University of Connecticut
PAE-20: Inter-Campus Collaboration on Sustainability

The Cooperative Extension program, including its subsidiaries, has hundreds of sustainability programs and publications.

The Connecticut Sea Grant College Program is a unique partnership between the nation's universities and its primary ocean agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The University of Connecticut is our State's Sea Grant College. Connecticut Sea Grant (CTSG) collaborates with maritime industries and coastal communities to identify needs, and fund research, outreach, and educational activities that have special relevance to Connecticut and Long Island Sound. (http://www.seagrant.uconn.edu/) Our mission is to work towards achieving healthy coastal and marine ecosystems and consequent public benefits by supporting integrated locally and nationally relevant research, outreach and education programs in partnership with stakeholders. The University also partners with the National Cooperative Extension Agencies, the USDA, the NSF, and other national agencies to promote research and extension in sustainability related topics. Much fieldwork is performed as collaboration with other partners, for example, partnerships with the Yale Forest or Audubon Society holdings. The GLISEN efforts for Long Island Sound study also fall into this category: "The University of Connecticut and Stony Brook University (part of SUNY system) are exploring the formation of a research consortium to understand the full range of environmental interactions that transpire in the Sound, its coastal margins, and associated watersheds. The intent is to be highly inclusive of patterns and processes in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine compartments, including atmospheric, biological, and hydrological dynamics. As a result, research could encompass population and community studies of wildlife and fishery species; biogeochemical dynamics of urbanizing watersheds; plant-animal microbe interactions in terrestrial or aquatic systems; multi-jurisdictional conflicts and climate change adaptation; salt marsh restoration, aquaculture; infectious disease dynamics; landscape ecology of litter invertebrates; efficacy of N-credit policies; fate, transport, and effects of pharmaceuticals; regional circulation models, urban forestry; air pollution and human health; food web dynamics; atmosphere-biosphere interactions"

The Office of Environmental has worked over the last few years to assist other regional UConn campuses in developing their own sustainability programs and student initiatives. Examples include collaborations with the UConn Law School for sustainable curriculum development, inclusion of West Hartford representatives at Recycling Workgroup meetings, collaboration with EcoHusky student groups in Avery point, and regional collaboration in the annual sneaker recycling campaign.