The document summarizes discussions from Working Group 3 of the ISCN 2015 conference. Key points discussed include: 1. Using university campuses as "living laboratories" to strategically align research, teaching, operations, and community outreach around sustainability themes and projects. 2. The need for universities to collaborate more with external stakeholders and consider longer time frames, as sustainable change and relationship-building takes years. 3. Fostering integration between academics and facility operations through tools like environmental management systems and job descriptions, and regular events to identify shared themes. 4. Engaging hearts, minds and hands to drive behavioral change through coherence with organizational culture and campus environment.

1. ISCN 2015
WORKING GROUP 3 BREAK-OUT SESSION

2. Working Group 3
Principle 3 of the ISCN-GULF Sustainable Campus Charter…
Explore how alignment the organization’s core mission
with sustainable development, facilities, research,
education, and outreach can be achieved by creating
“living laboratories” for sustainability.
Integration of research, teaching and learning, campus
operations and outreach.
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3. Agenda
2.30-2.45 Welcome, framing & objectives of the session
Ariane König, University of Luxembourg
2.45-3.00 Conceptual basis for the session : Co-production as a form of dialogue that
reframes university relations and transforms the institution itself
James Evans, University of Manchester
3.00-4.00 Cases I -IV
• KTH-Sustainability, Goran Finnveden, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• UBC Sustainability Scholars, Victoria Smith, University of British Columbia
• Exploring barriers to sustainable behavior, Davis Bookheart, HKUST
• Learning and Teaching for a Sustainable Future, Karola Braun-Wanke, Freie Universität Berlin
4.00-4.30 Interactive panel discussion with all presenters
10 min. Coffee break with voting on key themes
4.40-5.10 Work in break out groups on each table - one on each of the 3 key themes
5.10-5.30 Presentations by break-out groups and synthesis and session conclusion
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4. PLENARY PRESENTATION: KEY FINDINGS
Campus as living labs:
•A framework to strategically align coproduction activities
temporally and thematically.
•Projects act as shared territories around which actors coalesce and
critically reflect.
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5. Key findings continued…
Collaboration between stakeholders on and beyond campus:
•A new vision of the role of Universities in society in the face of
accelerating change and growing complexity would help.
•Time frame challenges:
◦ Collaborations involve relationship building over years
◦ Time scales of academics and other stakeholders often differ
(operations and external)
◦ Solution-oriented research should consider future challenges
as well as todays – living labs can serve as platforms for social
learning and adaptive management over time.
•Aim for strategic engagements: Projects with teachers and
schools can offer significant multiplier effects
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6. Key findings continued
Fostering Integration :
•An environmental management system can provide a useful platform for integration of
change concepts and empirical data collected by operations and researchers.
•Job descriptions in the administration include the need to work with researchers and
students.
•Regular events combining researchers and administration to identify shared themes, with
project money on the table
•Build a culture of reward for and implementation support for good ideas
Fostering attitude/behaviour change:
•Coherence with organisational culture and campus environment rqd
•Engage hearts, hands and minds
•Design learning environments: institutional, virtual and physical meeting places for it.
•Universities can learn from the private sector
•Ideas are only moved with people – ambassador programmes like Green Monday are
effective
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7. Key Issues Discussed
Integration of academia and operations
Collaboration with stakeholders beyond the university
Lasting sustainable institutional change
Attitude to resources and behaviour change
Engaging faculty
Evaluation/self-evaluation/defining and measuring success
Criteria to identify/account for sustainability research
Sense of place – situated knowledge
Resourcing and scaling
Education for instilling curiosity and critical questioning
Political influence of universities and reach e.g. universities at COP 21
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8. What might ISCN contribute (2015/2016)
1. Scenarios/vision on the role of universities in society?
2. Identify key work themes with stakeholders in a
participatory framing process towards a work
programme (e.g. private sector and schools, int. govt
orgs…).
3. An ISCN Ambassador programme
4. A knowledge resource of living lab projects and elements
amenable to meaningful integration of operations and
research- and how these relate to global challenges.
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9. BACK UP SLIDES
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10. How can we get a more DIRECTED PROCESS for humans to assume new
responsibilities and collectively transform our relation to the environment?
PROGRESS builds on the joint EVALUATION of and passing judgment on a
direction of learning and its application, following criteria of rationality.
This process requires CRITICAL DIALECTICS, reflection and fundamentally
changes its subject.
THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT is conceived as an integral part of a learning
life form, as there is intricate interaction and change in the relation between
subject and the context it is embedded in.
Jaeggi, R. (1987) Kritik von Lebensformen. Suhrkamp.
How can we define progress?