Sustainable Queen's

Inside Higher Education article on university sustainability offices  (PDF*, 12 KB)

Note: This page will be updated periodically in the days and weeks ahead. Please check back regularly to see what has been added.

Background information

This web page has been constructed for the use of University Councillors to help them prepare for the 2008 Annual Meeting which has Sustainability as its theme.

The concept ofsustainability has received much attention recently, but the term is not easy to define, partly because it has been used in many contexts. For our purposes here, we understand it as the attempt to take account of the short and long-term ecological and human consequences of our planning and actions. The concept has broad implications across the University, in areas ranging from the very concrete, such as the energy-efficient construction of new buildings or reductions in energy and resource use in our ongoing operations, to the educational, such as educating ourselves to become more conscious of the global implications of our decisions as members of society, consumers, and citizens, to the academic, including research on issues of energy, resources and choices at the political, scientific and humanistic levels.

Although this is perhaps not broadly known, Queen's is already the home for a wide range of sustainability initiatives across all facets of the university. One of the goals of this meeting is to showcase some of these efforts. At the same time, recognizing that University Councillors bring with them a rich background of experience and expertise, we hope that discussions at the Meeting will help us to see ideas and areas we have missed.

In addition, a number of the activities in the area of sustainability have taken place perhaps not in isolation, but sometimes without strong bridges to other facets of the issue. So, for example, it can be a challenge to map questions of building construction to the content of courses. Another goal of the Meeting is begin to bridge some of these gaps.

These pages have been designed to provide some background that Councillors are encouraged to consider in advance of the meeting in May. Some of the links are also fun, such as the live window into energy consumption in each of the buildings on campus! Over the next few weeks, we will be adding to these materials. In particular, we welcome suggestions from Councillors concerning possible additions or modifications. Comments or suggestions may be sent directly to Greg Lessard or to Peggy Watkin.

Sustainability in various units at Queen's

Many of the offices and units at Queen's are currently seeking to embed sustainable principles in their operations. The following lists are far from exhaustive, but they provide a sense of the breadth of activities already found on campus.

University Operations

The Office of the Vice-Principal (Operations and Finance) has been devoting significant attention to sustainability issues for a number of years. The following links provide a sample of their initiatives.

• Sustainability at Queen's (see sidebar links)
• Physical Plant Services and Energy
• Sustainability Reports prepared with PPS by Queen's students, through the Technology, Engineering & Management (TEAM) program of the Department of Chemical Engineering (quite detailed)
• Power consumption of individual buildings on campus, updated in real time!
• Waste management issues

Student Organizations

Students and student organizations have been leaders on the sustainability front. The following links represent a small sample of their recent efforts.

• AMS Sustainability Office (see the various links)
• The Engineering Society's Tea Room

Student Affairs and Residences

The AVP and Dean of Student Affairs and his staff have been doing important work to bridge the gap between the operational and educational facets of sustainability. Since many students spend their first year in residence, this has given rise to a range of new initiatives, some of which are listed below.

• Queen's Energy Challenge (Students in residence participated this year in an energy challenge which pitted them against other universities and against each other among residences.)

Teaching and Research

Teaching and research in the area of sustainability spans the campus. The following links provide only a tiny fraction of these initiatives:

• The School of Environmental Studies
• The Living Energy Lab project to make two campus houses as energy-efficient as possible (an Engineering Society project)
• Certificate in Corporate and Social Responsibility (School of Business)

Advocacy

In recent years, the Queen's Sustainability Network, a coalition of students and faculty, have been working to express and make visible a set of principles and values around the notion of sustainability. The following link shows the current version of the set of Principles they have proposed:

Draft version of Sustainability Principles (PDF*, 28 KB)

Sustainability Elsewhere

Queen's is not alone in working on the issue of sustainability. The following readings provide a more general overview of activities in universities and elsewhere.

• A 2001 overview article from University Affairs
• The Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future (ULSF). Note in particular the Talloires Declaration
• The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
• The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
• The National Wildlife Foundation's Campus Ecology website.
• Harvard University's Green Campus Initiative.
• The Sustainability Office at the University of British Columbia
• The Sustainability Office at the University of Toronto
• Federal government initiatives within the ecoACTION framework

Further readings

The reading list on sustainability is vast and the following links only skim the surface of this fast-evolving area.

• A description of Planet U, an important book on the topic of sustainability in the university context
• Environmental Science: Toward a Sustainable Future. (Contains a number of interesting quizzes and questions/answers.)

Discussion

It is our hope that Councillors will use their own experience together with the materials provided above as a basis for further discussion. To facilitate this, a link is provided here to the discussion facility created by Peter Gallant.

To enter the discussion list, click here and sign in.

 

*PDF files can be viewed using Adobe Reader.

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Last updated: March 27, 2008. Please send corrections or suggestions to greg.lessard@queensu.ca.

In keeping with the theme of sustainability, we have tried as far as possible to avoid mailing out large quantities of paper. However, any Councillor who has difficulty accessing any of this material may request a printed version by contacting Peggy Watkin in the University Secretariat at watkinm@queensu.ca or by telephone at 613 533 6093.