“Becoming Catalysts for Climate Action: Sustainability and the Anchor Mission”

Abstract

University sustainability commitments, initiatives, and strategic planning efforts can transform neighborhoods and regional economies, facilitate powerful cross-sector collaborations, and help tackle cities' most urgent public challenges.  This piece explores why it can be daunting for university-based anchor and sustainability professionals to collaborate and how they might do so more effectively. The authors argue that by creating internal and external networks, sustainability and anchor staff have more opportunities to create shared language, metrics, and goals. In this way, projects at the intersection of anchor and sustainability work are not shouldered by a handful of individuals, but rather borne forward by a web of relationships that doesn’t overtax one office or institution. Through networks of anchor and sustainability-focused staff, faculty and partners, sustainability can be more effectively integrated into anchor institution strategies, borrowing productively from an anchor framework that considers multiple lenses: physical plant and infrastructure, procurement, workforce development, public engagement, community-engaged learning and research.