1. IARU Green Guide for Universities
Melissa Goodall, Yale University
On behalf of the International Alliance of Research Universities
June 2015
2. • Established in 2006
• 10 universities that “share
similar values, a global vision
and a commitment to
educating future world
leaders.”
• “IARU member universities
work together to address the
major challenges of our time.”
3. IARU Members Australian National University
ETH Zurich
National University of Singapore
Peking University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Cambridge
University of Copenhagen
University of Oxford
University of Tokyo
Yale University
4. Major Points
of Collaboration Global
Education
• Global summer program
• Summer student exchange
• Global Cross-Disciplinary
Tournament
Institutional
Joint
Working
•Alumni Associations Network
•EdTech Horizons
•Global Transformation in IARU Member
Strategies
•International Students Support Group
•Librarians' Contact Group
•Research Administrators' Network
•Staff Development and Exchange
•Technology Transfer Network
Research
Collaboration
• Aging Longevity and Health
• PKU Medical City
• Future Cities LaboratorySustainability
Events
• On-going information exchange
• Exploration of shared practices
• Student fellowships
• Shared projects and events
6. Green Guide
Establish
10
topics
Assign lead
author and
two supporting
authors for
each chapter
Develop
template for
drafting
content
Circulate
chapter
outlines and
drafts
Solicit case
studies for
each chapter
Review all
working drafts
Rework
content into
new chapters
Revise, edit,
repeat
Submit final
manuscript to
top leadership
for review
Publish
20. • + 4,000 downloads
• 695,000 tweets including #IARU2014
21. Next Steps
• Global University Climate Forum
• Shared projects on energy and labs
• (possible) Green Papers
• (possible) 2016 conference
22. IARU Green Guide for Universities
Melissa Goodall, Yale University
On behalf of the International Alliance of Research Universities
June 2015
Notes de l'éditeur
As part of their commitment to promote sustainability, the IARU universities have established a Campus Sustainability Program aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of their campuses.
Global Education
Global summer program
Summer student exchange
Global Cross-Disciplinary Tournament
Institutional Joint Working
Alumni Associations Network
EdTech Horizons
Global Transformation in IARU Member Strategies
International Students Support Group
Librarians' Contact Group
Research Administrators' Network
Staff Development and Exchange
Technology Transfer Network
Value of Research Intensive Universities
Women and Men in Globalizing Universities
Research Collaboration
Aging Longevity and Health
PKU Medical City
Future Cities Laboratory
Each of us has a different way of managing sustainability. This chapter highlights some of the common components such as engaging leadership, distributing responsibility, and developing ways to measure and report on progress.
The IARU institutions have varying degrees of focus and penetration when it comes to operations and academics. This chapter highlights the ways that HEIs can lead by example in operations, but also touches on the possibilities for scholarship in the context of operations.
We originally had a chapter on energy, but realized that in terms on content flow, it made more sense to include it under operations and under buildings.
Buildings are undeniably a critical element to any campus. This focuses on possibilities for innovation in construction as well as the need to work with occupancy patterns and behavior.
All 10 of the IARU institutions are deeply committed to the sciences. Labs are both a major priority and a major challenge for each of us. What we discovered with this chapter is that none of us has a great way to deal with the challenges that labs pose, due largely to the fact that changing lab behavior means changing PI behavior, which is always going to be a challenge. Even so, in collecting examples of challenges and hurdles and how they might be overcome, we learned from each other and have hopefully planted seeds for others.
I was one of the supporting authors on this chapter, and found it to be one of the more difficult chapters to work on. Materials management is such a huge and complex beast, it was difficult to narrow it down to one cohesive chapter. While Yale is developing a distinct materials management strategy that includes reduce, reuse, repair, recycle as well as supply chain and diversion, ETH-Z is prioritizing commodity groups by impact using an LCA framework. Neither tactic is necessarily better than the other. Each is being developed to suit the instutional cultures and structures, so each is a valid approach. Hopefully this is reflected in the chapter and it will be helpful to others.
This is a chapter we had not originally intended to include, but in our review of the first draft chapters we realized it was absent. Again, because each U has a different urban infrastructure context, there were some challenges, but the chapter offers some good foundational insights that should translate to many campues.
Communication seems so basic, and yet it seems we are all struggling to do it effectively. This chapter was led by NUS, which has developed a really strong visibility program (replete with a mascot and tattoos). It overviews things like how to reach various audiences and how to streamline your messaging so that you are not overwhelming or nagging.
One of the lessons we learned here was pretty basic – even when we are all speaking English, different words are used differently depending on culture. So when we say Staff in the US, t means non-academic employees, but apparently that’s not consistent. It actually took us quite some time to figure out how to work the language so that it would suit an array of English speaking audiences.
Beyond that, we were able to develop a pretty strong chapter that offers tactics for developing programs for employees and students. A lot of U’s focus most of their attention on students, which is understandable. We made the case for also developing staff engagement initiatives because staff are longer-term and tend to be more empowered to make high impact decisions. Students are important too, of course, so hopefully the ideas and examples here will be helpful to others.
In October IARU hosted a faculty-led scientific congress.
This was an amazing event with headliners like the Danish Prime Minister and Peter Bakker of the WBCSD.
We launched the book in tandem with this. While the conference was inspiring and highlighted global trends and solutions, our conference was intimate – it had around 150 attendees - and was organized in a way that fostered dialogue and action-oriented local solutions.