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THE ARCHITECTURE ISSUE
The Chronicle Review's yearly look at architecture examines buildings on and off campuses. Above, Caltech's new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, designed by Morphosis. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Campus-Sustainability Conference Is the Biggest Ever
Raleigh, N.C. — Among higher-education conferences, the one that got underway here Sunday is unusual. In the exhibit hall, vendors show off $15,000 composters as if they were sports cars. The registration clerk asks you if you require a vegan meal plan. People calculate the environmental impact of taking the stairs versus the escalators to conference sessions.
It’s the national conference of the Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education, and thanks to the popularity of sustainability these days, the conference is bigger than ever. This year’s event drew about 1,750 attendees from more than 400 institutions. Compare that to the association’s conference two years ago at Arizona State University, which drew about 600 people.
“We have our own convention center and everything,” said a joking Julian Dautremont-Smith, the associate director of AASHE.
Young faces abound. Many of the people here at the Raleigh Convention Center are students who have been sent by their institutions. Ithaca College, I hear, sent a whole busload from New York.
The conference this year also features a number of luminaries: Van Jones, president of Green for All; Vandana Shiva, the environmental activist from India; Peter Senge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology management guru; and Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, who spoke last night about oil shortages, stresses on food and water supplies, and climate change.
“This has to be one of the most positive trends — how fast this organization has grown,” he said. Although that growth is spectacular, he said, it’s not enough — he has been talking about sustainable development for more than three decades, and he still sees a world in decline. He suggested that AASHE change its name to something with a little more flair — the Association for Higher Education Saving Civilization, or something like that.
Joking aside (although I don’t think he was joking), the association’s rapid growth had some folks here wondering what the organization will look like in the future. Will it grow even more? Will it develop regional chapters, like other higher-education organizations? Or will attendance here reach a peak in popularity? Is sustainability a fad that will go away in a few years?
Certainly the problems that the sustainability crowd grapples with — environmental crises and their connected social and cultural problems — are not going away anytime soon. In fact, the dimmer the future for the planet, the more vital this organization must be, because its entire mission revolves around the idea of imagining a better future for the planet and higher education’s role in that.
Updates from the conference will appear on Buildings & Grounds over the next couple of days. —Scott Carlson
Scott Carlson | Monday November 10, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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I hope no one at the conference looks at this new evidence on global warming:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2008/oct/01_10_2008_DvTempRank_pg.gif
— jk Nov 10, 07:17 AM #
Let’s consider homecoming bonfires where 18-wheelers deliver acres of timber reconstructed as pallets to be burned on the eve of the big game.
How “sustainable” are those excurricular big games, the travel to and from them by teams and fans, etc.?
How sustainable is faculty travel to conferences?
What is the future of professional organizations in the face of budget cutbacks and sustainability goals?
The academic associations need to do some studying of their own before someone beats them to it. How about an association of the associations where some ass’n conferences, regional and national, in related fields agree to combine (same city, same time), and others agree to meet every other year on an ongoing basis?
— MSlibraryGhost Nov 10, 09:20 AM #
jk, you hater – don’t distract these people with the truth.
— TRB Nov 10, 02:35 PM #
jk – FYI the United States doesn’t represent the entire world or the center of the universe.
— wc Nov 10, 02:46 PM #
How ironic that the sustainability conference now has their own convention center. Has anyone studied the sustainability of sustainability conferences?
— mary Nov 10, 06:10 PM #