Delta College President, Jean Goodnow receivesSecond Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Outstanding Individual Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th AnnualAmerican College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

President Jean Goodnow has been making sustainability a strategic imperative by integrating it into Delta College’s (MI), educational, administrative, and operational activities. In 2007, President Goodnow signed the ACUPCC and convened a Sustainability Task Force. In 2008, she assembled a college-wide Green Summit during which sustainable concepts were introduced and input from the campus community was invited. As a result, Green Fridays, a four-day work-week, was piloted. Green Fridays has been established as a successful measure of carbon reduction and expanded each year.

Net Impact is an international nonprofit with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world. They recently ran this inspirational story about Net Impact member - Clayton Snyder - championed the cause for the Monterey Institute of International Studies to complete their climate action plan for the ACUPCC - with a target of eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.

"All this carbon neutrality work has been our [Net Impact] chapter’s biggest accomplishment,” Clayton says. “And personally, leading the project allowed me to manage sustainability policy for an organization. I never would have gained skills in GHG auditing or carbon planning without the Campus Greening role."

The impact of the energy efficiency, conservation, and behavior change efforts that will help MIIS achieve climate neutrality are important - but Clayton's experience, which he is now bringing to his professional career at EcoMedia, an organization that allows advertisers to support municipal environmental projects to make them feasible.  In the Net Impact article, Clayton goes on to encourage more students to take an active role in their campus's sustainability planning:

By Michelle Dyer,  Chief Operating Officer, Second Nature

(This article appears in the October, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

After the ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit in Denver I will be stepping out of my role as Chief Operating Officer of Second Nature, to join Intersection Partners, a private equity investment firm that builds sustainable businesses, as Principal.  I joined Second Nature to support Tony Cortese and the Second Nature team through a time of significant growth and to build the organizational capacity to advance its mission.  With the excellent team now have in place, and the phenomenal success of the ACUPCC and the Advancing Green Building in Higher Education Initiative, the time has come for me to move forward.

This opportunity came quite unexpectedly as I was conducting early research into potential next steps in my career path.  I knew it would be rare to find an investment company with the supportive atmosphere and committed team I have enjoyed during my tenure at Second Nature, not to mention difficult to make a transition given the current state of the economy.  I was blessed to connect with my new partners, who understand sustainability deeply and feel a vocation to create meaningful, positive businesses.

By Georges Dyer, Vice President of Programs, Second Nature

(This article appears in the October, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

A core concept in the field of systems thinking is that in any system, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”   The relationships between the components of a system are vital to understanding the system as a whole, and it is impossible to really understand a system by only studying its components in isolation from one another and in isolation from other systems.

This concept is illustrated through the ACUPCC network.  This group of over 670 colleges and universities with top-level commitments to promote education and research on climate and sustainability, and ‘walk the talk’ by pursuing climate neutrality in their operations is poised to have a great impact on humanity’s quest to break our fossil fuel addiction and preserve a safe, livable future.To date, 535 institutions have submitted greenhouse gas inventories and 320 have submitted climate action plans - all publicly available so students, faculty and staff can learn about where their institutions stand and what strategies other institutions are trying.  As the results of preliminary analysis of this data become available, some trends are emerging.