What Might This Funding Accomplish?

The Higher Education Sustainability Act will:

• Educate and train the next generation of scientists, engineers, planners, and business professionals will help in the development of new tools and strategies for environmental and resource conservation, energy efficiency and more sustainable development.

• Promote good business practices in higher education will prepare students for future success, and provides real world examples to the business and government sectors of how sustainability practices result in greater productivity.

• Empower “sustainability literate” graduates to help safeguard public health, protect natural resources, and support energy conservation efforts, as well as build a large market for sustainably-produced goods and services.

• Enable graduates to become informed private stewards of our natural resources — the end-result of an education that prepares citizens to critically evaluate the voluminous environmental information presented to them and come to their own conclusions as to the best course of action (a critical alternative to increased environmental legislation and litigation).

Most importantly, this level of funding would rapidly hasten the infusion of sustainability studies into multiple disciplines within higher education curricula. This in turn will produce a critical mass of graduates who are knowledgeable about our sustainability challenges and engaged in advancing sustainability solutions in both their careers and in their community life. We believe that these graduates will come to embody the core of a society that is sustainability-literate. They in turn will move the U.S. much closer to achieving a healthier national economy, society and environment.

Over a five - ten year period, one might also expect this funding to firmly embed sustainability programs in a core of several hundred leading colleges and universities, train upwards of twenty thousand faculty and administrators, and impact literally millions of graduates with a new understanding on how the economy, environment, and society are interrelated. The perspectives and content of dozens of majors would be updated to reflect the understandings of sustainable development, from the design fields of architecture,
engineering and planning to economics, business, resource management and community development.

In addition, this funding will enable efforts by the national and regional/state networks and the national associations noted above to create ongoing, quality initiatives to educate their members about the opportunities and information already available for sustainable development.

More specifically, five to ten years of such campus research, development, operations, and policy funding would:

• Accelerate U.S. energy independence and freedom from dependence on foreign oil, through new thinking and developments in both energy production/consumption and product design/manufacturing

• Produce breakthroughs on financing mechanisms and policy analysis to eliminate irrational regulations and make sound economic development more affordable

• Enable the U.S. to begin to take the lead from European countries in sustainable products and technologies, a rapidly growing sector in the global marketplace

• Help catalyze more effective voluntary certification systems for sustainable products, producing more competitiveness for U.S. industry

• Establish templates, based on existing successes such as the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, for creating sustainable business forums for business throughout the country, improving the pace of sustainable business development in both large and small businesses

• facilitate cross sector conversations and collaborations (such as the new Metropolitan Hospital LEED building in Grand Rapids that will house sustainability groups in West Michigan to develop synergies for sustainable development)

In sum, the mission of the Higher Education Sustainability Act seeks to equip our college graduates with the educational grounding necessary to meet the mounting global challenges that we face as a nation. These challenges are essential to the vitality of our society, not to mention our very competitiveness as a nation. While establishing funding for the Higher Education Sustainability Act will involve up to $50 million, a tiny amount in comparison to other federal expenditures, the impact of this funding will have a staggering effect on positive educational programs across the country.