Case Study: Sustainable Communities Collaborate
GOAL:
Increasing awareness and concern about climate change (anchored by the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and popularized by the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”) focused interest and pressure on Penn State University and its surrounding communities to implement sustainability measures.
CHALLENGE:
Although many sustainability initiatives existed on campus and in the Borough of State College, students were not broadly connected to sustainability issues/solutions nor to the local community in addressing these issues.
SOLUTION:
The Sustainable Communities Collaborative (SCC) was created as a cross-university initiative to connect students through their coursework to community sustainability priorities. SCC links students to community-based sustainability projects that provide students with opportunities to apply their classroom learning to real-world challenges. Through SCC, students also become acquainted with civic issues through partnerships with local government.
PROCESS:
Each SCC project is a facilitated effort, involving interdisciplinary faculty expertise and students, co-led by a key community leader and the University’s SCC staff, to help develop and support thriving, healthy communities and advance student learning about the scholarship of sustainability.Through the SCC, Penn State faculty members partner with selected communities in Pennsylvania, including representatives from local governments, campuses, businesses, and other organizations. Once the partnering community leaders have identified a set of projects that contribute to advancing their sustainability goals, they are then matched with existing PSU courses that include an experiential learning element. Meetings are held to establish the details of the projects, taking into account the needs and interests of both the community and faculty partners. Projects are typically addressed in the time frame of one semester, although some projects may span two semesters and may involve more than one course, particularly if the project is multi-dimensional and would benefit from an interdisciplinary problem-solving approach. Written project reports are provided to community stakeholders at the conclusion of each project.
OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS:
SCC was launched in the 2013-2014 academic year and has continued to grow in size and scope each subsequent year. The first year involved the completion of 11 projects by 218 students and 7 faculty members across five Penn State colleges, all with the Borough of State College. SCC has contributed immeasurably to the Borough’s
sustainability efforts, according to the State College Borough’s 2022 Sustainability Plan. “From 2013 to 2017, the Sustainable Communities program assisted the Borough with 48 different projects involving over 600 Penn State students and accounting for thousands of hours’ worth of actual work. The value of this assistance, if counted in redirected Borough salaries or avoided contractual work, could be measured in the tens of thousands of dollars.”
Furthermore, the Sustainable Pennsylvania Community Certification, a project of the Pennsylvania Municipal League and Sustainable Pittsburgh, is a voluntary performance recognition program to help municipalities achieve their sustainability goals to save money, conserve resources, and encourage innovation. State College Borough is one of 7 municipalities in Pennsylvania that has achieved Platinum Certification.
Within five years, SCC expanded to include many central Pennsylvania sustainability projects beyond the State college Borough, as well as engaged students at six Penn State campuses across the Commonwealth completing nearly 500 student projects.