快活app Us
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The Center for Sustainability was formed in 2012 after the Sustainability Council realized that in order to听take the necessary steps to achieve real progress, a full-time sustainability staff member was necessary.听From听a small office space in Johnson McFarlane听Hall, Chad King and a handful of students began looking for opportunities to solve some of 快活app's most pressing issues. This small team started a bike shop, began the听Zero听Waste hockey program and began engaging campus partners to bring sustainability to their departments.
The Center for Sustainability grew quickly from a small group of dedicated students and a single full-time coordinator to a lively, accomplished community of passionate undergraduate students, graduate fellows听and two full-time staff members.听
In the Fall of 2022, an entirely new leadership team joined the Center, who, along with the interns and fellows at the Center, are helping co-create a transition away from sustainability towards a regenerative future. This transition represents a paradigm shift, and the Center is actively working with the rest of the 快活app community to move听beyond sustaining 鈥渂usiness as usual,鈥 and toward a way of being that is holistic and that creates a livable future for all. In a regenerative future, humans are allowing the Earth and all ecosystems to heal while also focusing on healing relationships with ourselves, each other, and with other species.鈥
As part of this transition, the Center co-created six values that we organize all of programs around:
- Education: We believe that equipping our community with accurate information and thinking skills (critical, creative, systems) empowers them to take intentional and meaningful action to address social-ecological injustices. 听
- Equity & Justice: We uplift the connection between social and ecological sustainability and work to address systemic inequities with local action and by improving access to services and information. We recognize and work to address the role that power, privilege and oppression play in exacerbating or addressing social-ecological injustices. 听
- Ecological Care: Taking a living systems approach to our work, we uphold the imperative of caring for ourselves, one another, our non-human kin, and the natural world through mindful and needs-based consumption and engaging in regenerative practices that create systems and ways of being that allow for all to flourish. 听
- Empowered Communities: We learn from and partner with community partners on and off-campus to advance our knowledge and skills to address social-ecological injustices. Our community partnerships are grounded in reciprocity, cultural and intellectual humility, and a deep, shared commitment to elevating the well-being of all humans and the more-than-human world. 听听
- Hopeful & Intentional Practice: We support one another through the emotions associated with global environmental change while practicing optimistic realism. We choose to focus our energy on taking meaningful and informed action, building structures and systems that are emergent and inclusive, and focusing on what鈥檚 in our control.听
- Interconnectedness: We uplift living systems and demonstrate our interconnectedness with other humans, other species, and the natural world through our culture, communication, curriculum, programming, research, and partnerships.听
Our work happens all over the 快活app campus, operating the Crimson Crank, our bike shop in the basement of Nagel Hall, the Food Pantry in Driscoll Commons, and the Thrift Store on the first floor of Centennial Halls. Additionally, our Engagement team produces the "This Week in Sustainability Topics" news letter (TWIST), organizes several events and workshops throughout the year, and have other un-announced project's in the works. The Center for a Regenerative Future's headquarters is on the first floor of the Community Commons (next to Starbucks) - there you will find a welcoming space to discuss regenerative projects, find community听and forge relationships with those who share passions and values.听
Learn more about the Center's leadership team below!
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