Northern Arizona University
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

The Sustainable Campus Ecosystem Initiative (SCEI) was born in the fall of 2019 after five steering committee meetings with key group of 8-12 individuals, and two large brainstorming meetings with upwards of 60 individuals representing administration, faculty, research, operational staff, and students. The Office of Sustainability Manager co-facilitated the discussion surrounding current challenges faced at presenting operational issues into classroom, curriculum and utilizing the world-class carbon/greenhouse gas research we have here at NAU. We are still in the early stages of lifting this large effort off the ground and has spurred a Carbon-Mitigation task force to harness NAU researchers to turn their eye locally to our campus and figure out how to rapidly reduce our carbon output.
The goal of this initiative is to enable student-learning opportunities and campus-wide engagement through data sharing and a direct connection to operations to tangibly be able to see their impact. It is an ambitious, culture-changing initiative that we are hopefully will elevate the student experience and success as well as benefit our campus footprint and multi-party collaborations. The update to our university Climate Action Plan is designed to serve as the cornerstone to the SCEI initiative, provided the framework to activate student learning and research towards solving some of our most difficult operational challenges. There is a Carbon Task force being formed to help lead the Climate Action Planning and the SCEI initiative towards rapid reductions in our own carbon footprint.

The NAU Green Fund is primarily an undergraduate student committee that manages the collective fund generated by the $15/semester Green Fee paid by students - $620,000/annually. Since its inception in 2010, the NAU Green Fund has provided over $2 million in funding dispersed across 86 projects, addressing an incredible variety of sustainability demands across campus. The NAU Green fund has supported important projects including: NAU’s Conservation Program and NAU’s composting program, Student research grants, NAU’s largest solar PV array, two on-campus wind turbines, an ongoing campus-wide conversion to Tersano Ozonated Water, a number of student sustainability research grants, the Yellow Bike Program, the reusable O2Go container program, and sustainable menstrual products. The Green Fund is proud to include the consultant funding for the update to the 2020 Climate Action Plan among the projects that we have now supported through student fees.

NAU has proudly housed the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professional (ITEP) since 1992. ITEP was created to act as a catalyst among tribal governments, research and technical resources at Northern Arizona University (NAU), various federal, state and local governments, and the private sector, in support of environmental protection of Native American natural resources. ITEP was established at NAU in 1992, in cooperation with USEPA. ITEP accomplishes its mission through several programs. ITEP works with Tribes nationally to educate and train environmental professionals along with leading climate change preparedness studies and adaptation plans for tribal groups. More locally on our campus, ITEP has worked with the Office of Sustainability on the 2020 update of the Climate Action Plan and other sustainability groups to provide the important, and often missing, indigenous perspective.