Dear Class of 2013, Welcome to Washington University in St. Louis! You are embarking on your college careers during a time with great challenges and even greater opportunity.

Some of the greatest challenges of the 21st century – issues relating to energy, the environment, and sustainability – are central parts of our mission here at Washington University in St. Louis. We are moving quickly to transform our University into a “Living Learning Laboratory” that connects scholarship and discovery directly to design and management in order to find sustainable solutions to global challenges, to bring rapid transformation to our campus and society.

The active engagement and participation of every member of our community is crucial to our success. To contribute to our on-going goals, we recommend each of you start with the following five steps your first year at Washington University:

1. Expand your education. Whether or not you plan on pursuing a degree in a field that will address the environment, every school at Wash. U. teaches courses or conducts crucial research on issues that are key to sustainability. We encourage you to purposefully pursue at least one course on these issues. In addition, there are at least a dozen student “green” groups devoted to sustainability; you can join them or become part of the University’s Student Green Council to apply your coursework in on-going projects.

2.Participate in research. Through our International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability, Wash. U. is leading cutting-edge research in a variety of energy, environment and sustainability fields. We encourage you to attend the Center’s distinguished speaker series to learn from experts in the field. We also encourage you to actively seek research internships with the Office of Sustainability.

3.Green your lifestyle. A key part of our campus culture is learning how to live well in our community. As part of that, we encourage each member of our community to minimize their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, generation of waste, and water consumption, and to use one of many alternative forms of transportation – including walking, bicycling, and mass transit.

4. Serve our community. Through our Community Service Office and many other campus partners, our community continually demonstrates that a healthy social network is crucial to sustainable societies. Opportunities abound to serve those in need in our community in ways that improve lives, our environment, and our economy.

5. Help shape our sustainability strategic plan. This year, Wash. U. will be finalizing our first comprehensive sustainability strategic plan. Through orientation, campus forums, speaker events, and our sustainability web-sites, there will be multiple ways for every member of our community to provide feedback and ideas that will help us become the national leaders in sustainability..

If you are interested in our work or are curious to learn more about these opportunities and our efforts, please visit: sustain.wustl.edu or contact me directly.  I wish you the best for a sustainable future.

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Tags: environment, green, international center for advanced renewable energy and sustainability, student green council, sustainability

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Forum, Op-Ed Submission. You can follow any responses to this entry through this feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.