Sustainability is becoming integral to the management and mission of higher education, but some academics question whether the campus sustainability movement is itself sustainable. How, they ask, can such an amor-phous concept—now freely appropriated by corporate marketers—provide a sound basis for the transforma-tion of student learning and the wise operation of cam-pus facilities?

With more than 16 million students distributed across 4,200 U.S. colleges and universities, success in campus sustainability will depend on the vision, commitment, and agility of exemplary institutions—places where education for sustainability becomes an organizing principle for administrators, faculty and students; cur-riculum designers; facilities managers; campus plan-ners and architects; and the off-campus communities with which they interact.

Helping to sustain the rise of the campus sustainabil-ity movement in North America is the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Educa-tion (AASHE). Founded in 2005 to coordinate, expand, and strengthen initiatives on a few dozen campuses, AASHE has quickly grown to include nearly 500 col-lege and university members. Its mission is to promote sustainability in all sectors of higher education through education, communication, research, and professional development.

The value of a campus sustainability program consists of ethical, environmental, financial, and perhaps most important, educational benefits. Some of these are im-mediate and concrete, others distant or intangible. Foremost among the intangible benefits are the oppor-tunities for institutions of higher learning to promote a more hopeful future by demonstrating leadership and social responsibility. There is enormous promise for making sustainability integral to a wide variety of courses and learning communities. Any institution that is dedicated to innovative ideas and the preparation of future leaders will need to consider sustainability as a core component of its mission and strategic plan. Beyond the public relations benefits, there will be the grateful support of students, faculty, and alumni who seek new directions for learning in a time of financial and ecological distress.

More tangible benefits are the cost savings from re-source conservation and investments in green technolo-gy. Campuses are realizing significant savings in energy, water, and other resources, establishing hedges against the price volatility of conventional fuels and electricity,

Monty Hempel

achieving cost savings from recycling and waste mini-mization, and beginning to capture the long-term ben-efits that accrue from improvements in building design, campus transportation planning, space utilization, and more enlightened consumption.

Campus fund-raisers and development officers are discovering the importance of sustainability to donor groups and individuals concerned about the growing gap between conventional education, with its emphasis on narrow subdisciplines, and the cross-disciplinary problem-solving skills required to address emerging challenges, such as global warming and the acceleration of social inequality throughout the world.

Despite the advantages of embracing sustainability in all sectors of higher education, many colleges and uni-versities remain reluctant to move beyond a few cam-pus demonstration projects. Institutionalizing sustain-ability will require them to both teach sustainability in the classroom and practice it in campus operations.

When campuses begin to model successful (i.e., sustain-able) behaviors, buildings, and practices that teach by example, students will derive important lessons about the consistency of what educators say and do. “Walk-ing the talk” on campus is already becoming a potent recruitment device for prospective students.

The key struggle within institutions of higher learn-ing, however, will not be over how sustainable their campuses look or how appropriately they operate their facilities. It will be over the content of their education and the institutional role they adopt as educators and moral leaders in the sustainability debate. The princi-pal challenge will not be to persuade several thousand procurement officers or campus energy coordinators and physical plant managers to adopt more sustain-able practices, technologies, and designs. It will be to convince many of the 1.2 million faculty mem-bers in higher education to incorporate sustainability concepts and values into their teaching, research, and daily behavior. If some critical mass of educators can be mobilized in this way, the goal of sustainable sustain-ability will sound less like an oxymoron than a sensible and solemn pledge to educate future generations in a manner that truly demonstrates and communicates our reverence for life and learning.

Monty Hempel is the Hedco professor and director of environmental studies at the University of Redlands in Redlands, CA. He is also one of the founding board members of AASHE.

Editorial

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. • VOL. 1 NO. 2 • APRIL 2008 • DOI: 10.1089/SUS.2008.9983 SUSTAINABILITY 89

Is Sustainability Sustainable? A View from Higher Education

By Monty Hempel

When campuses begin to model successful (i.e., sustainable) behaviors, buildings, and practices that teach by example, students will derive important lessons about the consistency of what educators say and do.