Every year the WOHESC conference is an opportunity for sustainability staff to get a finger on the pulse of the wider sustainability efforts taking place in higher education institutions. It’s a moment to hear and learn from what others are doing and to engage in conversations with the community of folks who are passionate about making change.
The keynote speakers and plenary panels this year highlighted the power and importance of weaving in social justice to environmental justice efforts. With voices like Ubax Gardheere tying racial equity to climate change, and Ananda Lee Tan making the call for evolving past conventional frameworks towards a much more inclusive, interwoven, and intersectional approach to changemaking, the sessions overall maintained a focus on overlapping movements for human rights. It’s inspiring and exciting to witness the ways in which our collective conversations for sustainability can be grounded in the context of the social and political realities of this moment. As an attendee of the conference, I would say the tenor of these discussions and presentations is that we face great challenges on almost every conceivable level, but that the human capacity for connection, creativity, innovation, thoughtfulness, and awareness is powerful if we can focus our efforts.
Our own Jenny McNamara, the director of the Campus Sustainability Office, started off the conference alongside several other key colleges and universities, by giving an overview of PSU’s work as of late. She spoke to our commitment to racial equity and accountability, renewable energy across campus systems, green space on campus, and LEED certified buildings. Also within our team at CSO, Amanda Wolf, Program Analyst, and Rob Hemphill, Sustainability Data Analyst, led a session dedicated to their planning process to turn the STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) submission into an Action Plan, with tips for how to evaluate with intention and implement best practices, which is a great example of PSU leadership for the benefit of the broader community. Heather Burns, from the Leadership for Sustainability Education program, co-led a workshop on cultivating restful practices to counteract the disconnection, burnout, perfectionism, sense of urgency, individualism, power hoarding we all see as a result of dominant culture. And also representing the faculty, we heard from Dr. Hal Nelson, who researches environmental, social and economic sustainability here at PSU, who spoke about Decarbonizing the Gas Grid and Increasing Regional Resilience alongside a policy manager at NW Natural.
It’s exciting to see PSU leading such a diverse array of topics in a well-attended and respected sustainability conference! Our school holds such a history of being at the forefront of sustainability innovation and change, and it is in these collective conversations that we can continue that legacy, get inspired by others who are also at the cutting edge of problem solving, and reinforce the importance of our interdisciplinary and intersectional work for social and environmental justice.