Professor David Orr, the chair of environmental studies at Oberlin College and a leading figure in the campus sustainability movement, will be the keynote speaker at UC Santa Cruz's annual Campus Earth Summit on Thursday, January 27.
Sponsored by the Student Environmental Center, the summit will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., followed by an organic lunch, at the College Nine/College Ten Multipurpose Room.
The newly established Chancellor's Sustainability Council will be introduced at the summit, which will also include a brief opening address by Acting Chancellor Martin M. Chemers.
The Chancellor's Sustainability Council is designed to create a campuswide focus on sustainability by providing channels of dialogue, collaboration, and action among the chancellor, senior administrators, students, staff, faculty, and members of the local community.
UCSC's first Earth Summit was held in 2002. The summits have served as a forum for students, staff, faculty, administration, and the larger Santa Cruz community to collaborate and discuss tangible ways to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of campus life. Such efforts are intended to encourage the university to reach environmentally responsible benchmarks in specific topic areas.
Each of these areas is a breakout group within the summit, and participants will choose their group based on their own passions. Groups will brainstorm priorities and form ongoing working groups to create action plans to be implemented on a continuous basis throughout the year. Their work will be documented as an update to the Blueprint for a Sustainable Campus, the entire UCSC community's vision that contains information on history, best practices, goals, indicators, and priorities with regards to specific sustainability topic areas.
The event is free and open to the public. Reservations may be made online at www.ucscsec.org/blueprint_and_summit/summit05invite.html.
