November 2, 2007

Use-inspired research – Sustainability

© 2007 Arizona Board of Regents. All rights reserved.INSI

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Pathways to SustainabilityASU is committed to

environmental practices

for a more sustainable

university.

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ASU makes the grade ASU is nationally

recognized as a campus

sustainability leader.

Going ‘green’: ASU gives sustainability mass roots By Skip Derra

One convert at a time is a noble goal for any altruistic endeavor, especially sustain-ability, which has long laid low in the grass roots of society. Partly because of this, and because of the consumer-driven society in which we live, converting people to sus-tainability has been slow.

Arizona State University’s efforts in sus-tainability are garnering support on a level of hundreds at a time. Call it a “mass roots” effort that starts at the top with President Michael Crow pushing ASU forward in the field by making sustainability a university-wide priority. Crow also has played a visible role in advancing sustainability nationally. For example, he was intimately involved in formulating the recent American College and University President’s Climate Com-mitment.

“More than ever, universities must take leadership roles to address the grand chal-lenges of the 21st century, and climate change is paramount amongst these,” Crow has said about the President’s Climate Commitment.

Sustainable traditionASU has a long tradition in sustain-

ability, which has been the focal point of many environmental research projects and classes. Part of the interest in sustainability relates to ASU’s location in the Sonoran Desert of the Southwest.

In recent years, research themes in sus-tainability were boosted by the opening of several centers and facilities devoted to the field. The Decision Theater, which fosters collaboration through visualization of real-world problems, is an example, as is the Decision Center for a Desert City and its accent on wise water management.

Sustainability education also has moved front and center at ASU, which is home to the first (and so far, only) freestanding, degree-granting School of Sustainability in the United States. The school opened its doors last January with an initial class of six graduate students, which grew to 28 with the admission of a new crop of highly accomplished graduate students in August. The school plans to rapidly expand into

undergraduate education in fall 2008. Sustainability is being practiced on cam-

pus as ASU implements sustainable busi-ness practices as a way of “walking the walk, as well as talking the talk,” says Jona-than Fink, the Julie Ann Wrigley director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and ASU’s university sustainability officer.

It’s clear that the university located in the brown Sonoran Desert is going green in many different ways.

Fink says sustainability is not like the environmental movements of the past.

“Sustainability basically has to do with trying to reconcile environmental values with economic values and social values. We are not trying to set up polarity among these groups. We don’t want this to be big business versus tree huggers.”

Getting people to take on sustainability is best done “by example, education and financial incentives,” Fink says.

“Sustainability to me, and to the next generation of students, means how can I make the world a better place,” explains Charles Redman, director of ASU’s School of Sustainability and a key player in the

university’s overall sustainability efforts.“We need to tackle our problems (heat,

limited water resources, economic prosper-ity) comprehensively,” he says. “It is not enough just to solve the water problem. After all, we could just desalinate the Pacific Ocean. But there are energy issues involved with that.”

“We must innovate, work together and successfully implement new ideas if we are to successfully live in the desert. Sustain-ability is not just an attitude about how we are going to do something,” Redman adds. “It is going to require a real comprehensive evaluation on how we go about doing our business.”

Changing how we operate as a university is one of the goals of ASU’s sustainability efforts. There is a wide range of campus projects underway to make this transition. They include:

• Free bus passes to all faculty, staff and students resulting in a ridership increase from 400,000 one-way trips in its first year to more than 1.5 million bus riders last year.

(See SUSTAINABILITY on page S4)

ASU's sustainability efforts are picking up speed. With the recent opening of the School of Sustainability, continued research projects and 'green' business practices, ASU is committed to ushering environmental values into the social landscape.

Ann Kinzig

Bonny BentzinCharles Redman

Wellington Reiter

Ecologist Kinzig leads a global team of researchers in “Advancing Conservation in a Social Context,” one of the largest grants that the MacArthur Foundation has ever awarded to a public university.

Reiter brings to ASU a vision for the “‘new city” – a blending of art, science, design and quality-of-life enhancement to achieve urban sustainability.

After building the urban-environmental research portfolio of the Center for Environmental Studies and the Global Institute of Sus-tainability as director, Redman has turned his energies to design-ing the new School of Sustainability.

Bentzin leads and coordinates a universitywide network to in-tegrate sustainability practices on campus, reach ASU’s carbon neutrality goals, and use the campuses as a living laboratory.

Ann KinzigAssociate Professor, School of Life Sciences

Charles RedmanDirector, School of Sustainability

Wellington “Duke” ReiterDean, College of Design

Bonny BentzinManager, University Businesses Sustainability Practices

SustainabilityFaces of

Sustainability is...…a blueprint

for the future of commerce – a guide for how to make our industries more efficient, have a lighter footprint, and ultimately give rise to the new green-collar economy.

Chris SamilaUndergraduate Organizer

Green Summit

...living in a manner that I can be proud of – making choices that work for me without denying resources to oth-ers – now and in the future.

Brenda ShearsAssociate DirectorGlobal Institute of Sustainability

…trying to eat mostly food that my great grand-parents would recognize.

Rod GroffCoordinator

Wrigley Lecture Series

Chris Samila

Brenda Shears

Rod Groff

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Nancy Grimm

Pat GoberJim Buizer

Jonathan Fink

Grimm leads dozens of scientists in the CAP LTER project, a long-term study of an urban ecosystem that is the basic science project feeding the Global Institute of Sustainability.

Fink, who as vice president for research and economic affairs was one of the main architects of ASU’s sustainability initiative, now oversees the research of GIOS, the educational programs of the School of Sustain-ability, ASU’s sustainable business and construction practices, and the use of the Decision Theater to promote sustainable solutions.

President Crow recruited Buizer in September 2003 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, D.C. to lead the conceptualization, design and initiation of a comprehensive, uni-versitywide program for sustainability at ASU. On July 1, 2007, having successfully accomplished this charge, Buizer and President Crow trans-ferred these responsibilities to GIOS Director Jonathan Fink.

Gober, a geographer, runs a center that studies the intersection of climate change, water management and population growth in Greater Phoenix. Her team works closely with partners in municipal and state government agencies, and takes advantage of the technological capabilities of ASU’s Decision Theater.

Nancy GrimmPrincipal Investigator and Co-Director, Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research

Jim BuizerExecutive Director and Science Policy Advisor to the President

Jonathan FinkUniversity Sustainability Officer and Julie A. Wrigley Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS)

Pat GoberCo-Director, Decision Center for a Desert City

Rob Melnick Govindasamy Tamizhmani

Tischa Munoz-Erickson Kerry Smith

Melnick works to connect ASU’s research and education initiatives in sustainability with the global business community. The Morrison Institute will soon release the much-anticipated public policy report, “Sustainability for Arizona: The Issue of our Age.”

Tamizhmani runs the only Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory in North America, providing ASU with excellent relationships with solar technology companies. He also leads a major education pro-gram for students who want to work in renewable energy.

Munoz-Erickson is one of the first School of Sustainability Ph.D. students.

Smith, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sci-ences, is one of the world’s leading environmental economists and is a pioneer in developing indicators to measure the non-market value of environmental assets.

Rob MelnickAssociate Vice Provost for Economic Affairs and Public Policy, and Director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Tischa Munoz-EricksonPh.D. student, School of Sustainability

Govindasamy TamizhmaniAssociate Professor, ASUP Electronic Systems, and Director of the Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory and Fuel Cell Laboratory

Kerry SmithProfessor of Economics, W. P. Carey School of Business

PathwaysTenS u s t a i n a b i l i t y

to

School of SustainabilityASU is home to the nation’s first School of Sustainability.

With unique graduate degrees and planned undergraduate degrees, the School of Sustainability will educate a new generation of leaders to address the environmental, eco-nomic and social challenges of the 21st century.

Students pose with their tools that will help to create a more 'green' friendly world.

Student Sustainability Coalition

The Student Sustain-ability Coalition is a venue for student orga-nizations and individuals concerned with sustain-ability to meet and work together to exchange resources and opportuni-ties that contribute to sus-tainability efforts on the ASU campus and in the surrounding community. The coalition’s objectives include reducing ASU’s ecological footprint and raising awareness.

A $25 million dollar invest-ment from Julie Ann Wrigley transformed the Center for Environmental Studies, with its growing portfolio of urban environmental research, into a Global Institute that connects all of ASU’s sustainability ini-tiatives in research, education and business practices.

Investments in the Global Institute of Sustainability

Julie Ann Wrigley

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ASU President Michael Crow is a charter signatory and chair of the Steering Committee for the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. Under Crow’s leadership, ASU will address global warming by implementing and modeling ways to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions on its campuses and acceler-ate research and academics to better equip society to re-stabilize the earth’s climate.

8 The Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC), a com-ponent of the Global Institute of Sustainability, is a place where scientists and policy-makers can meet to make more effective decisions in the face of an uncertain climatic future. Specifically, DCDC uses WaterSim, an interac-tive modeling technology, to focus on water management in the context of central Arizona’s complex political and economic systems, rapid urbanization and population growth, variable desert climate and global climate change. Through sophisticated model-ing techniques and outreach programs, DCDC allows researchers and decision-mak-ers to collaborate to develop solutions for a sustainable desert city.

DCDC and WaterSim

The Decision Theater is used to explore sustainability issues ranging from urban growth and public health to education and the environment.

Photo By dUStin hAmPton

ASU is leading the way in sustainability with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification standards required for new building construction on all ASU campuses. The university is committed to designing buildings that are environmentally friendly, demonstrate sustainability principles and save enough energy to pay for the energy-efficiency features over the life-time of the structure.

Building Green

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7ASU Local FoodsASU Grounds Maintenance has started a pilot program

to divert food currently grown on campus out of the waste stream and into kitchens. The ASU Local Foods Program is being expanded to incorporate the ideas and passions of our students. In a related waste-management project, Grounds Maintenance is diverting landscaping waste to a local farm for composting. The compost is then returned to campus, where it is used in the place of industrial fertilizers. This program, diverting an average of 11 tons of material a month from the waste stream, does not just save money – it creates a healthier campus with the use of manmade fertilizers.

10 In May 2006, ASU established the Joint Center on Urban Sustain-ability (JCUS) with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. JCUS is the only high-level partnership be-tween the United States and China in the field of urbanization. The center’s objective is to examine urbanization in the context of en-vironmental, economic and social sustainability from the perspectives of both countries.

5Pervious Parking Lots

The parking lot outside of ASU’s Nelson Fine Arts Center is covered in pervi-ous pavement. Unlike conventional asphalt and concrete pavements, pervious pavement allows liquid and air to flow through it, passing directly into the earth below. This pavement minimizes water pollution, recharges groundwater aquifers, and mitigates the urban heat island effect – a phenomenon that occurs when urban materials (such as conven-tional pavements and buildings) absorb and store heat, thereby raising the tem-perature of the air around them. Ad-ditionally, pervious pavement facilitates improved vegetation health because roots have access to the water that flows through the pavement.

The pervious parking lot is a project of the National Center for Excellence in SMART Innovations for Urban Cli-mate and Energy, which is part of the Global Institute of Sustainability and funded by the Environmental Protec-tion Agency and industry.

6Photovoltaic Systems

The roof of the Tempe campus Parking Structure 2 houses a 30 kWhr photovol-taic system that generates energy for the structure’s internal lights and provides shade for parked cars. The receptors on the solar array produce energy during peak energy and parking demand hours, allowing ASU to conserve energy, reduce harmful emissions and comply with the university initiative that all new buildings be “green.”

SustainabilityFaces of

ASU’s Climate Commitment

A row of solar panels from the Polytechnic campus' Photovoltaic Testing Lab reflects the scorching Arizona sun.

Joint Center on Urban Sustainability

Pervious pavement minimizes water pollution and lessens the urban heat island effect.

Junior Terra Ganem is the leader of the Student Sustainability Coalition.

Photo By elizA gRegoRy

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• A Flexcar program where cars, located on campus, can be rented by the hour as a way of encouraging alternative methods of commuting.

• A green purchasing program that encourages buying “green,” purchasing recycled products, and an EnergyStar purchasing mandate in place since 1997.

• A commitment to solar energy. The first system on campus was a 30 kWhr demonstration system on the roof of a parking garage, providing shade for cars and power for the garage. A second system is being installed on Biodesign B that will serve as a prototype for a 4 MW system on the Tempe and Polytechnic campuses.

• A food utilization program that uses food grown on campus – fruits (including 20 citrus varieties), dates, nuts and herbs currently make up the collection – in ASU din-ing facilities. Additional varieties will be introduced as areas of the campus are re-landscaped turning the urban landscapes of ASU into a microfarm.

• A program that diverts landscaping waste to a local farmer partner for composting. In its first month, 11 tons of waste were composted rather than sent to a landfill.

“Over the last several years, the ASU community has demonstrated a growing interest in sustainability issues,” says Bonny Bentzin, manager of university sustainability business practices. “As ASU has begun shifting its policies and operations, more people have shown a willingness to adapt their behavior adopting the new programs. We have only just begun – it will take the entire community work-ing together with the administration to make the signifi-

cant changes and behavioral shifts required to achieve our sustainability goals.”

Education firstThe School of Sustainability admitted its first class of six

graduate students in January, supplemented by the much larger group in August. Redman says the initial class comes equally from Arizona, the rest of the United States and overseas. Foreign students include four from China, two from India and one each from South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico.

Next fall the school will begin offering undergraduate courses in sustainability, where Redman says he thinks as many as 100 new students will be the first to begin work towards a major in sustainability. The advantage of the ASU school, compared to other universities’ sustainability efforts, is its broad base.

“Our approach is that to build a sustainable world, we need people who are comfortable working from the wid-est range of perspectives possible,” Redman says. “So we encompass architecture, business, engineering, social, life and physical sciences and aspects of the humanities.”

“We are committed to being problem-based rather than discipline-oriented and hence to having hands-on courses that tackle real-world problems as part of both under-graduate and graduate curricula.”

In addition to teaching students about sustainability, ASU is well equipped for performing research in the field. Fink said there is a diverse portfolio of sustainability re-search throughout ASU.

Sustainability reaches new heights with education, training

V. Scott Cole

Jianguo Wu Jay Golden

Rick Shangraw

Cole has been the primary implementer of ASU’s move toward sustainable construction practices, assuring that all of the university’s new buildings are LEED certified. He has also helped guide the facilities and maintenance staff toward more active engagement in ASU’s sustainable business practices.

In his role as executive director of the Decision Theater, Shangraw helped develop this facility into one of ASU’s strongest tools for advancing sustainability, building bridges between the university’s research strengths and the policy needs of the community.

These engineers are teaming with industry, inter-national researchers and governmental agencies to develop sustainable materials and renewable tech-nologies for an urbanizing world.

Wu, one of the world’s leading landscape ecologists, over-sees a major research program, funded by the Chinese and U.S. governments, seeking to restore ecological health, economic vitality and social well-being throughout the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

V. Scott ColeDeputy Executive Vice President, Business & Finance

Jay Golden and Kamil KaloushCo-Directors, National Center of Excellence for SMART Innovations for Urban Climate and Energy

Rick ShangrawVice President for Research and Economic Affairs

Jianguo WuProfessor, School of Life Sciences

Kamil Kaloush

(Continued from page S1)

SustainabilityFaces of

By Skip DerraArizona State University is mak-

ing its way up the charts in sustain-ability. Two recent reports on sus-tainability on campus feature the efforts of the university.

ASU earned high marks in its on-campus sustainability efforts, including administration, climate change and energy, and green building, according to the College Sustainability Report Card 2008.

The Report Card is published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and assesses the sustainability efforts of 200 public and private universities with the largest endowments. It is the only independent sustainability evaluation of campus operations and endowment investments. Each university is judged according to eight areas (administration, climate change and energy, food and recy-cling, green building, transporta-tion, endowment transparency, in-vestment priorities and shareholder engagement).

ASU got A’s for administration, climate change and energy, and green building efforts. It received

B’s in food and recycling and transportation. ASU was listed as a “campus sustainability leader” mak-ing it one of only 25 universities to earn that distinction, because it scored at least an average of an A- in all five campus categories. Its overall grade for all eight categories was a B-.

The Report Card liked ASU’s ad-ministrative efforts because of the key role President Michael Crow has played in the President’s Cli-mate Commitment and because of the stature of sustainability efforts on campus. Climate change and energy efforts were cited, in part, because of ASU’s policies concern-ing energy use and its plans for new solar energy installations. The green building program was cited because all new ASU buildings must meet at least LEED Silver standards.

“We are quite pleased that the Sustainable Endowments Institute has recognized ASU’s leadership during their first assessment of our performance,” says Jonathan Fink, director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and ASU’s sustain-

ability officer. “We expect that we will do even better in the next round, reflecting programs that are just now being implemented.”

Schools that received the highest overall grades (of A-) were Harvard University, Dartmouth College, University of Washington, Middle-bury College, Carleton College and University of Vermont.

Kiwi magazine, a publication de-voted to “helping parents raise their children the healthiest way pos-sible,” also put out a green college report that lists ASU as one of the 50 schools that “will help your kids help the planet.”

In its 2007 Green College Re-port, Kiwi cited the efforts of ASU’s School of Sustainability to establish an undergraduate degree in sustainability with a focus on problem-oriented learning, ASU’s two-year energy saving upgrade project, and its solar array installa-tion on the roof of a parking struc-ture as examples of how it is going green.

Derra, with Media Relations, can be reached at (480) 965-4823 or skip.derra@asu.edu.

ASU makes the grade in sustainability

These projects include large programs in rapid urbaniza-tion, like the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Eco-logical Research project, the Decision Center for a Desert City, and other activities like the ecological restoration of the Mongolian grasslands in China, the development of new architectural approaches to solar energy, the integra-tion of geospatial analysis into the assessment of urban crime data and a study of the social factors influencing the effectiveness of biodiversity preservation.

Fink says overall the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) has generated $35 million in private investment and has an international board of trustees co-chaired by businesswoman Julie Ann Wrigley, Rob Walton (chairman of Wal Mart) and President Crow.

“The world is rapidly recognizing that conducting busi-ness as usual poses potentially great dangers for future generations,” he explains. “ASU, with its ability to quickly muster large teams with different disciplinary backgrounds is well positioned to address some of the toughest technical and consumer product questions of sustainability.”

In fact, the multidisciplinary culture at ASU has helped its overall sustainability efforts, Fink says.

“We work with government agencies to make sure the problems we are working on are the ones that actually will have an impact,” he says. “This is something that will grow in importance because as the problems grow more com-plicated we will need insight from economists, historians, artists, as well as scientists and engineers. So what stands out at ASU is a culture in which working as a team is part of our distinctive competitive edge.”

For students, it could mean being positioned properly for the future.

“Students want this done at all levels,” Redman says.“We believe there is an enormous market for people

trained in sustainability,” he adds. “Beyond business where we believe the majority of students will end up, there will be positions in government, especially at local and state levels, in NGOs and in academia.”

“The payback is we are going to generate human capital, trained personnel in sustainability,” Redman says. “The key to this is an educated work force, but it is a work force educated for this century and not the 19th century.”

Derra, with Media Relations, can be reached at (480) 965-4823 or skip.derra@asu.edu.

School of Sustainability director Charles Redman holds up a slab of porous concrete with sustainability students Thad Miller (left) and Tischa Munoz-Erickson on the pervious parking lot.