Edmonds College
PAE-4: Sustainability Plan

As a community college, our staffing levels make it difficult to maintain several plans. Our Climate Action Plan, while including strategies for reducing carbon emissions, also includes the categories, Sustainability in Curriculum and Culture and Community and Student Engagement. Ultimately, the goals of the Climate Action Plan should be connected to our overall strategic plan, which is under development this year (2012-2013). The Sustainability Researcher led this process for the Climate Action Plan of gathering input from members of the Sustainability Council (which has diverse representation) as well as working closely with facilities (meeting as well as using collaborative documents to craft the plan) for the portions of the plan that affect operations.

The following strategies will be pursued per the Edmonds Community College Climate Action Plan (not directly related to the reduction of GHG, but more broadly related to sustainability education and community outreach): Incorporate sustainability into institutional framework, Make sustainability a general education requirement for all graduates, Hire Sustainability Researcher to coordinate Sustainability Initiative on campus, Increase sustainability integration into courses/programs across campus, Assess job market for green job viability, Demonstrate sustainable practices on our living campus. The college will: Establish Center for Service Learning; work with other Washington colleges as part of the Greenforce Initiative; work with the Washington Center on the Curriculum for the Bioregion project; work with the City of Edmonds partnering on the New Energy Cities project; perform energy audits through the energy management program for the community (residential and commercial); report on climate reduction progress.

As per the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, GHG inventories are submitted every year (although every other year is the minimal commitment), and progress on our Climate Action Plan is evaluated every other year. With a new President at the helm, the institution recently reevaluated its mission and core themes with the Strategic Plan under development this year. The hope is that sustainability goals will be a part of the plan at a high level that will provide focus for all departments. Goals related to the Strategic Plan will be developed by planning groups involving a wide variety of stakeholders and measuring of progress will depend on the goals (who and when), but progress must be maintained on an annual basis.