Concordia College - Moorhead
PAE-20: Inter-Campus Collaboration on Sustainability

Just a sampling of ways that Concordia College has been sharing our sustainability experience with other institutions: Concordia provided information and assistance for, and is featured in, the report Sustainability in Minnesota Higher-Education Institutions. This highly accessible guide by University of Minnesota graduate student Kiernan Gladman provides an handy resource and snapshot of sustainability efforts at institutions of higher education in Minnesota. A Concordia student, Kristina Kaupa, presented in a student forum at the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (UMACS) consortium in November 2013 about her experience getting an EcoHouse on the Concordia College campus. Sustainability Coordinator, Kristin Brethova, co-hosted a networking session at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education's (AASHE) 2013 conference for sustainability professionals in higher education. At the 2012 Vocation of a Lutheran College conference centered on Sustainability and Stewardship, Dr. Ken Foster, Political Science faculty member and chair of the President's Sustainability Council, gave a presentation on Concordia College's sustainability journey.

Concordia College has official partnerships with Minnesota State University Moorhead and North Dakota State University, under the cooperative agreement called Tri-College University.

Concordia College holds annual Earth Day/Week events that cover the topic of sustainability, and are free and open to the public, including students from other local higher education institutions. On Earth Day this year (Monday, April 22nd, 2013), Concordia College hosted an event, "Just Cool It! Community Wisdom Meets Climate Change" that included a series of presentations across a variety of topics, but related in some way to climate change. Throughout the event, students, faculty, staff, and community members explored various approaches being used to design, develop, and implement concrete solutions. The schedule of sustainability presentations included 15 Concordia professors, 10 Concordia students, 1 Concordia graduate, 2 Fargo-Moorhead residents, 2 North Dakota State University professors, and 1 Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) professor. Prior to the event, a considerable amount of conversation took place between Concordia College and MSUM faculty members on the shape that Earth Day celebrations would take, and opportunities for collaboration and partnership. In winter 2013-2014, faculty member from the three institutions have already been working together and with community members with the aim of hosting an even more highly collaborative event in April 2014.

Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota's Tri-College University partnership: http://www.tri-college.org/about_tcu/