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Please describe your institution's greenhouse gas mitigation strategies.
AUS’s sole energy source is electricity provided by Seattle City Light, a carbon-neutral utility company. Fifteen percent of our KWs are from renewable energy. We are a Gold member in Seattle City Light’s “Green Up” program and the 13th largest purchaser of green power. Seattle City Light’s electrical generation breaks down as follows: 91.2% hydro, 4.4% nuclear, 4.35% wind, 1.4% coal, 0.6% gas, and 0.1% biomass.
• Install lower wattage bulbs in all lighting fixtures throughout the building.
• Replace current three-lamp fixtures in hallways to a typical two-lamp fixture; costs are offset with Seattle City Light’s rebate program.
• Install ceiling-mounted occupancy sensors for on-demand lights and HVAC.
• Install “energy misers” on vending machines.
• Turn off refrigeration to water fountains and bubblers.
• Adopt the 2030 Challenge targets for fossil fuel reduction in construction and major renovations.
• Develop and promote guidelines on how faculty, staff, and students can help reduce energy consumption on campus (such as turning off lights and computers overnight).
• Continue to explore the feasibility of LED lighting, including costs and stability.
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Please describe your institution's plans to make sustainability a part of the
curriculum for all students.
Antioch University Seattle integrates sustainability principles in all of its academic programs, with several degrees and certificates focused specifically on sustainability. A list of all courses bearing academic credit that feature sustainability and climate change is shown in Appendix F.
To meet a goal of ensuring that all Antioch University Seattle students and faculty understand the need for sustainability and carbon neutrality, as well as how to best achieve this, AUS plans to implement actions that will:
• Make our institution a leader in sustainability higher education – locally, regionally, and nationally.
• Embed sustainability in all aspects of AUS academic program, curricula, and research activities to better understand and practice the broad scope of sustainability.
• Strengthen a creative, positive learning environment that nurtures, respects, has compassion for and a sense of responsibility to one another other and for nature.
• Encourage students and faculty to become engaged citizens
of the world.
• Make sustainability a meaningful practice in the context of everyday living.
• Emphasize place-based pedagogies and practices.
• Create and sustain partnerships with other organizations, groups, and higher education institutions working to advance sustainability and carbon neutrality, including the Antioch University campuses in Ohio, California, and New Hampshire.
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Please describe your institution's plans to expand research efforts toward the
achievement of climate neutrality.
AUS is primarily a teaching institution, but many AUS faculty engage in research related to sustainability, including:
• In 2011, the AUS School of Education received a grant from the Jiji Foundation for work on a Leadership Institute for sustainable schools and communities. This work is guided by the following questions: 1) How can we best provide leadership in the development, implementation, and assessment of Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) programs serving K-12 education? 2) How will we lead our programs to systemically shift policy across sectors? 3) What makes sustainability education sustainable?
• Cindy Updegrave is a Visiting Faculty participating in an NSF-funded collaboration between scientists and educators at the University of Washington and Stanford’s Research Institute on a Data-driven Inquiry in Geoscience Environmental Restoration Studies (DIGERS). The goal of this project is to enhance opportunities for university and high school level American Indian students to engage in geoscience studies by developing curricula that is place-based, hands-on, and relevant to tribal communities.
• Kate Davies, Center for Creative Change Core Faculty, received several grants for research on environmental health. In 2005, Dr. Davies conducted a study of the economic costs of environmental diseases and disabilities. She is currently completing a book on the environmental health movement.
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Please describe your institution's plans to expand community outreach efforts toward the
achievement of climate neutrality.
The Education for Social Engagement Project: Learning in the Service of Self & Society in a Global Environment
AUS seeks to be a premier, social engagement institution of higher education that highlights issues of community diversity, justice, and progressive learning through challenging, project-based intellectual work and service. Based on feedback gathered from community focus groups, faculty leadership, in conjunction with senior leadership and the Board of Trustees, AUS has determined that the social engagement theme that will define the AUS campus for the next three years will be Sustainability. AUS will pursue the perspective, study, and practice of ecological, personal, social, and organizational Sustainability. The project will begin by establishing a series of engagements among teams of AUS students and faculty with commercial, social service, educational, environmental, and political constituents. We will engage students and faculty in AUS courses that have service learning and/or external placement components from each of our four academic centers: the School of Education, Center for Creative Change, B.A. Degree Completion Program, and, School of Applied Psychology, Counseling, and Family Therapy.
Year One (Inquiry phase during which data will be gathered, synthesized, and reviewed): AUS will organize research teams to survey our AUS community and our surrounding Belltown neighborhood of Seattle with the overall guiding questions: “What challenges to the sustainability of your primary services are you facing, and how might AUS help?”
Year Two (Service phase): AUS will provide need-directed services in the Sustainability field through student practicum placements from our four academic centers and cooperative agreements with partner agencies.
Year Three (Outcomes sharing phase): AUS will convene providers and community leaders/activists together to hear, consider, and discuss findings and make recommendations for action. AUS will host a regional conference where research teams will present their findings and recommendations with regional stakeholders and service providers.
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