West Chester University of Pennsylvania
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

What began as a sustainability-in-the-curriculum initiative in 2016, West Chester University's Brandywine Project for Sustainability Education has grown to include Faculty, Staff, and Student workshops designed to introduce our community to environmental, social, and economic sustainability and engage them in WCU initiatives to achieve our Climate Action Plan goals in collaborative ways. Three bi-annual Faculty Workshops have been held (the most recent in January 2020), six Staff Workshops, and five Student Workshops (the latter organized and implemented by a student organization named Students for Sustainable Action). The Brandywine Project has influenced other efforts on campus by, for example, lending the "Brandywine b" logo to student research projects highlighted in each semester's Research Day activities.

WCU’s Geo-Exchange Distribution System heats and cools seventeen buildings on campus, almost half of all building space. Between 2008 and 2018, it reduced the university's energy costs by millions of dollars and on-campus fossil fuel carbon emissions by 65%. By seizing an opportunity to replace, rather than refresh, an aging district hot water heating system powered by a coal-fired boiler plant, WCU was able to decommission the plant (which had been a major point source of air pollutant emissions in Chester County, PA) and eliminate coal from its energy sources.

West Chester University's four campus gardens -- three vegetable gardens on North and South campus and at the president's residence, Tanglewood, along with the new Natural Pigments and Dyes Garden -- link the university's educational mission to sustainability, research, and social equity efforts. Food is grown organically, faculty use the gardens to extend the classroom outdoors, produce is donated to WCU's Resource Pantry and is sometimes used in the Nutrition lab for hands-on demonstrations, and off-campus charitable organizations, and research is conducted.