Information on UMACS
The need for a regional organization
Why target higher education in our work for sustainability? Whether acting alone or in concert, the potential for colleges and universities to serve as change agents for sustainability is great. Institutions of higher education are major players in regional, state, and local economies, and are responsible for educating the next generation of leaders in government, business, and our communities. While some individual institutions have made significant advances toward sustainability in education and practice, there has been little collective effort or coordination on this front in our region. Consequently, schools that do attempt to raise the profile of sustainability on their campuses often end up "reinventing the wheel," making the same mistakes as other institutions, or may fail to recognize when opportunities present themselves. Faculty/staff/students working in isolation, often against the dominant campus culture, can quickly become demoralized.
UMACS was established in 2005 to address these problems by encouraging networking, information sharing, cooperative research, and by hosting regular meetings to bring together academic and operations people from a variety of campuses. This will not only yield greater efficiency, but we hope will prompt successful schools to share their models/lessons with others and provide needed encouragement those just starting out on a path to greater sustainability.
Goals for UMACS
UMACS will encourage the sharing of information and resources on
campus sustainability through a variety of means, including regular meetings
and moderated email discussion lists. Another top priority will be to
encourage campuses to establish ongoing environmental audits. Data from
these audits will be shared with UMACS members to help them evaluate
their own campus performance against real-world benchmarks from similar
schools in our area. Over time, we plan to build a database of these
benchmarks that can be used to evaluate progress toward sustainability
in all aspects of campus operations. Breaking down barriers to
collaboration between campuses and between academic/professional
staff/students at individual schools is our third area of interest.
Support for UMACS
UMACS is hosted by The College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, two Catholic, Benedictine schools working in partnership in central Minnesota. A grant from the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance also supported initial planning and the first regional conference in 2006. UMACS is currently a volunteer operation-- if you would like to volunteer your services please contact Dr. Derek Larson, chair of the UMACS steering committee, for more information.