“Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum expanded the sustainability conversation at SCU, inviting us to integrate environmental justice more deeply into our work through the inclusion of new voices and engaging in more community-based research partnerships centered on climate justice and resiliency. We hope to build stronger connections with local tribes and diverse communities.” – Lindsey Kalkbrenner, Center for Sustainability Director

Welcome back to our Compass newsletter, a periodic look back at the paths the Center for Sustainability has navigated and the new directions we’re heading in pursuit of building a more humane, just, and sustainable world. 

Winter Quarter 2024 has been an exciting one for SCU – President Sullivan announced the university strategic plan Impact 2030 in February and the Center for Sustainability and the Division of Mission & Ministry announced the sustainability strategic action plan Leading Through Laudato Si’ in March! 

Vice President for Mission and Ministry Alison Benders explains the connections between the two plans well: “A major thrust of Impact 2030 is to assure that our graduates are prepared as persons of competence, conscience, and compassion to meet the most urgent issues of our times. By including sustainability throughout the four main goals, the university will be committed to caring for our common home as one of its highest priorities. Leading through Laudato Si’ is the roadmap for SCU to do this sustainably and justly.”

Read on to learn about the many ways we are living out our commitments to our strategic action plan and involving the campus through research, events, and workshops.

By the Numbers

• Cycling Maternity Clothing: Beginning April 2nd, HR will be collaborating with the Center for Sustainability to share maternity clothing for all expecting SCU parents. Thanks to generous donations from the English Department, there are four large bins and four bags of clothing in sizes XS-2XL available for borrowing.
• Winter Gardening Work: Garden Manager Becca Nelson is busy putting in 3000 ft. of new irrigation lines to replace the old system. 
• Survey Responses: The Waste Move Out Survey received 510 respondents and there are nearly 800 respondents thus far for the annual transportation survey.
• Sustainability Playbooks Actions: 858 actions have been submitted and 118 badges have been earned by 34 individuals! (Submit your actions here!)
  • 7 people have earned all 6 badges before the Changemaker badge
  • Audrey Joy, Veronica Johnson, Josue Herndandez-Perez, and Sally Walsh have earned the Change Maker badge!
• Sustainable Interactions: Everyone's engaged!
  • The Forge Garden hosted 3 Winter Workshops with 74 attendees in total.
  • 73 people attended 5 Maker Nights while 84 people participated in SDG Week events (not including the EcoFashion Show highlighted below).
  • Of the 9 LEAD Roadshows, Center for Sustainability student coordinators presented to a total of 105 first year students and 39 sophomores and juniors.
  • The Buy Nothing SCU Facebook group (co-sponsored by the Office of Student Life) now has 96 campus participants.

A Bright Beacon: Environmental Justice Book & Workshops

Chad Raphael, Center for Sustainability Faculty Associate, Laudato Si’ Implementation Team Member, and Communication Professor co-edited a book, Ground Truths: Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice with Martha Matsuoka (Associate Professor and Director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College). This text offers lessons about community-based research and environmental justice, emphasizing how we can do better in these areas. Ground Truths outlines, evaluates and produces actionable data and relationships between research and communities specifically for black, indigenous, low-income communities, and people of color by centering local knowledge. 

SCU’s Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative co-hosted a webinar series over the winter quarter based on this new book. Congratulations to Chad!

Summer Sustainability and Justice Workshop Series

Chad Raphael is also one of the instructors for our summer sustainability and justice workshop series (Sustainability Across the Curriculum, Environmental Justice and Integral Ecology, and Pedagogy for Sustainable Justice). These workshops help faculty (SCU and beyond) to integrate sustainability and justice material into their courses. Since 2007, 312 faculty and staff (including 221 from SCU) have been trained to integrate sustainability and environmental justice into their curriculum. Non-SCU participants were invited to join these workshops in 2019 and already 91 external faculty and staff have been trained. 

Help us spread the word about participating in one of these workshops in Summer 2024. Applications submitted before April 2, 2024 will receive top priority; the final deadline is Monday, May 6, 2024. You can find more information here.

Please enjoy this video from 2022 participant Accounting Professor Stacey Ritter. She highlights how thinking about finances and the accounting language through a sustainability lens reframes the entire process and gives her course curriculum at SCU a new light. 

Sustainable SCU: Leading Through Laudato Si'

The Center for Sustainability and the Division of Mission and Ministry are proud to announce the launch of the strategic action plan Sustainable SCU: Leading Through Laudato Si’.

The Center for Sustainability will be serving as the “organizational change management” to orchestrate the implementation of the plan in the following areas: Academics, Campus Engagement, Community Engagement, Operations: Energy, and Operations: Resources. Executive Sponsors, including members of the President’s Cabinet, will provide high-level support and guidance for this work, while the Implementation Teams, composed of subject-matter experts from across campus, will work to achieve the goal, strategies, actions, and tasks affiliated with their areas. 

This winter, we held our first Executive Sponsor meeting and the first Implementation Team meetings. 

For more information about the plan, please refer to our announcement letter sent to the university.

Laudato Si’ Stories

This past Fall, SCU students joined the Inspector Planet Beach Cleanup in Santa Cruz. Two sophomores Emma Hatfield (Neuroscience) and Gabby Robles (Bioengineering) won a monetary prize for the most bags of trash picked up! Thanks to their work in Campus Ministry and studying Laudato Si’, the pair have been continually encouraged to explore the ideas of environmental justice. “We always appreciated the campus and student engagement that the Center for Sustainability promotes. We thought it was a good idea to keep the prize money within sustainability after the cleanup,” Hatfield explained.

We appreciate the donation from Emma and Gabby, and we hope they continue to be inspired by opportunities to work towards environmental justice!

The Bird Solar Project has two phases online! With the activation of the Leavey Parking Lot and the AEC Solar systems on March 18th, their annual estimated production will be 6% of the 2023 Silicon Valley Power consumption for campus. Once the North Garage Solar system is completed, the production will be 9%.

Special Spotlight: Support Sustainability Initiatives this Day of Giving

On April 10th, the Center for Sustainability will join Santa Clara University in the annual Day of Giving celebration. You can choose from five different funds within Sustainability Initiatives – spanning environmental justice partnerships, student leadership development, climate action and awareness, sustainable food systems, and climate neutrality projects. 

With $100K in challenges, your gift can make a huge impact:

• Challenge 1: If at least 175 gifts are made to any Sustainability Initiatives, donors Dorian Daley and Michael Krautkramer will unlock a $50K gift for the Climate Action Fund!
• Challenge 2: If all Sustainability Initiatives raise at least $75K, the same generous donors will give an additional $50K to the Climate Action Fund!

Your gifts support the Center for Sustainability and our efforts to make the world a more humane, just, and sustainable place!

Event Highlights

This quarter, the Center for Sustainability hosted 18 events! Here are some great features:

Sustainability and Justice Thought Leaders:

Grants:

• Congratulations to English professor Amy Lueck, Forge Garden Manager Becca Nelson, and Anthropology professor and Center for Sustainability Thought Leader Maia Dedrick on their receiving a grant from the Environmental Justice and Common Good Initiative and the Miller Center. The project “Native Plants for Stewardship, Harvest, and Sustainable Use in Ohlone Cultural Projects” will support sharing Ohlone cultural knowledge and public education in the local community. The Ohlone youth will engage in an annual summer cultural camp, while SCU students and community members will learn about Native plants at the Center for Sustainability’s Forge Garden.
• Congratulations to Erin Kimura-Walsh (Director, LEAD Scholars Program), Melissa Thiriez (Director, Employment Relations and Partnerships, Career Center), and Veronica Johnson (Academics and Engagement Program Manager, Center for Sustainability) on their receiving a grant from the Regents Experiential Learning Initiative for “Styling Success: Career Wardrobes.” This program aims to educate students on workplace attire and expand the Center for Sustainability’s thrift pop-up to a permanent store.

Thought Leadership:

• Virginia Matzek, restoration ecologist and Environmental Studies and Sciences Professor, is featured on Episode 40 of the podcast The Case for Conservation. In this episode, “Should We Resurrect Extinct Species?” Professor Matzek weighs in on the pros and cons of bringing back the Siberian steppe native Wooly Mammoth.
• Iris Stewart-Frey, Environmental Studies and Sciences Professor and Laudato Si’ Working Group Member, along with fellow ESS colleague John Dialesandro, and others dove deep into the issue of shade coverage and tree canopies in Fresno, CA. Their work was featured in an Eos article about the recent extreme heat research presented at AGU’s Annual Meeting 2023 in San Francisco.
• Aleksandar Zecevic, Leading through Laudato Si’ Academic Working Group Member and Computer and Electrical Engineering Professor, wrote an article titled “How Beauty Can Inspire A Sense of Duty: Reflections on Laudato Si’” for the Winter issue of the Explore Journal. Zecevic explores the challenge technology and human behavior pose to the environment, and he also considers how technology in itself can/cannot reverse climate change.

Viewing the Horizon: Upcoming Events

	Bronco Exchange: All alumni, staff, and students are invited to join Sustainability at SCU and Beyond. This Bronco Exchange group helps the SCU community connect for networking, mentorship opportunities, discussing sustainability topics, and sharing events / job postings. Alumni: Please consider becoming a mentor (Learn more at the resources tab).
	Join our Team: Applications for our Forge Garden Summer Intern program are open now until April 12th! All other student positions – Forge Garden Apprentices, Student Sustainability Coordinators, Silicon Valley Power Sustainable Futures research fellowships, and Sustainable Food Systems research fellowships – will be opening in mid/late April. Stay tuned to get involved!
	tUrn Week: The 10th-ever tUrn week (April 22-26) features talks, workshops, festivals, exchanges, panels & performances on the climate crisis. tUrn is free and open to the public – RSVP for any of the diverse events both in person and online throughout the week! We will be collaborating on Tuesday (April 23) with inaugural Climate Research & Creative Expression Symposium, on Wednesday morning (April 24) with our sustainability strategic action plan progress update and an early evening viewing of the Laudato Si' documentary The Letter, and on Friday (April 26) at the Good Market and the Barnless Barn Dance!
	No Pollute Commute Challenge: Join Transportation & Parking Services and the Center for Sustainability in Week 7 of the quarter for events throughout the week advocating for sustainable modes of transportation.
	Fellowship Presentations: The second cohort of Silicon Valley Power Sustainable Futures Fellows will be presenting their final projects to the City of Santa Clara during a council meeting on Tuesday, May 28th. Check out last year's presentations here!
	Forge 15th anniversary and Sustainability Celebration: Join us at the Forge Garden on May 30th for our end of the year Sustainability Celebration! We will also be celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Forge Garden. This annual celebration acknowledges Sustainability Champions who have been leaders and change agents in the areas of academics, operations, engagement, and innovation, and those who have embodied sustainability in their work, activities, and life throughout the year. Nominate someone (or yourself!) for a Sustainability Champion Award.
	Supporting a Circular Economy: The Swap for Good pop-up thrift shop where students, staff, and faculty members can swap their used clothes for other items, all for free, will take place on Friday, June 7th. During Finals Week, the Center for Sustainability will host Zero Waste Move Out for on-campus residents to donate reusable products for Hope Services or Bronco Surplus. Residents are also encouraged to place all other items in designated areas around campus, such as e-waste, food, or carpets, to divert waste from the landfill.