San Jose State University
PAE-20: Inter-Campus Collaboration on Sustainability

The Director of Sustainability at SJSU, Katherine Cushing, along with three graduate students, presented a workshop at the AASHE 2010 conference in Denver, CO. About 25 students, faculty, and staff from universities across North America attended the session, entitled “Measuring Change in Pro-Environmental Behavior: SJSU’s Ecological Footprint Challenge.” At this presentation, the SJSU delegation was able to share with other institutions what SJSU learned about using an online ecological footprint tool to reduce the impact of participating students, faculty, and staff by 10% over the course of an academic year. The Director of Sustainability at SJSU is an active participant in Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV), an organization that partners policy makers, local businesses and universities within Silicon Valley. As part of her involvement with SSV, the director of Sustainability attended the SSV Summit conference at Stanford University and moderated a panel entitled “Measuring for Impact and Success: Case Studies [in organizational sustainability].” SJSU maintains an extensive sustainability website where information can be found about sustainability programs, initiatives, academics, research, events and other resources. Websites: Sustainable Silicon Valley: http://www.sustainablesv.org/ CSU Chico Conference: http://www.csuchico.edu/sustainablefuture/conference/ SJSU Sustainability: http://www.sjsu.edu/sustainability/

AASHE Sustainable Silicon Valley CSU This Way to Sustainability VI Conference

At the CSU “This Way to Sustainability” conference held at CSU Chico in November 2010, representatives from SJSU collaborated with other sustainability directors from most of the 23 CSU campuses to craft a CSU-wide sustainability mission statement and climate change work plan. In preparation for this conference, the Sustainability Director and Dean of the College of Science, Michael Parrish, drafted an SJSU Sustainability Vision document which summarized current sustainability practices at SJSU and outlined the organization’s vision for moving forward. This document was shared with sustainability directors and coordinators from other CSUs who attended the conference.