San Jose State University is committed to making sustainability a central concern of our institution. We aim to achieve this goal through policies and practices, whether it be educating the campus about the need for sustainable living or reducing the campus' "ecological footprint" through the reduction of energy consumption and waste.
To further its pledge of a more sustainable future, in March 2008 the Academic Senate passed a resolution establishing a task force to explore ways the campus has, is and can provide a greener campus and community. In February of 2009, the Associated Students Board of Directors passed Resolution 08/09-02 supporting campuswide sustainability efforts.
In May 2009, the Sustainability Task Force presented a report of its findings and recommendations to the Academic Senate. A PDF version of this paper can be found here.
Our dedication to becoming a greener institution spans many aspects of the campus including courses, research, campus operations, student organizations and projects and community outreach. This website is an effort to share the collective efforts being made to address sustainability across the SJSU campus.
As part of the University’s sustainability initiative, we are inviting all students, faculty, and staff to join us in measuring our individual ecological footprints and taking steps to reduce our collective footprint by 10% this academic year. During the first phase of the challenge, underway between October 1 until November 6th, participants register through this competition website and complete a short survey that calculate and record the consumption habits based on their daily lifestyles.
In March 2010, they return to reenter their new footprint data, and to compare for improvements in resource consumption. Individual student, faculty, and staff members who have the lowest absolute footprint and who have reduced their October footprints by the greatest percentage are our Grand Prize winners.
SJSU makes a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education. The Talloires Declaration (TD) is a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities. It has been signed by over 350 university presidents and chancellors in over 40 countries. Find out more here.
President Whitmore has appointed Associate Professor Katherine Kao Cushing as special assistant to the president and director of campus sustainability. More details can be found here.
print
email