Dickinson College
PAE-20: Inter-Campus Collaboration on Sustainability

Dickinson College is a member of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resources Consortium (PERC), an association of 20+ colleges and universities that promotes sustainability in higher education. Neil Leary, Director of Dickinson’s Center for Sustainability Education, is a member of the Executive Board and vice president of PERC. PERC organizes conferences and webinars to share ideas and practices for sustainability education and sustainable campus operations. Through our position on the Executive Board, Dickinson helps plan programs for PERC events and Dickinson faculty and staff are frequent session organizers and presenters. In 2008 Dickinson hosted a PERC conference for sustainability coordinators from across the state. We are currently planning a regional conference on college farms and sustainable food for fall 2011 that will be held on Dickinson’s campus and cosponsored by PERC. See http://www.pagreencolleges.org/. Dickinson College is leading a NASA funded project, Cooling the Liberal Arts Curriculum: a Campaign for Climate Change Education, in which we are partnering with four community colleges. The program offers two workshops that are open to teaching faculty from any college or university. The Changing Planet Study Group is a year-long learning community for the enrichment of interdisciplinary teaching about Earth science and human dimensions of climate change. The Climate Modeling and Data Tools Workshop provides training in the use of a NASA global climate model (GCM) and tools to integrate and visualize social, economic, and environmental data for teaching about climate change. Faculty from ten different schools participated in the 2010-2011; faculty from 14 schools are registered to participate in 2011-2012. http://www.dickinson.edu/academics/distinctive-opportunities/sustainability-education/content/Climate-Education/ COP15 Coverage through AASHE (2009) : Dickinson College provided coverage of the 2009 United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 15th Conference of the Parties negotiations for a sustainability in highere education audience by creating a series of blogs, webinars, and live Q&As from Copenhagen, Denmark through partnership with AASHE. http://www.aashe.org/category/blog-topics/cop15-he

Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) The Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC) The Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI)

Intercollegiate Biodiesel Conference (2009): In April 2009 representatives from two dozen schools, members of the biodiesel industry, and members of the general public attended Pennsylvania's first intercollegiate biodiesel conference hosted by the Dickinson College Biodiesel Project. http://www2.dickinson.edu/departments/sustainability/biodieselevents.html#2009conf SEF Solar Scholars Conference (2008): Dickinson College hosted the first Solar Scholars™ conference of The Sustainable Energy Fund in 2008, which provided hands-on renewable energy education to the more than 90 professors and students from 31 universities who attended. Dickinson students, faculty and staff have attended every Solar Scholars conference since, which is now known as the EnergyPath Conference.