Passport to Earth Summit 2002 A case study in exploring sustainable development at the University of Minnesota

• Published in: International journal of sustainability in higher education Vol. 4; no. 3; pp. 239 - 249
• Main Authors: Bhasin, Brijdeep S, Bjarnadottir, Thorunn, Das, Varsha N, Dock, Maia M, Pullins, Emily E, Rosales, Jon R, Savanick, Suzanne, Stricherz, David M, Weller, Lark A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2003
• ISSN: 1467-6370
• DOI: 10.1108/14676370310485438

The second Earth Summit renewed attention to sustainable development and environmental concerns worldwide; in our university, however, attention has been minimal. In response, several campus organizations collaborated to raise awareness on campus and in the local community by hosting a year-long, nine-event series of speakers and panels, each related to a chapter of Agenda 21. In addition to raising awareness among our constituency, we sought to increase our initiative's sustainability. Towards these ends, we developed 11 objectives, monitoring our success at achieving these objectives throughout the year by using surveys of participants, panelists, and collaborators. Here we reflect on the series' impact based on evaluation analyses, and an assessment of how well we reached our goals. We close this paper with a discussion of our case study as a means to evolve sustainability interests at institutions of higher education into functional sustainability networks, initiatives and educational programs.