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This article outlines a three-phase change management process for institutions committed to creating a trajectory towards a sustainable campus. For the purpose of this discussion an institution committed to sustainability is concerned with and responds to its impact on environmental and human health, locally to globally. There are three distinct phases to this framework: awakening, pioneering and transformation. A transitioning phase takes place between each of the phases, which has its own set of distinguishing characteristics. The purpose of the framework is twofold: to inform the institutional strategy by recognising key characteristics of the change management process for sustainability; and to prepare and enable the change management team (sustainability stakeholders) to recognise and thus guide the organisation through the processes. A successful change management process prepares the institution for course correction and the ability to continuously seek new solutions and set new goals over time.
Today, Unersities must come to terms with the fact that compliance as driven by state and federal regulations merely keeps our institutions from being overt polluters. Until such regulations are updated it is up to a university to figure out how best to contribute to a healthy environment rather than deplete it. This is the basis for the intersection between sustainability and higher education. Universities that are on the cutting edge of this field not only improve their practices but also develop models that bridge the operations and academic gap and find innovative ways in which sustainability advances the core mission of a university via research and scholarship.
As a sustainability director who facilitates this process of integrating sustainability into the institutional fabric at Yale, I am frequently asked if I am going to work myself out of a job once the university is 'sustainable'. There was a period of time when I too thought that might be the fate of a sustainability officer, with the assumption that once solar panels were on the roofs, biodiesel in the buses, organic food in the dining halls and zero waste to landfill, we could walk away thinking our work was done. That was a very short-lived vision.
What has become clear to me over the years is that we tend to be distracted by the visible indicators or the 'products'...