University of Minnesota, Morris
EN-9: Staff Professional Development

The Office of Sustainability works with campus partners to hold "Summit" meetings each semester on topics like food and composting. Staff on-campus are invited to the meetings which provides them opportunities to learn more about sustainability topics. The second program offered is the BISoN program. The BISoN program invites all campus members to join a small group of students, faculty and staff to learn more about sustainability. The purpose of the program is to train participants in basic sustainability-thinking and to provide them with tools to engage with other people within their social networks on campus. The Office of Sustainability also works with professional groups on campus to make sustainability education available at their professional meetings during the year (for example, at UMM we have a Professional and Administrative Staff Association, and the OOS would provide sustainability education/training at their meetings). The campus also has a Fall Professional Development Day with a variety of topics. Sustainability is often included at this event as a topic.

The all-campus introduction to the Summit meetings are done via the campus lisserv system, which is used frequent on our campus to alert people to meeting opportunities. The Morris Fall Professional Development Day also features sustainability topics and provides an opportunity for faculty and staff to learn more about sustainability on-campus and to discuss progress and ideas for improvement. The Morris Academic Staff Association also has a brown-bag lunch where sustainability ideas are discussed.