University of California, Santa Barbara
EN-9: Community Partnerships

The Outreach Center for Teaching Ocean Science (OCTOS) is an educational outreach facility located on the UCSB campus. The entire building was recently accredited with LEED's Gold status. OCTOS is a project between UCSB and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS). The goal of OCTOS is to inspire environmental stewardship of our ocean resources through education and conservation. OCTOS will have exhibits that demonstrate ways in which visitors can reduce their energy use and environmental impact. NOAA has had a 30-year partnership with UCSB, and the two have worked together through programs that promote marine education and community outreach.

UCSB is a founding and active member of our regional Clean Cities Coalition, known as the Central Coast Clean Cities Coalition (C-5), which was formally designated by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2006. C-5 is a group of local stakeholders whose mission is to expand the use of alternative fuel vehicles and fueling infrastructure throughout the Central Coast. Arjun Sarkar, who works in UCSB Transportation Services as the university’s Alternative Fuel Coordinator, was elected as Board Secretary of C-5 in 2013. Recently, UCSB has been working collaboratively with the group Plug-in Central Coast, an offshoot of C-5. The group was formed in 2011 and UCSB has been involved in the project since its inception. The goal of Plug-in Central Coast is to encourage and facilitate mass adoption of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) in the San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. As a member of Plug-in Central Coast's Coordinating Council, UCSB has helped to develop the regional Electric Vehicle Readiness Plan, which addresses the challenge of providing charging infrastructure to support the growing number of people transitioning to electric vehicles. UCSB has provided staff time and input into the project and has been a leader in electric vehicle infrastructure deployment. Right now, the group is looking into the possibility of a DC fast charger on the UCSB campus.

Each year, UCSB co-hosts the Central Coast Sustainability Summit in conjunction with the cities of Goleta, Santa Barbara, and Carpentaria; the County of Santa Barbara; and the Community Environmental Council. These six agencies collaboratively plan the agenda, choose the topics, and manage the ongoing initiatives. The goal of the summit is to encourage collaboration and sharing of best practices to help address some of the complex environmental issues in our region. We do this with the belief that our water shed, food shed and other resources do not follow the same jurisdictional lines that our local agencies do. In order to create programs that are sustainable, we have to collaborate across these lines. Conference topics from the year 2013 included green jobs (social/economic well-being), renewable energy (ecological health), buying local (economic prosperity), and collaborative volunteer management. Projects launched during the Conference continue year-round. Examples include the Multi-jurisdictional Renewable Energy Task Force, where we are currently exploring the feasibility of becoming our own utility to allow us to better secure renewable energy for our community through a community choice aggregation option. We also launched the cross-agency Volunteer Management Program, which enabled local non-profits to shift from a model of recruitment per organization to a collective model of joint recruitment to the environmental movement as a whole. In each project we take on, we look for opportunities to create deep and lasting changes that will be institutionalized long after the conference. We do this through policy development and by creating new community resources and lasting community partnerships. All of the events are open to the public, and the planning committee makes a conscious effort to identify and invite to the event organizations that would be affected or that represent individuals that will be affected by the issues being discussed. We also ask our partners to help us identify organizations outside our existing network. Information about the summit is posted on our public website, including copies of presentations. Participants include local government agencies, chambers of commerce, non-profit organizations, campuses, utility companies, and private companies. When new ongoing initiatives are launched through the summit, we give all participants of the broad public event the opportunity to determine if they feel that their organization (or the people their organization represents) would be a stakeholder and, hence, want to be integrally involved in the process, including its governance. All organizations that declare their interest in becoming an organizer in the ongoing efforts are welcomed to the process. UCSB contributes year round staff time, as well as approximately $1600 each year for the event. The 2014 conference will prospectively include the pressing topics of water and energy. Through the upcoming summit, we will continue to launch new county and region-wide, ongoing initiatives. The summit began in Fall 2011 and has continued since.