developing and implementing a comprehensive, university-wide Climate Action Plan, as well as integrating sustainability into university-wide curriculum, which will equip our students with the necessary skillset to build a more sustainable and equitable future. Since he presented to the board last October a lot has happened: • Three sustainability forums were held with guest speakers from McKinstry and Cascadia regarding our decarbonization plan, Waste Management and Kittitas County around waste diversion, and sustainability awards. • Six classroom presentations were held to measure literacy, increase awareness, and inspire students to be involved in sustainability projects moving forward. • A Student Green Fund was passed, which was a student-led sustainability project for students who have an idea but no funding to implement it. A student-led committee will work with the Sustainability Council to review applications that come forward. • Several campus-wide events were held Spring Day of Service, Bike to Campus Day, SOURCE presentations, community tabling at Earth Week, Don’t Waste, Donate campaign, and Regalia Reuse program during commencement. • A monthly CWU sustainability newsletter has been developed. • Collaboration with classes and students on a myriad of climate action plan initiatives and feasibility studies. Mr. Bousson then reported that CWU’s Climate Action Plan has been completed and is published on the CWU Sustainability website. It was a 15-month process that was highly collaborative within the CWU and local communities. He added that CWU recently received the 2024 Sustainability and the Sustainable Development Award from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) for our institutional commitment to advancing environmental stewardship and climate change solutions on our campus and throughout our community. Dr. Susan Kaspari summarized the education and curriculum piece of sustainability. She explained that the objective is to integrate sustainability and climate change education across the university curriculum, co-curricular activities, and campus culture. The strategy is to train and incentivize faculty members to incorporate sustainability in the curriculum. An additional strategy is to develop a Sustainability Center to collectively advance sustainability knowledge and address critical sustainability challenges. Workshops were held in the spring for faculty teaching one of CWU’s 300+ sustainability courses, and 20 faculty members attended the Piedmont/Ponderosa training in June. This two-day training focused on why and how to integrate sustainability in to teaching and provided examples from faculty already doing this work. In addition, a Faculty Sustainability in the Curriculum Team was established for 2024-2025. Core Value 3: Stewardship Goal 2: Elevate shared governance and collaboration across the university and advance professional development and leadership opportunities that demonstrate the value of our human resources and that build a strong, united university community.
5 Board of Trustees Minutes July 25-26, 2024
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online