by providing a cost effective, efficient transporation model. UC San Diego hopes to serve as a leader for other campuses and communities worldwide in managing growing transportation demands while reducing its carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels.

Reducing Toxins in Toys and Other Children’s Products (2009)

Commitment By: Marty Meehan, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts at Lowell
Estimated Value: $120,000
Geographic Scope: Global

To decrease exposure of children worldwide to toxic substances by bringing together plastics engineering and health and environment students and researchers to inventory and assess materials currently used in plastic toys, and identify areas for improvement. With the assistance of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, students and researchers will assess alternatives to harmful materials. The program will include community education and advocacy in a forum for members of the toy industry, institutional and family caregivers, legislators, and policy advocates.

Students and Mentors in Sustainable Careers (2009)

Commitment By: Robert L. Potts, Chancellor, Arkansas State University-Jonesboro (ASU-Jonesboro)
Partners: National Council for Science and the Environment
Estimated Value: $330,000
Geographic Scope: U.S. Midsouth, Arkansas, Mississippi Delta Region

ASU-Jonesboro commits to working with EnvironMentors methoring program to identify and match high school students from under-resourced backgrounds with faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students at ASU’s Jonesboro campus and their research collaborators, as well as with regional science and environmental professionals, in one-on-one mentoring relationships. EnvironMentors (http://cseonline.org/environmentors/) is a national college access initiative that prepares high school students from underrepresented backgrounds for college degree programs in environmental and related science fields. Minority high school students will be matched with college and university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and science and environmental professionals in one-to-one mentoring relationships. Working together, students and mentors develop rigorous environmental science research projects over the course of the academic year. This commitment would focus those associations more specifically upon sustainability issues related to climate change, and advising students on college and career plans.

Global Business and Social Justice Institute (2009)

Commitment By: George E. Martin, President, St. Edward’s University
Partners: RGK Foundation; Casa Luz (San Jose, Costa Rica)
Estimated Value: $240,000
Geographic Scope: Costa Rica

St. Edward’s University will build upon the recent launch of the Global Business and Social Justice Institute that focuses on social justice issues in other countries and creates socially responsible and viable solutions to these problems. The Institute will implement a faculty development component, weaving thematic content from a specific region into the spring curriculum and will culminate in a trip to the region of interest to implement proposed ideas and solutions. Students will formulate a business plan; develop marketing communication strategies and colaterals; identify prospective donors; design a new website; identify potential revenue producing cottage industries; and recommend new accounting methods that meet the criteria for tax credits in the United States, Canada, and Eurpoean Union.

Babson Global Entrepreneurship Education Network (2009)

Commitment By: Leonard Schlesinger, President, Babson College
Estimated Value: $18 million
Geographic Scope: Global

By dramatically building on the foundation of their highly successful Price-Babson Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE), which has demonstrated our unique capabilities to “teach the teachers,” the Babson Global Entrepreneurship Education Network (GEEN) will build a global community of Babson trained educators that will deliver their unique and highly successful brand of educating new and emerging leaders around the world. Specific initiatives within this commitment include organizing a symposium at the beginning of the clinical-residential year where educators would spend time at Babson (learning to teach) or in an entrepreneurial environment (learning the practical side) or a combination of both; the localization of their materials to meet the relevent needs of communities, businesses, and governments around the world; the creation of a state-of-the-art virtual web-center for GEEN – this would allow on-line education and classes, blogging, dissemination of best practices, and professional network support; thus resulting in greater outreach; and a certification program that will “license” their approach to influential educators who will disseminate knowledge on a global and unprecedented scale. They envision this prorgam being one that can be replicated by other institutions. Finally they will continue their work with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, resulting from the release of the first ever Babson Entrepreneurship Monitor (BEM) for the State. The collaboration modeled there demonstrated the first time that this methodology, designed to measure entrepreneurial activity, has been applied at the state level everywhere in the United States.

Cal State East Bay Summer Algebra Academies (2009)

Commitment By: Mohammad Qayoumi, President, California State University East Bay
Estimated Value: $169,000
Partners: Southern Alameda County Regional Educational Alliance, Mitch Kapor Foundation, R.T. Fisher Educatonal Enterprises, Inc., STEMCAP, Allen Temple Baptist Church & Glad Tidings Church, Bank of America
Geographic Scope: California

Recognizing that algebra has become a gateway course to a high school degree and enrollment in college, Cal State East Bay offered its inaugural Summer Algebra Academies in 2008. Alameda school district test results indicate that African American students are performing very poorly in math and are much less likely than other students to succeed in high school algebra. Cal State East Bay is attempting to increase their chances of success by providing intensive summer education combined with mentoring and follow-up tutoring during the school year. Seventy-two percent of student participants attained an increase in scores from pre- to post-test, indicating that this program can make a difference in individual academic achievement. To fulfill its economic stewardship responsibilities in a region that is facing growing shortages of highly skilled workers, Cal State East Bay will scale up this program to enable 250 students in the next two years to improve their performance sufficiently to eventually attend college and pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Honors House Sustainability Retrofit (2009)

Commitment By: Brian Rogers, Interim Chancellor, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Estimated Value: $1,000,000
Geographic Scope: Alaska

University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Honors Program students will lead a project to design and retrofit an on-campus house that demonstrates opportunities for sustainability and energy efficiency in a northern climate. UAF’s Honors Program students are working with local architects and engineers to design a sustainable facility using a 1950s-era house on the campus. Assistance is being provided by the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, which was built on campus four years ago. With this commitment, the university aims to demonstrate sustainability techniques and principles in a student-designed and operated retrofit house, and to create an ongoing research tool and a site to showcase these techniques and principles to the community. In future semesters, students will quantify energy and water used by the facility, and waste produced during its usage

Tribal College Sustainability Indicators Research Project (2008)

Commitment By: Verne Fowler, College of Menominee Nation
Estimated Value: $150,000/year
Partners: Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin; Menominee Tribal Enterprise;
Oneida Nation Tsyunhehkw; Indigenous Environmental Network; Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Commissioners of Public Lands; Iowa State University North Central Regional Center for Rural Development; Pennsylvania State University; NEW North;
United States Forest Service; Environmental Protection Agency
Geographic Scope: North America

This commitment will develop sustainability indicators and establish a process and guidelines for tribal colleges and universities to measure and monitor sustainability performance in a realistic, reliable, and culturally appropriate way. These indicators will be identified, bench-marked, and disseminated by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) at the college, and will integrate students into the process. All the data, frameworks, and processes identified by SDI will be collected into a toolkit that other tribal schools can use as they assess prospects for increased sustainability efforts on their respective campuses.

Progress Update (as of January 2009): During the Fall of 2008, Sustainable Development Institute staff facilitated a total of nine visioning sessions with seven at the Keshena campus and seven at the Green Bay campus. Indicators of sustainability have been identified from the proceedings and appropriately bench-marked. Students gathered data for the greenhouse gas emissions inventory and energy benchmarking indicators. The students designed surveys, created databases, entered data, analyzed results, and are identifying ways to improve campus sustainability.

A Center for Democratic Citizenship and
a New Liberal Arts (2008)

Commitment By: Elizabeth Coleman, President, Bennington College
Estimated Value: $40 million
Geographic Scope: Global

Bennington College has committed to reorienting the priorities of undergraduate education towards furthering the public good. To that end, they will develop a new liberal arts with coursework and experiences within and throughout our curriculum designed to change the odds that each of our graduates has the knowledge, both substantive and strategic, and the staying power to be committed to – and capable of – effective action in addressing the urgent issues of our time.

Progress Update (as of July 2008): Bennington has begun offering new courses featuring problem-based curriculum in Fall of 2008. Called Design Labs, these courses encourage students and faculty to come together to grapple with one particular, urgent, real-world problem and to design possible solutions. et of six modules, intensive three-week courses focused on developing specific capacities necessary for grappling with real-world problems, will also be offered in Fall 2008.

Bennington is also planning on breaking ground for the Center for Democratic Citizenship and a New Liberal Arts in July 2009. They have also begun making faculty appointments within the Center itself, including members of the current Bennington faculty interested in developing problem-based (rather than departmentally based) curriculum.

Applying International Poverty Alleviation Strategies to
Central Arkansas (2008)

Commitment By: Lu Hardin, President, University of Central Arkansas
Estimated Value: $500,000
Geographic Scope: Arkansas

The 2006 USDA-ERS estimated population of rural Arkansas was 1,155,458. The Economic Research Service in 2004 estimated a 17.7 percent poverty rate in rural Arkansas. Reducing the poverty rate in rural Arkansas could directly impact the lives of approximately 200,000 people.

The University of Central Arkansas made a commitment to engage UCA students in undergraduate research projects to apply the lessons of successful international poverty alleviation strategies toward fighting poverty in the rural areas of Arkansas. The goal is to identify the strategies that are most feasible in Arkansas and suggest specific ways they can be adopted and implemented. Existing organizations could use this research to guide their anti-poverty work in Arkansas.

Progress Update (as of July 2008): Since that time, a team of UCA faculty and administrators from the Office of the Provost, the Honors College, the College of Liberal Arts, and the College of Business have been working together to develop undergraduate research protocols and other procedures to ensure the legitimacy of the work that will be conducted. Their goal is to implement this project during the 2008-09 academic year, which begins in August. The research opportunities will be extended to as many students as possible, across the broadest possible range of academic disciplines, and it will include support for travel and study abroad to conduct research internationally.