[Last Updated: June 5, 2008]

CSUN Greening Project:

An Initial Proposal and A Call for Participation

The University campus is in the process of formalizing a set of initiatives aimed at strengthening sustainability practices within CSUN. There are four broad initiatives proposed within the Greening Project:

Establish a multi-college Institute for Sustainability - This institute will serve as the umbrella to coordinate and organize CSUN’s research, teaching, and formal University implementation efforts to green the campus.
Initiate a footprinting protocol - This protocol will assess impacts campus operations have on the environment, in terms of carbon emissions, resource consumption, waste generation, water footprint and other ecological variables. And it will also offer on-going research, teaching, and service opportunities for faculty and students across the campus.
Reorganize the undergraduate curriculum and initiate a Graduate Certificate Program, focused around issues of sustainability

Identify existing graduate and undergraduate courses that pertain in some way to issues of sustainability, perhaps with the ultimate objective of establishing a GE Concentration in Sustainability that might become a required component of the GE curriculum,
Initiate a new sustainable development-focused graduate-level certificate and specialization program, perhaps through the Tseng College of Extended Learning, and which would include carbon market management, green business practices, green manufacturing and engineering, as well as global change processes and ecological planning,
Develop a set of Student Learning Objectives for General Education courses that serve to ensure students are well grounded in the principles and practices of sustainability thinking, and to help organize interdisciplinary efforts to teach sustainability from diverse perspectives and with multiple objectives.

Form a stakeholder-based Campus Task Force to direct sustainability-related activities and events on campus - This Task Force would be broadly constituted from faculty, staff, students and community members. It would meet on a periodic basis and would coordinate efforts to green the campus and the University body on an everyday basis.

We will be seeking active participation from faculty, staff and students interested in all these sustainability-related initiatives. But first, please respond to a brief survey to help build a database of research and teaching expertise. To help us create a database of expertise and to ensure a participatory process for the Greening Project, we need to know what faculty are already doing. We invite faculty to complete the survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6PqQDDHB_2bLvEkE_2buRTC_2fBw_3d_3d

Background Information

Resource material for the CSUN Greening Project is compiled at a Campus Sustainability Resources web page <http://www.csun.edu/~vasishth/Campus_Sustainability_Resources.htm>; this website will be periodically updated as the Greening Project unfolds.

The broad-ranging campus wide set of initiatives have been triggered by the research and pedagogical interests of faculty at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (Dr. Ashwani Vasishth) in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Dean Stella Theodoulou), and at the Department of Management (Dr. Nancy Kurland and Dr. Deone Zell) in the College of Business and Economics (Dean William P. Jennings). The effort seeks to better integrate research, teaching and implementation practices across the campus, with assistance from the Office of the Provost, Academic Resources, and the Dean of the College of Business and Economics.

Diane S. Stephens, Director, Academic Resources, is facilitating the Greening Project.

Dr. William P. Jennings, Dean, College of Business and Economics, is facilitating discussion amongst the various deans about the formation of the Institute for Sustainability.

The Footprinting Protocol will be directed by an interdisciplinary committee of faculty, staff, and students which is expected to emerge within the next few months.

The Curriculum Reorganization and the Graduate Certificate Program will be directed by an interdisciplinary committee of faculty and students which will also take shape within the next few months. This will be based, in part, on a survey of faculty being conducted by Dr. Zell, Dr. Kurland, and Dr. Vasishth.

The Task Force initiative with take shape within the next few months as well, and will be based on a strongly participatory approach.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Dr. Ashwani Vasishth at (818) 677-6137, Dr. Deone Zell at (818) 677- 4500, Dr. Nancy Kurland at (818) 677- 4440, or Diane S. Stephens at (818) 677-5929.