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Sustainability On University Campuses Learning Skills Building And Best Practices 1st Ed Walter Leal Filho
123
World Sustainability Series
Walter Leal Filho
Ugo Bardi Editors
Sustainability on
University Campuses:
Learning, Skills
Building and Best
Practices
World Sustainability Series
Series Editor
Prof. Walter Leal Filho, European School of Sustainability Science and Research,
Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Management”, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany
Due to its scope and nature, sustainable development is a matter which is very
interdisciplinary, and draws from knowledge and inputs from the social sciences
and environmental sciences on the one hand, but also from physical sciences and
arts on the other. As such, there is a perceived need to foster integrative approaches,
whereby the combination of inputs from various fields may contribute to a better
understanding of what sustainability is, and means to people. But despite the need
for and the relevance of integrative approaches towards sustainable development,
there is a paucity of literature which address matters related to sustainability in an
integrated way.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13384
Walter Leal Filho • Ugo Bardi
Editors
Sustainability on University
Campuses: Learning, Skills
Building and Best Practices
123
Editors
Walter Leal Filho
European School of Sustainability Science
and Research
HAW Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany
Ugo Bardi
Department of Chemistry
University of Florence
Florence, Italy
ISSN 2199-7373 ISSN 2199-7381 (electronic)
World Sustainability Series
ISBN 978-3-030-15863-7 ISBN 978-3-030-15864-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934514
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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Preface
There is much which universities can do, to make their campuses more sustainable,
either with or without an institutional policy behind it. Starting from measures to
reduce use energy more efficiently and reduce energy consumption, and going into
waste prevention and management, the range of action possible may also include
sustainable transportation and other measures to benefit the environment and reduce
the footprint of campuses.
Much can be gained if one can demonstrate how campus sustainability may be
put into practice. With this need in mind, the book Sustainability on University
Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practice showcases examples of
campus-based research and teaching projects, regenerative campus design, waste
prevention, and resilient transport, among others. It demonstrates the role of
campuses as platforms for transformative social learning and research, and explores
the means via which university campuses can be made more sustainable.
The aims of this book are as follows:
i. to present a variety of works on campus greening and sustainable campus
development;
ii. to offer a platform for the dissemination of ideas and experiences acquired in
the execution of research, teaching and projects on campus greening and
design, especially successful initiatives and good practice;
iii. to introduce methodological approaches and projects which aim to integrate
the topic of sustainable development in campus design and operations;
Last but not least, a further aim of the book is to document and disseminate the
wealth of experiences available today.
We hope the experiences gathered on this book will serve as inspiration to many
universities, and may encourage those not yet engaged, to start new projects and
other initiatives in this central area of university life.
Hamburg, Germany Walter Leal Filho
Florence, Italy Ugo Bardi
Summer 2019
v
Contents
Part I Institutional Practices and Frameworks
Engaging Students and Campus Community in Sustainability
Activities in a Major Canadian University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Tatiana Teslenko
A Review on Integrated Information System and Sustainability
Implementation Framework in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Mona M. Al-Kuwari and Muammer Koç
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development
of Sustainability Competences. The Experience of the University
of Bologna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Gabriella Calvano, Angelo Paletta and Alessandra Bonoli
Generating a New Idea of Public Mission for Universities.
A Sustainable Communication Paradigm for Community Building . . . . 45
Viola Davini, Ilaria Marchionne and Eugenio Pandolfini
Involving Students in Implementing a Campus Culture
of Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Madhavi Venkatesan and Julia Crooijmans
University of São Paulo Environmental Policy: Master Plan and Pilot
Projects for Pirassununga and Ribeirão Preto Campuses . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Patrícia Faga Iglecias Lemos, Fernanda da Rocha Brando
and Tamara Maria Gomes
Mind the Gap! Developing the Campus as a Living Lab for Student
Experiential Learning in Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Tela Favaloro, Tamara Ball and Ronnie D. Lipschutz
A Pragmatic Framework for Setting Up Transdisciplinary
Sustainability Research On-Campus That Can Make a Difference . . . . 115
Griet Ceulemans and Nathal Severijns
vii
The Brazilian Educational System: An Analysis of a Hypothetical
Full Shift to Distance Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
José Hugo de Oliveira and Cecília Maria Villas Bôas de Almeida
Using the Learning in Future Environments (LiFE) Index to Assess
James Cook University’s Progress in Supporting and Embedding
Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Colin J. Macgregor, Adam Connell, Kerryn O’Conor and Marenn Sagar
How Green Can You Go? Initiatives of Dark Green Universities
in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Jocelyn C. Cuaresma
Green Campus and Environmental Preservation on a Brazilian
University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Evanisa Fátima Reginato Quevedo Melo,
Marcos Antonio Leite Frandoloso
and Ricardo Henryque Reginato Quevedo Melo
Sustainable Universities: A Comparison of the Ecological Footprint,
Happiness and Academic Performance Among Students of Different
Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
M. J. Alves-Pinto Jr. and B. F. Giannetti
Sustainability in Higher Education: The Impact of Transformational
Leadership on Followers’ Innovative Outcomes
A Framework Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Reem S. Al-Mansoori and Muammer Koç
Part II Initiatives, Projects and Case Studies
The ECOMAPS Project: How the Academy Can Get Involved
in Local Waste Management Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Sara Falsini and Ugo Bardi
National Sustainability Transitions and the Role of University
Campuses: Ireland as a Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
William Horan, Rachel Shawe, Richard Moles and Bernadette O’Regan
Closing Graduates’ Sustainability Skills Gaps by Using the University
as a Live Sustainability Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Kay Emblen-Perry
Socio-productive Inclusion of Waste Pickers on Segregated Solid
Waste Collection in Brazilian Universities as an Instrument
for Sustainability Promotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Isabella Pimentel Pincelli, Sara Meireles
and Armando Borges de Castilhos Júnior
viii Contents
Adapting the Economy for the Common Good for Research
Institutions—Case Studies from the IGC Bremen
and IASS Potsdam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
David Löw Beer, Sara Franzeck, Tim Goydke and Daniel Oppold
Healthcare Waste Management in a Brazilian Higher Education
and Health Research Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Ana Maria Maniero Moreira and Wanda M. Risso Günther
“Salomone Sostenibile”: An Award to ‘Communicate’ the University’s
Leading Role in Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Luca Toschi, Marco Sbardella and Gianluca Simonetta
Engaging Students in Cross-Disciplinary Research and Education—A
Processual Approach to Educational Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Ulla A. Saari, Saku J. Mäkinen, Pertti Järventausta, Matti Vilkko,
Kari Systä, Kirsi Kotilainen, Jussi Valta, Tomas Björkqvist
and Teemu Laukkarinen
Campus Interface: Creating Collaborative Spaces to Foster Education
for Sustainable Development in a Multidisciplinary Campus in a
Mexican Higher Education Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Jairo Agustín Reyes-Plata and Ilane Hernández-Morales
Moving Toward Zero Waste Cities: A Nexus for International Zero
Waste Academic Collaboration (NIZAC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Jonathan Hannon, Atiq Zaman, Gustavo Rittl, Raphael Rossi,
Sara Meireles and Fernanda Elisa Demore Palandi
Towards Regional Circular Economies. ‘Greening the University
Canteen’ by Sustainability Innovation Labs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Susanne Maria Weber and Marc-André Heidelmann
Students’ Opinion About Green Campus Initiatives: A South
American University Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
João Marcelo Pereira Ribeiro, Lenoir Hoeckesfeld,
Stephane Louise BocaSanta, Giovanna Guilhen Mazaro Araujo,
Ana Valquiria Jonck, Issa Ibrahim Berchin
and José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra
Open Source and Sustainability: The Role of University . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Giorgio F. Signorini
Promoting Sustainability and CSR Initiatives to Engage Business
and Economic Students at University: A Study on Students’
Perceptions About Extracurricular National Events Hosted
at the Local University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Marco Tortora
Contents ix
University Campuses as Town-Like Institutions: Promoting
Sustainable Development in Cities Using the Water-Sensitive
Urban Design Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Vitor Gantuss Rabêlo, Issa Ibrahim Berchin, Marleny De León,
José Humberto Dias de Toledo, Liane Ramos da Silva
and José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra
The Fisherman and the Farmer: How to Enliven the Concept
of Sustainability by Means of a Theatre Piece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi
Whale HUB: Museum Collections and Contemporary Art to Promote
Sustainability Among Higher Education Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Valeria D’Ambrosio and Stefano Dominici
UNIFAAT Solid Waste Management Plan: Education
and Environmental Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Estevão Brasil Ruas Vernalha, Micheli Kowalczuk Machado
and João Luiz de Moraes Hoefel
Taking the Students to the Landfill—The Role of Universities
in Disseminating Knowledge About Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Sara Falsini, Sandra Ristori and Ugo Bardi
Green Design, Identity or Both? Factors Affecting Environmentally
Responsible Behaviors in Student Residences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Martyna Mokrzecka and Krzysztof Nowak
Sustainability in University Campuses: The Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . 577
Walter Leal Filho
x Contents
Part I
Institutional Practices and Frameworks
Engaging Students and Campus
Community in Sustainability Activities
in a Major Canadian University
Tatiana Teslenko
Abstract Higher education institutions (HEI) have the potential to engage local
and global communities in transformative learning for sustainable principles and
practices. However, transforming a university campus into a model of sustainable
development and best practice is a challenging task. It is only possible by engag-
ing students, faculty, staff, and the campus community, as well as local and global
partners. During the last decade Canadian universities have ramped up their efforts
in order to support community engagement and partnerships. They aim to connect
their research and innovation capacity with the policy and implementation chal-
lenges of partner organizations. The University of British Columbia (UBC) has
actively pursued sustainability goals and targets for over twenty years. By estab-
lishing the University Sustainability Initiative (USI), UBC went a step further than
other Canadian universities. The paper presents an overview of the evolution of
the university’s sustainability strategy and focuses on sustainability-related develop-
ments within the last decade. It discusses five on-campus and off-campus engagement
programs that contribute to UBC’s sustainability goals: the SEEDS program, Sus-
tainability Ambassadors, “UBC Reads Sustainability”, Student Sustainability Coun-
cil, and Sustainability-in-Residence, the Greenest City Scholars at the Point Grey
campus in Vancouver, Canada. These programs exemplify joint efforts for promot-
ing sustainable behaviors and practices that contribute to a net-positive campus and
promote human and ecological wellbeing. Developments and findings discussed in
the paper could be of value for many HEI interested in successful ways to engage
students, staff, faculty, and the broader community in the practice of sustainability.
Keywords Education · Community engagement · Transformative learning ·
University · Living lab · Agent of change · Sustainability · Partnership · Action
research
T. Teslenko (B)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science, University of British
Columbia, Applied Science Lane, Vancouver, BC 2054-6250, V6T1Z4, Canada
e-mail: tteslenko@gmail.com
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University
Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_1
3
4 T. Teslenko
1 Introduction
It is common knowledge that the world’s future will be shaped by today’s educa-
tional experiences of our students. For this reason, higher education institutions (HEI)
have an important function as agents of social transformation and change. In order to
address today’s most pressing challenges on a global level, HEI should develop con-
temporary problem-driven and solution-oriented curricula (Robinson 2008; Sarewitz
and Kriebel 2010).
Along with the potential for transformational action, HEI are in a position to
addressvariousdimensionsofsustainabilityanddevelopintegratedknowledge(Wiek
et al. 2011). Nurturing world-leading research, supporting innovative pedagogy, and
mobilizing partners and resources are important vehicles for enacting positive change
and promoting sustainability (Cortese 2003).
This paper first presents its theoretical framework, methodology, socio-
ethnographic context and research questions. It then considers key ESD develop-
ments within the last decade at the University of British Columbia in Canada (UBC),
a global centre in research and innovation.
Further discussion highlights sustainability-related pedagogical innovations and
advances in research, student and community engagement. Three topics are exam-
ined: establishing partnerships on the university campus and beyond, transforming
the campus into a living lab, and positioning the university as an agent of change. The
effect of these innovations and advances on building a sustainable work-live-learn
campus is examined.
An important contribution of this study lies in the consideration of the socio-
ethnographic context and collaboration with the local aboriginal community. Another
contributionliesindemonstratinghowa“wholeuniversity”approachhasbeenimple-
mented on a large multicultural campus, and how positive change has been advanced
in an integrated and holistic way. A third contribution is the examination of recent
community engagement strategies related to human and environmental wellbeing.
The paper discusses several examples of sustainability-related programs dedicated to
the engagement of students and the community. These programs enable the univer-
sity to enhance global and local partnerships and offer every student the opportunity
for transformative learning, inspirational research, and rewarding student life.
2 Theory and Methodology
The theoretical framework for the study comprises transformative learning theory
(TLT), emancipatory action research (EAR), and case-study approach. Transfor-
mative learning can be defined as “the capacity to change existing patterns and
world-views, to construct new knowledge collectively, to challenge and improve
practice, and to critique and examine sustainability issues” (Sterling 2004). Dis-
cussing the theoretical basis for the learning process, Mezirow’s TLT emphasizes
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 5
critical reflection, dialogue and holistic learning (Mezirow 2009). In particular, TLT
distinguishes between three types of reflection: content reflection, process reflec-
tion, and premise reflection. Learning takes place within the social and emotional
contexts of each student’s life through analysis, exploration of contrasting theories,
and critical reflection. Therefore, examination of this context is essential for devel-
oping sustainability-related curricula and involving students in sustainability-related
research, pedagogical innovation, and community engagement initiatives (Coops
et al. 2015; Reilly and Teslenko 2015).
Transformative learning is thought-provoking because it challenges wide-spread
beliefs and leads to a whole reconstruction of meaning (Sterling 2013). A shift from
conformative (or even reformative) learning to transformative learning constitutes
a shift to higher order learning. During this shift, multiple changes happen at a
fast pace, questioning traditional methodologies and promoting capacity building
and empowerment (Disterheft et al. 2015). As pointed by Howlett et al. (2016),
transformation should occur among academics in the first place. Changes of view-
points empower them to transcend disciplinary boundaries and integrate academic
research with non-academic expertise and systems of knowledge. As the saying goes,
“knowledge is power”, and the power of transformative learning is evident when
students and faculty critically assess and challenge their world view, assumptions
and beliefs (Howlett et al. 2016).
The value of integrating TLT with ESD has been widely discussed in literature
(Ryan and Cotton 2013) as a way to engage the faculty, staff, students and campus
community. When this happens, a university changes from a knowledge-transfer cen-
tre to a “place of mind”, i.e., a site for rigorous reflection, critical thinking and trans-
formational learning. The combination of whole curriculum reform and individual
specialized courses supports ESD integration in HEI because interpretive flexibility
and openness for variations offer a substantial opportunity for pedagogical innova-
tion. According to Leal Filho et al. (2015, 2018), about 600 universities around the
world have adopted the new vision of ESD integration in HEI. In Canada, many
public sector education (PSE) institutions require that their students should be famil-
iar with the concept of sustainability (Teslenko 2012; Vaughter et al. 2016). Of 220
accredited HEI, 110 (that is, 50%) have sustainability policies in place (Beveridge
et al. 2015). Traditionally, these policies have a Brundtland (i.e. intergenerational)
and/or three-pillar (e.g. economic, environmental and social) orientation to sustain-
ability(Vaughteretal.2016).However,recentresearchidentifiedtheneedtointegrate
non-traditional aspects of sustainability in the public discourse in order for HEI to
act as a catalyst for economic and social transformation (Leal Filho et al. 2018).
These aspects are related to human, societal, and environmental wellbeing; they
include ethics, aesthetics and culture, as well as non-material values, e.g., mutual
help, solidarity, and compassion. For example, Burford et al. (2013) have identi-
fied several cultural aspects: aesthetic, political-institutional and religious-spiritual
(e.g., intercultural fluency, diversity and equality). These new aspects contribute to a
fourth pillar that will expand the scope of the traditional three-pillar approach. Some
Canadian HEI, including UBC, now include this fourth pillar in their sustainability
policies.
6 T. Teslenko
The dimensions of this fourth pillar can be explored through action research,
an important participatory approach that is useful in projects involving community
and industry partners. Action research illuminates the impact of transformational
learning on students’ understanding of core competencies and skills (Reilly and
Teslenko 2015). It can contribute to the transformation of professional practice, gen-
erate new knowledge and lead to pedagogical transformation (Cohen et al. 2000;
Cebrián et al. 2012; Somekh 2006). Action research and interdisciplinary collab-
oration have unique transformational properties; they can address complex, multi-
stakeholder problems with high social and environmental relevance. Action research
promotes emancipatory rather than technical change, so it is can help faculty and staff
to embed ESD in the curriculum (Reilly and Teslenko 2015). It can be undertaken
by a group of instructors working at the same university, researchers within the same
institution, students and advisers (Cebrián et al. 2012; Somekh 2006). Therefore,
emancipatory action research (EAR) was chosen for this study due to its potential to
engage participants in a learn-by-doing process accompanied by critical reflection,
clarification of essential values, and exploration of contrasting viewpoints (Cohen
et al. 2000; Somekh 2006). Both TLT and EAR can be combined with observation,
interviewing, and pedagogical reflection (Teslenko 2012) and are integral to devel-
oping a flexible learner-centered approach for student and community engagement.
This flexible approach incorporates self-reflection on the transformative potential of
universities and the role of faculty, staff and students as agents of change. As noted
in literature, self-reflection of this type is necessary for integrating ESD in higher
education and for societal transformation in the 21st century.
Another important methodological approach used in this study is the case study
approach. As noted by Leal Filho et al. (2018), this approach offers the possibil-
ity to study all participants and documents which either empower or prevent HEI
from moving forward towards ESD. There are four basic constituents of a case: the
problem, the context, the audience, and constraints; all of them are considered in
our study of student and community engagement in sustainability-related activities
at UBC. Data about students’ and community engagement were collected through
literature and document review, observations, program participant evaluation sur-
veys, and analysis of institutional and program resources. This analysis focused on
the university’s initiatives, achievements, strategic documents and reports for the last
decade (2008–2018).
3 Research Questions Related to Student and Community
Engagement
Solving the challenges of sustainability requires collaboration between local and
global partners at a large scale. Discussing the foundations of “sustainable universi-
ty”, Sterling and Maxey (2013) conclude that the relationship between higher edu-
cation and the external community “needs to change for the benefit of both entities;
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 7
that there needs to be a much better congruence between these two realities” (p. 304).
For this change to occur, universities must actively seek partnerships as opportunities
to enact positive and sustainable change. Indeed, partnerships between universities,
government and industry are a popular element of international and national decla-
rations about ESD (Wright 2004). A partnership is an important mechanism through
which organizations and businesses can address complex sustainability challenges
and minimize economic, environmental and social impacts (Haanaes et al. 2012). In
fact, it has been argued that universities have an obligation to form such community
partnerships (Cortese 2003). In their analysis of 70 university partnerships in Europe,
Asia and North America for advancing sustainability, Trencher et al., (2014) note that
most of such relationships occur at the town/city level, with the local/neighborhood
scale the next most frequent. Partnerships between universities and communities take
many forms, including “internships, academic service projects, applied research,
organization and community capacity building” (Clifford and Petrescu 2012, p. 78).
Such partnerships can advance sustainability goals for both organizations (Bilodeau
et al. 2014).
Importantly, in 2015 the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
included partnerships, excellence and collaboration among key commitments of PSE
institutions to address societal needs:
1. To equip all students with the skills and knowledge they need to flourish in work and life,
empowering them to contribute to Canada’s economic, social and intellectual success.
2. To pursue excellence in all aspects of learning, discovery and community engagement.
3. To deliver a broad range of enriched learning experiences.
4. To put [our] best minds to the most pressing problems — whether global, national,
regional or local.
5. To help build a stronger Canada through collaboration and partnerships with the private
sector,communities,government andothereducational institutionsinCanada andaround
the world (Universities Canada 2015).
The University of British Columbia is one of three top Canadian universities, and
it is consistently ranked among the 40 best universities in the world (UBC 2018c).
It has two campuses: the Point Grey campus and the Okanagan campus. This paper
discusses sustainability initiatives at the Point Grey campus which is situated in a
2.4-million city of Vancouver in Canada. The university consistently builds connec-
tions across both campuses and creates synergies with local and global partners. One
of these partners is the municipal administration of the City of Vancouver. In July
2011 the City of Vancouver has set an aspirational goal to become the greenest city
on the planet by 2020 (City of Vancouver 2018). The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan
(GCAP) prepares Vancouver for the potential impact of climate change, while build-
ing a vibrant community, a thriving economy, and a healthier city. GCAP comprises
ten smaller plans, each with a long-term goal to 2050 and medium-term targets to
2020. These goals include the following: green economy, climate leadership, green
buildings, green transportation, zero waste, access to nature, lighter footprint, clean
water, clean air, and local food (City of Vancouver and UBC 2010).
8 T. Teslenko
The residents of the City and the UBC community proudly acknowledge that
Vancouverites live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish
peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem Nations. The
University Endowment Lands are situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded
territory of the Musqueam Indian Band (UBC 2018a). “Unceded” means that this
territory was not formally surrendered by the First Nations people and it belongs to
them. This land has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam people, who
for thousands of years have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one
generation to the next on this site. The following quote from an aboriginal prayer
demonstrates sustainability-related philosophy of the First Nations people:
This land doesn’t belong to us. This land belongs to seven generations down the road. I pray
that the water that we drink, the water that we swim in, will be there for our great great
great grandchildren. As well as all over the world. I pray that the land that we walk on, the
trees that we enjoy, will be there for our generations to come. These things, they all come
together with health. Health of humans. Health of the animals. And health of the Mother
Earth (Okanagan Charter 2015).
Since its inception in 1910 UBC has actively promoted a paradigm shift towards
embracing collaboration and promoting positive and sustainable change. A signif-
icant step in promoting social sustainability on campus was the signing of a mem-
orandum of understanding with the Musqueam Nation in 2006. UBC recognizes
the importance of this land to the Musqueam people and continuously reinforces its
commitment to aboriginal engagement (UBC 2012, 2015), especially through com-
munity involvement and through the transformation of campus into a living lab. It
is important to note that UBC sustainability strategy was developed in consultation
with the campus community, the University Neighbourhood Association (UNA), the
Musqueam First Nation, and external community partners. Based on these consid-
erations, the following research questions have been formulated for this study:
1. What engagement strategies are instrumental in building a sustainable work-live-
learn campus community?
2. How can a “whole university” approach be implemented on a large multicultural
campus? How can positive change be advanced in an integrated and holistic way?
3. What factors are important for turning a university into a living lab?
4. What strategies are useful for empowering students to be agents of positive and
sustainable change?
The limitations of this study are as follows: (1) it does not address all ten goals
articulated by the City of Vancouver; instead, it explores student and community
engagement at UBC; (2) it discusses sustainability-related developments on only one
of the two university campuses, specifically, the Point Grey campus in Vancouver; (3)
it touches upon initiatives within the last two decades and focuses on sustainability-
related developments within the last decade (2008–2018).
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 9
4 Key Sustainability Initiatives at the University of British
Columbia
In 1990, along with other leading educational institutions who signed the Talloires
Declaration (University Leaders for a Sustainable Future 2015), UBC pledged to
make sustainability the foundation for campus operations, research, teaching and
community engagement (UBC 2014). In 1997, UBC adopted a sustainable develop-
ment policy that encouraged ESD, as well as sustainable practices in its daily opera-
tions (Moore et al. 2005). In November 2007, the Province of British Columbia intro-
duced British Columbia’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act (British Columbia
Ministry of Environment 2007). The Act required that the university and all BC pub-
lic sector organizations be carbon neutral in operations from 2010 (Bilodeau et al.
2014). In response, UBC ramped up its efforts in sustainability teaching, research
and operations. The last decade (2008–2018) saw an unprecedented growth of UBC
campus infrastructure and a substantial increase in the number of employees and
students. The 2009 UBC official strategic plan, “Place and Promise”, reinforced a
high-level commitment to sustainability. It identified sustainability as one of six areas
that support the university’s three priorities: student learning, research excellence and
community engagement (SAS 2009; UBC 2012).
In 2009 UBC prepared a strategic document entitled “Sustainability Academic
Strategy” (SAS 2009; UBC 2012). It provided a vision and goals for enhancing sus-
tainability across the university, as well as a framework for the implementation of key
sustainability initiatives on campus. It is important to note that the plan was developed
in broad consultation with all members of the campus community, including advisory
and committee meetings, town hall forums, focus group sessions and opportunities
for feedback through social media sites. In 2010, the UBC Sustainability Initiative
(USI) was created. This strategic unit had a mission to integrate sustainability efforts
across the University and ensure that ESD, research and operations would indeed
advance in an integrated and holistic way. UBC established ambitious greenhouse
gas reduction targets and mobilized the work of many units across its campuses. It
initiated numerous sustainability-related advances, such as the ecological footprint
(Rees and Wackernagel 1994), regenerative sustainability (Robinson et al. 2011) and
shifting baselines (Pauly 2011). UBC was also the originator of the University and
College Presidents’ Climate Change Statement of Action for Canadian Universities
(University and College Presidents’ Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada
2012). In 2011 UBC became Canada’s 1st Fair Trade campus and earned Canada’s
1st Gold in the STARS sustainability rating system (AASHE 2015; UBC 2018c).
Inadditiontoinitiativesrelatedtoincreasingoperationalefficiencies,environmen-
tal stewardship and utility savings, sustainability is an active area of research and
study at UBC. Over 21% of faculty have sustainability research interests. 65% of
departments have courses with sustainability content. Across the university, admin-
istrative units pursue sustainability in their operations, and their strategic and opera-
tional plans include goals which are directly related to sustainability (UBC 2015). In
2015theuniversityforegroundedthreeinterconnectedthemes—inclusion,collabora-
10 T. Teslenko
tion and innovation. They were articulated in the new official strategic plan, “Shaping
UBC’s Next Century” (UBC 2015) and linked to four core target areas with signif-
icant transformational potential: (a) people and places, (b) research excellence and
collaborative clusters, (c) innovative pedagogy and transformative learning, (d) local
and global engagement leading to thriving campus communities.1
The new 20-year
Sustainability Strategy (2015–2035) for UBC’s Vancouver campus was developed in
the spirit of respectful collaboration with the Musqueam First Nation (UBC 2018a).
It builds on the previous UBC’s Sustainability Academic Strategy (SAS 2009) and
outlines UBC’s sustainability vision and aspirations for the period of 2015–2035.
5 Collective Action as a Foundation for Creating a Vibrant
Community
A sustainable campus is a place where sustainability is part of strategic university
decisions, where the university tries to improve the life of the local community
(Moore et al. 2005), and the local community is actively engaged in this process
through collaboration, inclusion and connectivity.
But how can “the whole university approach” be implemented on such a large cam-
pus? UBC comprises 17 Faculties, 17 Schools and 2 Colleges, with the student popu-
lation of 65,012, with 5,471 faculty, and 10,618 staff members. It has two campuses,
UBC Point Grey in Vancouver and UBC Okanagan in Kelowna (UBC 2018b). The
UBC community comprises residents of neighbourhoods on both campuses, includ-
ing students, faculty, staff and non-affiliated residents, as well as non-residents who
work or study on campus. UBC Point Grey campus is situated on the westernmost tip
of the Vancouver peninsula; it is about a 30-min bus ride from Downtown Vancouver.
This is a big site, at 993 acres or 4 km2
, and the campus is surrounded by 2,000 acres
of dense forest, known as Pacific Spirit Park (UBC 2018b). Altogether, this area
forms much of the 3,000 acres of the University Endowment Lands in Vancouver
Point Grey area. These lands were given by the government to UBC in 1908 when
the university was founded (The Daily Hive 2013).
The University supports a resilient and engaged campus community that addresses
changecollectivelyandcollaboratively.SpecificconditionsonthePointGreycampus
have cultivated an entrepreneurial culture that supports the development of sustain-
ability initiatives. This culture embraces compassion, wellbeing and social justice;
intercultural fluency, diversity and equality are integrated into UBC’s social sustain-
ability efforts. The campus accommodates a thriving multicultural community of
over 70,000 students, faculty, staff, and local residents. It has one of the most diverse
1Greatpeople —nurturingourglobalcommunityoffaculty,staffandstudents.Enhancinginclusion
within the UBC community and deepening our engagement with Indigenous partners. Collabora-
tive clusters — interdisciplinary research clusters focusing on problems of societal importance.
Innovative pedagogy — enriching experiential learning and research opportunities as ways to
master valuable competencies. Thriving campus communities — focusing on the wellbeing of
our UBC community, including sustainability and connectivity to our campuses. (UBC 2014).
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 11
populations of international students in Canada—in 2018, 26.3% of students were
international, which amounted to 16,188 international students from 156 countries2
(UBC 2018b). As a direct result of participating in the entrepreneurial culture at
UBC, these students acquire sustainability skills during their studies and rapidly
disseminate them on a global scale. Indeed, UBC has over 325,000 alumni in 140
countries (UBC 2018c). Two specific ways of community engagement are discussed
below: campus as a living lab and university as an agent of change.
6 Transforming the Campus into a Living Lab
An effective strategy of community involvement is to transform the campus into a
living lab and to nurture a thriving work-live-learn community. It means creating
public spaces, parks and amenities, as well as using operational, educational and
research capabilities in a way that “empowers the faculty, staff and students to study
and share lessons learned, technologies created and policies developed” (UBC Sus-
tainability 2017a). Two initiatives are discussed below: Sustainability-in-Residence
and Human and Environmental Wellbeing at UBC (UBC Sustainability 2017a).
6.1 Sustainability-in-Residence
UBC houses more than 10,000 students in 13 residential complexes and is actively
engaged in cultivating community and promoting green lifestyle choices (UBC
2018b). Every student living on campus can get involved in sustainability activi-
ties in the residence that range from integrating sustainability into their daily life
to joining the local sustainability committee. These committees present important
leadership opportunities. Students learn to organize events and activities that pro-
mote ecological and social sustainability topics in residence, such as reducing water,
waste and energy use; making sustainable food choices; using green cleaning prod-
ucts; recycling and composting. Sustainability-in-Residence activities are organized
collaboratively with partners on campus and beyond. As the program evolved over
the years, it engaged with many off-campus partners that work with campus resi-
dents, UBC staff, faculty and students in implementing and deriving lessons from the
“sustainable community living lab” experiment. Importantly, this program helps to
engage students in a way that stimulates their passions and empowers their collective
action towards making the Point Grey campus a model of a vibrant and sustainable
neighbourhood (UBC Sustainability 2017a). This kind of engagement and interac-
tion enhances transformative learning and leads to a reconstruction of meaning of
sustainable practice and the creation and dissemination of new knowledge.
2The top five countries where international students come form are China, the U.S.A., India, Repub-
lic of Korea, and Japan.
12 T. Teslenko
6.2 Human and Environmental Wellbeing at UBC
In 2013 UBC began a comprehensive eight-month process to develop a strategy
for next generation sustainability at UBC’s Vancouver campus. The process directly
engaged over 2,000 people and helped inform the new 20-year Sustainability Strategy
(2015–2035). In partnership with the University Neighborhoods Association (UNA),
UBC set up a goal to change from a commuter campus to a live-work-learn com-
munity. In October 2016 UBC announced a formal commitment and an investment
of one million dollars in ongoing funding to support wellbeing at its two campuses.
It became one of the first universities in the world to adopt the Okanagan Char-
ter (Okanagan Charter 2015). This Charter is an outcome of the 2015 International
Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges. It provides the following
definition of health promoting universities:
Health promoting universities and colleges infuse health into everyday operations, business
practices and academic mandates. By doing so, health promoting universities and colleges
enhance the success of our institutions; create campus cultures of compassion, well-being,
equity and social justice; improve the health of the people who live, learn, work, play and
love on our campuses; and strengthen the ecological, social and economic sustainability of
our communities and wider society (Okanagan Charter 2015).
UBC’s deeply-held commitment to human and environmental wellbeing is
reflected in the following goals set out in its strategic plan for the period of 2015–2035
(UBC 2016):
1. The campus housing and community development policies enable diverse and
more affordable housing options for faculty, staff and students reducing commut-
ing and financial stress, and supporting the development of a compact, complete
and adaptive community.
2. Integration of social sustainability demonstrates improvements in health, pro-
ductivity and quality of life of the UBC community.
3. Innovative engagement programs strengthen linkages across the campus to gener-
ateasenseofplaceandsupportthecreationofavibrant,animated,andsustainable
live-work-learn community.
By promoting human and ecological wellbeing in a holistic and regenerative way,
UBC empowers graduates, faculty and staff for long-term success (UBC Sustain-
ability 2017b).
7 University as an Agent of Change
Transformative learning is the basis for another important strategy for community
engagement: to position and promote the university as an agent of change. This flex-
ible, learner-centered strategy presents three opportunities: (1) to train future sus-
tainability leaders; (2) to work with private, public, NGO, industry, government, and
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 13
community partners; (3) to foster sustainability in the larger community beyond the
campus. In 2018 the university had 1,342 research projects with industry partners and
1,112 research contracts and agreements with government and non-profit organiza-
tions. This allowed 73% of students participate in enriched educational experiences
(UBC 2018c). Several on-campus partnerships are described below: the SEEDS
program, Sustainability Ambassadors, UBC Reads Sustainability, and the Student
Sustainability Council. In addition, one off-campus partnership is discussed: the
Greenest City Scholars program.
7.1 The SEEDS Sustainability Program: Experiential
Learning
The SEEDS Sustainability program serves as a gateway to collaboration for staff,
faculty, and community partners by providing a necessary link between the admin-
istrative, academic, and community engagement spheres of the university. It also
provides an experiential learning opportunity to students and promotes the vision
of the campus as a living lab. The goal is to support UBC’s efforts to advance sus-
tainability and contribute to its international commitments. The program is admin-
istered by UBC’s Campus Community Planning Department; it engages approx-
imately one thousand students, faculty, staff and on-campus partners in over 100
impactful research projects, including the Zero Waste Action Plan, Climate Action
Plan, Green Building Plan, and Wellbeing. It also leads the Campus Biodiversity
Initiative: Research and Demonstration (CBIRD) with the Faculty of Science and
campus stakeholders (UBC Sustainability 2017a).
The faculty are encouraged to develop sustainability-related curricula by tapping
into the existing networks on campus and to align research projects with classroom
learning outcomes. Departments are encouraged to create opportunities for students
to gain professional mentorship, experience and skills. Project managers are able
to frame sustainability challenges into well-scoped projects that meet staff needs
and inform strategic operational frameworks of the university. Students are empow-
ered to go beyond the classroom and gain professional experience and skills with
potential implications for future employment, as well as lead active research projects.
Involving students and the campus community in the social action of ESD empowers
them to construct knowledge through engagement and interaction. The power shifts
from instructors to students and further to community members; they start learning
from one another while they share their approaches to problems and find solutions.
The role of the instructor then expands to include the roles of the mentor, resource
provider, facilitator of the learning transfer and co-learner. In this way the princi-
ples of sustainability are integrated university-wide in research, teaching, campus
operations and community engagement.
14 T. Teslenko
7.2 Sustainability Ambassadors: Outreach Activity
“Sustainability Ambassadors” is an educational outreach activity developed by the
Teaching, Learning, and Research Office of the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI).
Volunteer Ambassadors work with the Sustainability Student Engagement Manager
as part of a team to deliver sustainability programming to fellow students on the Point
Grey campus. They network with various student sustainability-oriented groups to
encourage their interconnectivity on campus (UBC Sustainability 2017a). In this
way they help to organize and promote sustainability-related events and develop a
passionate commitment in their approach to sustainability. The program helps to
raise awareness of sustainability, to inspire the campus community to learn more
about it, and to explore sustainability principles and practices in their own lives. In
this was the campus community is engaged in holistic learning and conscientious
living through collaboration and critical thinking. This is another successful example
of implementing a flexible learner-centered approach.
7.3 UBC Reads Sustainability: Learning Beyond
the Classroom
The “UBC Reads Sustainability” initiative invites famous sustainability authors to
engage in a campus-wide discussion. It is not just a book club, lecture series, or
an opportunity to learn beyond the classroom—it provides a forum for students
across disciplines to discuss sustainability issues. Each year leading sustainability
books are selected. The program staff works with instructors in order to integrate
these books into courses, and to bring the authors to UBC for a public lecture series
(UBC Sustainability 2017a). It has been proven in literature that a discussion of
sustainability issues in the local context may lead to discussion of global issues,
thus improving the students’ understanding of complex topics through a “global”
approach. Students’ engagement with sustainability issues brings a fresh perspective
and enthusiasm to this discourse; students shift from an “outsider” position, through
a “participant-observer” position, to the position of a “leader” and a “passionate
supporter” of sustainable practices. Participation in the program enhances ESD in
students’ academic programs and helps them to experience real-world situations. It
also promotes clarification of essential values, exploration of contrasting viewpoints,
dialogue and holistic learning.
7.4 Student Sustainability Council: Leadership Opportunities
Founded in 2009, the Student Sustainability Council (SSC) is a select board of
students representing a wide range of organizations on campus. It manages funds
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 15
collected from the student environmental stewardship fee and allocates them for a
variety of sustainability projects. Importantly, any member of the community can
submit a proposal for funding support (UBC Sustainability 2017a). The administra-
tion and coordination of these projects provide important leadership opportunities
for student council members, improving their personal attitude towards sustainabil-
ity, promoting collective action, and enhancing critical reflection. Over the years an
increasing number of students got involved in the ongoing development of sustain-
abilityinitiativesoncampus:formercouncilmembersassumetheroleofcoordinators
for new student-led sustainability groups. In this way, work on the council provides
another transformational learning experience and encourages students’ commitment
and passion toward the development of sustainable practices.
7.5 Off-Campus Program: The Greenest City Scholars
More diverse opportunities for transformative learning exist in off-campus partner-
ships. The university has extended its reach to the off-campus community by devel-
oping a partnership project with the City of Vancouver (Munro et al. 2016). The
Greenest City Scholars program brought together members of the campus and the city
to support sustainable community development and enjoyed success due to a strong
relationship between the university and the city, shared sustainability goals, and sup-
port from senior administrators (Munro et al. 2016). In 2010 the City of Vancouver
and BC signed a Memorandum of Understanding and partnership (Munro et al. 2016)
for a duration of ten years (2010–2020). It outlines shared sustainability objectives,
guiding principles, administration, and implementation milestones. Key areas are
teaching and learning, applied research, community engagement, transforming the
campus and the city into a living laboratory, and hosting the world/communications.
Each key area has a set of suggested activities. The Greenest City Scholars program
was developed within the “Teaching and Learning” set of activities and was initially
called the “Green City Action Team/Mayor’s Fellows Program” (City of Vancouver
and UBC 2010, p. 3).
The idea of pairing UBC graduate students with the City staff emerged in the early
days of the discussions between the City and UBC because it offered benefits for both
parties: (1) the City appreciated UBC students’ research capacity that helped City’s
staff to advance its sustainability agenda; (2) UBC welcomed the potential to provide
students with valuable professional experience with real-world issues (Munro et al.
2016). Through this partnership, UBC could act as a “catalyst for economic and social
transformation” (O’Mara 2012, p. 235) and an agent of change for sustainability in
the community, which were some of the key principles expressed by the university
in its strategic plans (UBC 2012, 2015). In subsequent years the City of Vancouver
matched the funding of the program and provided the impetus for UBC to work
with other regional partners. This extra funding resulted in the tripling of the number
of student positions (Munro et al. 2016). In 2014, graduate student sustainability
internships, called “Sustainability Scholars”, were piloted with the provincial hydro-
16 T. Teslenko
electric power authority, a gas utility, a local First Nations community and several
on-campus departments.
Overall, participation in the Greenest City Scholars program helped UBC stu-
dents to broaden their sustainability education and led to significant outcomes to the
university and to the City (Munro et al. 2016):
1. It helped graduate students to acquire important competencies, e.g., an ability
to apply the knowledge from their own program to real-world problems, and an
opportunity to develop as agents of change.
2. It built an active bridge between the university and the City and allowed students
to play an important role in strengthening the partnership (Daneri et al. 2015).
3. It provided highly valued ESD-related work experience and allowed students to
make important research and policy contributions.
4. It was expanded because the City helped to establish connections with the City’s
other partners to encourage them to work with UBC.
Consequently, the impact of the Scholars program occurred on three levels: (a)
at an individual level—through the training and education provided to students; (b)
at an organizational level—through the contributions of individual projects to pol-
icy development; (c) at a broader level—as a mechanism to promote partnerships
required for societal transformation (Munro et al. 2016). These findings are consis-
tent with the principles of the guiding framework of desired outcomes for students
graduating from ESD programs (Marcus et al. 2015; Munro et al. 2016).
8 Conclusions
The University of British Columbia rightfully occupies an important place in the
globalnetworkofHEIthathaveturnedtheircampusesintoresearch,developmentand
demonstration sites for sustainable behaviour, infrastructure and community. UBC is
proud to share its 20-year-long track record of successful pursuit of operational sus-
tainability goals and targets. This paper briefly reviewed sustainability initiatives for
a period of two decades and foregrounded sustainability-related developments within
the last decade. It described activities that led towards student engagement and the
creation of a vibrant, healthy and resilient community and highlighted an important
part of this engagement—an on-going ecological conversation about sustainability.
This conversation helped to develop a shared understanding of ecological, social and
economic consequences of individual actions and collective action. The paper dis-
cussed two important developments: transforming the university into a living lab and
positioning it as an agent of change. It discussed the following important outcomes
that show how the University of British Columbia has successfully implemented
“the whole university approach” for embedding ESD through societal conversation,
collective action, collaboration and partnerships:
1. The transformation from a place of learning to a vibrant and sustainable work-
live-learn campus was facilitated by leveraging the community’s best assets and
Engaging Students and Campus Community … 17
diverse skills of students, faculty, staff and local residents. This was achieved
through delivering programming for all ages, building community capacity, and
engaging the community with outreach initiatives and local partnerships.
2. The university has deeply engaged with its local and global partners. Impor-
tantly, it has nurtured and supported a mutually respectful relationship with the
Musqueam people, the local First Nations Band on whose traditional, ancestral,
and unceded territories the Point Grey campus is located.
3. UBC joined other campuses that act as living labs, implementing ESD in ways
that empower students, faculty, and staff to become global agents of change and
influence sustainability practices around the world.
4. The university leveraged the introduction of the Provincial Government’s Carbon
Neutral Mandate as an opportunity to work collaboratively with its administrative
units, faculty, and students toward carbon emission reductions and associated cost
savings.
5. The growth and development of the campus created the opportunity to further
develop innovative practices:
a. On the research level, UBC researchers advanced sustainability scholarship.
b. On the curriculum and extra-curriculum levels, hundreds of ESD-related
courses, programs and educational events were developed for faculty, staff
and students.
c. On the organizational level, UBC committed to a deep integration of its
operational and academic efforts.
6. UBC’s strong commitment to promoting human and environmental wellbeing has
signified a major cultural shift. Wellbeing has become an important avenue for
creating a healthier, happier and more sustainable work-live-learn community.
Through these developments, every person in the campus community is empow-
ered to achieve their full potential in teaching, learning, research, and community
engagement. The University of British Columbia continues to build on its achieve-
ments, to study the problems and issues involved in implementing sustainable prac-
tices, and to prepare students with sustainability-related knowledge and skills.
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Tatiana Teslenko Dr. Tatiana Teslenko holds a Kandydat of Philological Sciences degree from
Odessa University, Ukraine (1989) and a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University in Canada (2000).
She is Professor of Teaching at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the University of
British Columbia. Her research interests include education for sustainable development, engi-
neering communication, and experiential learning. Dr. Teslenko authored four books and dozens
of papers in communication studies and transformative learning pedagogy. She designed and
launched several programs for international students (such as ASSIST UBC and the Graduate
Teaching Assistants training program). She was the founder and inaugural Director of the Cen-
tre for Professional Skills Development at the Faculty of Applied Science.
A Review on Integrated Information
System and Sustainability
Implementation Framework in Higher
Education
Mona M. Al-Kuwari and Muammer Koç
Abstract Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) hold an essential societal position
as a micro model for the larger community of cities, countries, and the World in
demonstrating a commitment to, contribution for, and transformational example of
sustainability. HEIs have a significant prospect for enabling change towards a sustain-
able future and development. An extensive number of studies present sustainability
ideation and implementation in HEIs with a large variety of approaches along with an
emphasis on the main factors affecting its implementation. In addition, other studies
report on different strategies used for aligning information systems (IS) with sus-
tainability. This present study is a review aiming at investigating the existing gaps
and identifying opportunities for future research towards developing an effective
and integrated IS framework to enhance and support sustainability implementation
in HEIs. Findings reveal that there is a necessity for further investigation on the link-
age between all phases of implementing sustainability in HEIs through integrating
sustainability and IS frameworks while considering all main factors that influence
this shift.
Keywords Sustainability implementation · Higher education · Information
system · Implementation framework · Assessment system
1 Introduction
In the past decade, a number of international studies, reports and conferences related
to sustainability raised critical issues about incorporating sustainability into educa-
tional systems (Shrivastava 2010). Although sustainable development (SD) in HEI is
M. M. Al-Kuwari (B) · M. Koç
Division of Sustainable Development (DSD), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar
Foundation (QF), Education City, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: monalkuwari@hbku.edu.qa
M. Koç
e-mail: mkoc@hbku.edu.qa
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University
Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_2
21
22 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç
not a new debate, it has only started to gain attention in recent years. For this reason,
there is an essential need to conduct additional and targeted research in order to estab-
lish new ways and means to develop sustainable practices in HEIs as they set perfect
examples and act as drivers for the rest of the society. On the international level, in
2000, the United States established the Association for the Advancement of Sustain-
ability in Higher Education (AASHE), which organized HEIs to lead the initiative of
sustainability conversion. The main roles of this organization are to provide resources
and a network of support and professional development to facilitate modeling and
advancing sustainability to HEIs in their activities. Another successful initiative in
this aspect is the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development
(2005–2014) by UNESCO, which aimed to encourage behavioral change by embed-
ding sustainable development into all education practices (UNESCO 2005).
All over the world, most of the HEIs started addressing issues around sustainabil-
ity through introducing this concept into their mainstream activities, research and
courses (Stephens and Graham 2010). Hereafter, HEIs were recognized for their great
contributions in supporting sustainability initiatives across their domains (Karat-
zoglou 2013). Accordingly, there are some successful examples of HEIs embedding
sustainability strategies into all of their educational activities such as curriculum
development, research, operations and activities. According to Goni et al. (2017)
an extensive number of studies highlighting sustainability in higher education have
been conducted, most of which have been concerned with surveying the substantial
role of HEIs in integrating sustainability, sustainability assessment, and sustainabil-
ity integration into education. However, in the context of higher education only a
few studies have investigated the function of IS in assessing all procedures used for
processing sustainability data (Gómez et al. 2015; Jorge et al. 2015).
Leal Filho (2011) mentioned that although over 600 universities signed interna-
tional agreements and conventions to commit themselves towards sustainable behav-
iors, many of them partially failed in implementing the framework of sustainability
into practice. According to Spira et al. (2013), most of higher education institutions
are following non-structured frameworks to integrate sustainability development. In
fact, he referred to a need to identify and formulate a generic and scalable framework
as well as to identify different influencing factors. Therefore, it is recommended to
avoid a focus on addressing specific needs of each organization, and instead to work
towards a holistic thinking to adapt and tackle sustainability issues (Nawaz and Koç
2018). In addition, an integral understanding of every system is mandatory to iden-
tify diverse factors hindering the implementation of sustainability in HEIs (Gómez
et al. 2015). Thus, it is important to cover all sustainability related dimensions by
considering how these factors can be related to an HEI’s system.
Recent technological advances have increased the availability, volume and capa-
bility of information management; decision makers require the availability of infor-
mation and data for both planning and decision making. An Information System
(IS) is a software that provides the information necessary to manage an organization
effectively by organizing and analyzing its data to move it into synthesized and useful
knowledge and functional actions for further continuous improvement. An IS gives
an overall picture of the company, acting as a communication and planning tool that
A Review on Integrated Information System … 23
assists decision makers to adapt to any changes. In addition to that, the IS is consid-
ered as a key facilitator to evaluate the performance and to monitor progress in order
to enhance business processes in any sector (Chofreh et al. 2016b). Therefore, the
evolution of sustainability practices in HEIs can be facilitated and improved with a
framework aligning sustainability goals, its implementation stages and IS; or it can be
adversely affected by the misalignment between sustainability and IS. Time waste
and excessive costs during sustainability implementation are two examples of the
possible misalignment that might lead to unsuccessful and inefficient sustainability
implementation. In contrast, the sustainability practices which are supported by IS
can lead to achieve sustainability goals and objectives in HEIs rapidly and efficiently
setting positive examples for the rest of society and other organizations.
This study summarizes findings from literature concerning the current state of
research in sustainability implementation by covering different concepts of pro-
posed frameworks and various strategies of IS in HEIs. A systematic review has
been conducted. The first step was to search for relevant articles from databases such
as ScienceDirect and ResearchGate using selected keyword including sustainability,
university, HEI, information systems in different combinations in addition to some
papers that were recommended by expert in the field of sustainability. Most of selec-
tions are scientific papers from journals, and the search resulted in around 100 +
documents. The second step was an analysis of the content of selected documents
by reviewing the title, authors and abstracts, a process which resulted in the number
of relevant articles being reduced to around 50. Out of these, only around 22 were
found to be addressing common issues of sustainability and IS issues in HEI at the
time of this search between November 2017 and January 2018.
The paper is divided into three sections. Section one covers findings from literature
review. Section two provides further research opportunities. Finally, the last section
presents conclusions and recommendations.
2 Implementing Sustainability in HEIs
Appling sustainability in HEIs is not a mere policy changing process. It is a major
transformation, which requires development and implementing a myriad of proce-
dures. In fact, implementing sustainability requires strategic planning, organizational
restructuring and decision-making that is supported by leadership vision. Different
perspectives of developing sustainability implementation frameworks and explana-
tions of how they would be mapped within IS in HEIs are presented in this section.
2.1 Sustainability Implementation Frameworks for HEIs
Sustainabilityhasemergedasanessentialtopicinhighereducation;therefore,numer-
ous researches have proposed schemes to introduce the sustainability concept into
24 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç
their mainstream courses, activities and research, while other studies have analyzed
different factors that might influence the implementation process. In this respect, in
2015, two studies were published: Jorge et al. (2015) conducted a research focusing
on analyzing the application of sustainability in higher education in Spain, and they
investigated the factors influencing sustainability practices; while Milutinović and
Nikolić (2014) studied the implementation process of sustainability in higher educa-
tion in Serbia, evaluated recent developments in theoretical concepts and practices,
and studied their potential impacts on Serbia’s overall HEIs practices. Both stud-
ies discovered the importance of universities increasing their commitment towards
sustainability application. They advised that this should be initiated by university
planners and decision makers and facilitated through acts of commitment such as
signing declarations similar to the College Sustainability Report Card (2011). Fur-
thermore, they concluded that HEIs require pursuing innovative ways to create links
with the society, mainly by the restoration of programs and a new research plan
(Jorge et al. 2015; Milutinović and Nikolić 2014).
Verhulst and Lambrechts (2015) established a framework and a model for sustain-
ability implementation based on some specific factors related to humans. In addition,
theyprovidedessentialguidelinestoembedsustainabledevelopmentinhighereduca-
tion. The authors focused on analyzing human factors influencing the implementation
of sustainability at the Belgian University. Resistance against change and internal
communication on changes were two examples of these human related factors. The
study showed that the theoretical model provided an explanation of the human related
barriers which, therefore, affected the integration of sustainability in higher educa-
tion. The authors showed the interlinkages between the discovered barriers and the
different phases of the implementation process. Finally, the study emphasized the
essential role of the continuous support by sustainable development representatives
and ambassadors within HEIs to enhance sustainability implementations.
Holdsworth and Thomas (2016) carried out a research similar to the aforemen-
tioned study. They developed a framework based on the theoretical Sustainability
Education Academic Development (SEAD) in order to identify requirements neces-
sary for educational development programs to apply sustainability in higher educa-
tion. These proposed frameworks considered the three main elements of an educa-
tional development program, academic development and organisational change; that
need to be taken into account in sustainability implementation in HEIs. However,
this study missed the guideline needed for this integration.
Over the last decade, the awareness of the impact of human activities has increased
significantly. This brought more clarity and pushed organizations to take responsi-
bility and be committed toward achieving SD goals. Furthermore, stakeholders were
highly engaged in the process of building sustainable future (Daub 2007). Therefore,
in order to support organizations and societies in their movements towards achieving
SD, accurate data collection in sustainability reports are needed to track performance,
share values, and take actions. To achieve this, assessment system and sustainability
practice should be aligned in one strategy. Suggestions for sustainability assessment
systems and its strategies are provided in the next section.
A Review on Integrated Information System … 25
2.2 The Information System Strategy for Assessing
Sustainability in HEIs
Darnall et al. (2008) mention that some studies noticed the integration of IS strategies
or existing assessment systems could be insufficient to achieve sustainability goals.
Moreover, applying conceptual sustainability models is very challenging if it is not
backed with some proper tools that are incorporated with theoretical framework.
Therefore, integration of multidisciplinary goals could assist towards sustain-
ability implementation and assessment. Moreover, IS strategies are different from
each other in design and scope, therefore ‘perfect sustainability circle’ will never be
reached. In the same context, Nawaz and Koç (2018) proposed a generic sustainabil-
ity management framework emphasizing the harmony between the suggested scheme
and established international standardized guidelines. The study also focused on the
importance of embedding the proposed framework with an assessment tool. The pro-
posed model creates strong relationship between diverse procedures necessary for a
systematic sustainability management.
Gómez et al. (2015) presented the issue of sustainability assessment by intro-
ducing an “Adaptable Model” for assessing the sustainability practices in several
application phases and data availability. This proposed model designed was based
on sustainability implementation experiences in higher education and takes into con-
sideration numerous assessment models and international declarations. The proposed
model is divided into four hierarchical layers with three main standards “institutional
commitment, example setting, and advancing sustainability” (Gómez et al. 2015).
They concluded that the assessment model is flexible and allows for comparison
within a group of organizations with common features.
Although Goni et al. (2017) mention the significance of managing sustainability
through assessment system, the concept of strategic alignment between the appli-
cation of sustainability in higher education and information system is neglected.
Goni et al (2017), focused on highlighting the important role of IS in supporting
sustainability activities towards building a sustainable environment for education.
The authors proposed the strategic alignment that should be established between
sustainability and IS in order to take all related activities of HEIs to a higher level.
They found that no IS strategies were considered during the initial phases of sustain-
ability implementation to support their practices, which would affect achievement of
sustainability targets. Conversely, this could be more beneficial for higher education
as it can develop the effectiveness of sustainability activities, as well as it can reduce
the implementation time and cost.
Regarding the issue of assessment systems to implement sustainability, Sustain-
able Enterprise Resource Planning (S-ERP) systems are important to be implemented
in sustainable organizations’ practices to assist them in avoiding the segregation issue
over extended value chain. However, organizations face difficulty in implementing S-
ERP system because of the lack of clear guidelines that explain the whole process of
applying the system (Chofreh et al. 2016a). For this reason, some articles addressed
this lack of guidelines through establishing the concept of the S-ERP as comprehen-
26 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç
sive plan. Chofreh et al. (2016c) indicate that it is necessary to provide a compre-
hensive plan and direction to implement the integrated system to avoid ineffective
and inefficient organizational activities. Authors tackled this subject by providing
certain components, such as a roadmap, framework, and guidelines. These S-ERP
components were verified by experts, and could be generally applied to various types
of organizations. Consequently, implementing S-ERP system in organizations could
be facilitated by this roadmap.
3 Further Research Needs and Opportunities
There were many existing studies concerned with sustainability implementation in
higher education, but only few of these studies have put forward generic, detailed
and applicable frameworks that can serve as guidelines towards a successful imple-
mentation to sustainable higher education. Many of them have presented theoretical
frameworks or focused on defining implementation frameworks at the level of a
particular university or even a university program in a specific country (Maas et al.
2016a). Couple other studies have concentrated on the development and applica-
tion of sustainability frameworks from the perspective of IS strategies and systems
in HEIs. However, additional and advanced studies still require in-depth research
regarding framework that considers all the components essential for the design and
implementation of sustainability and incorporation of IS strategies, along with estab-
lishing standardized guidelines for introducing sustainability in higher education.
Therefore, a holistic consideration of different processes when implementing sus-
tainability is essential, such as the effect of organisational changes.
As a result, there is a need to investigate more on sustainability implementation
processes in HEIs from the perspective of different influencing success factors that
should be considered in the framework and might affect the implementation. Further-
more, in order to succeed this integrated framework into HEIs, IS strategies should
be considered from the beginning of the implementation process by embedding all
sustainability practices using assessment systems. According to Gusmão Caiado
et al. (2018), although the results of this study find that there are five guidelines,
which can tackle sustainability challenges in order to facilities the implementation
of sustainability, there is an essential need for more investigation on sustainability
implementation issues in context of unsolved problems. Due to lack of standardized
guidelines for applying the assessment system to support sustainability activities in
higher education, more focus should be put on establishing the strategic alignment
for providing suitable guidelines for higher education. This will assist in performing
life cycle assessment and provide high quality information available in sustainability
reports to all stakeholders. As a result, the segregation issue that faced the higher
education while implementing sustainability would be solved. In order to provide
the decision makers with impact of social and environmental challenges and changes
on business and to reduce the consumption of natural recourses as well as promote a
healthy work environment, Battaglia et al. (2016) mentioned the important of using
A Review on Integrated Information System … 27
the assessment system to integrate sustainability into organizational strategy. How-
ever, the whole integration process of sustainability into the organizational strategy
was neglected due to cognitive barriers which led to stifled the cognitive enablers
and have disabled the integration process.
The needs of a research work are raised in order to fill gaps related to the lack of
integration of sustainability implementation framework in HEIs from the perspective
of all the effective factors and provide the strategic alignment concept with IS by
considering the best practices of implementing a system. According to Maas et al.
(2016b), most of research focused clearly on the IS in the context of environmental
and sustainability issues but the integration of sustainability by embedding all sus-
tainability practices that applied in an organization by using IS was marginalized.
Therefore, one of the challenges that can hinder the future research is to empirically
examine how organizations applied IS and what kind of tools they used.
4 Conclusions
Even if the sustainability is one of the most essential issues affecting society world-
wide, awareness about it and a sense of worthiness of its significance is still confined
to HEIs. However, the implementation of sustainable development at HEIs faces
many challenges. For instance, complexity of sustainability is in one hand of the
most important problems that has largely been underestimated, implementation of
sustainability, on the other hand, is a challenge that needs multidisciplinary skills,
information, politics, and collaboration between all levels in HEIs.
This study presents a review of the current literature on sustainability implementa-
tion in higher education to provide an overall summary and guidance on the topic and
uncovering the gaps in the literature. Findings of the literature review reveal that many
researches proposed various concepts for a sustainability implementation framework
in HEIs based on each of organizational point of view. In addition, it is clear that each
study considered different variables in their proposed frameworks. For this reason,
considering generic standers that could assist in developing sustainability frame-
works, it would be useful to be integrated with other components such as the various
influencing factors and information system strategies to coordinate the sustainability
transformation procedures in a successful way. Other studies separately proposed
assessment systems to facilitate management of applying sustainability practices in
higher education, such as S-ERP. These systems need standardized guidelines to be
aligned with strategies of HEIs.
This study also aimed at highlighting the knowledge gap in the linkage between all
components that are essential in implementing sustainability in HEIs. It is identified
that there is a need for further studies to develop a generic formulation to apply sus-
tainability framework with the underlined Information Systems (IS) strategy as one
of the important components and core facilitator of this implementation. In addition,
for a better implementation with an accuracy and accessibility of sustainability data
and information, higher education needs to take into account the assessment systems.
28 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç
As this study focus more on grab the attention to this issue, further applied research
through real life surveys and interviews needs to be conducted for suitable solutions.
In addition, due to different in geographical areas and cultures, any proposed frame-
works, guidelines, and assessment system should be empirically validated and tested
at national and international level.
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education: exploring the transition management framework. J Clean Prod 18(7):611–618
A Review on Integrated Information System … 29
Spira F, Tappeser V, Meyer A (2013) Perspectives on sustainability governance from universities in
the USA, UK, and Germany: how do change agents employ different tools to alter organizational
cultures and structures. In: Caeiro S, Leal Filho W, Jabbour C, Azeiteiro U (eds) Sustainability
assessment tools in higher education institutions. Mapping trends and good practice around the
world. Springer, pp 175–188
UNESCO (2005) United nations decade of education for sustainable development (2005–2014).
International implementation scheme. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001486/148654e.
pdf. Accessed 01 Nov 2017
Verhulst E, Lambrechts W (2015) Fostering the incorporation of sustainable development in higher
education. Lessons learned from a change management perspective. J Clean Prod 106:189–204
Ms. Mona M. Al-Kuwari hold a Master degree in computing from the College of Engineering
and Bachelor Degree in Statistics from the College of Science both from Qatar University. Her
Master’s thesis was entitled “The National Students Information System (SIS)” and it examined
the impact of the N-SIS on the learning environment in the Qatari schools. She is currently in
her second year of her Ph.D. in Sustainability studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. In 2014,
she joined Qatar Foundation as Program Analyst in QNRF and one of her main responsibilities
is to invest in QNRF data by managing and analyzing research data. Before joining QNRF, she
has spent over eight years as a statistician holding the position of Head of Statistical Department,
conducting research in Ministry of Education and Higher Education, on education system in Qatar.
Dr. Muammer Koç is a founding professor of sustainability at HBKU in 2014. Before, he held
professor, director, chair and dean positions at different universities in Turkey and the USA
between 2000–2014. He has a Ph.D. degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Ohio
State University (1999) and an Executive MBA degree from the University of Sheffield, UK
(2014). He has published 130 + publications in various international journals and conferences;
edited three books; organized, chaired, and co-chaired various international conferences, work-
shops and seminars on design, manufacturing and product development. In addition to his aca-
demic and educational activities, he provides consulting services to industry, government and edu-
cational institutes for strategic transformation, business optimization, organizational efficiency,
lean operations, restructuring and reengineering initiatives. He has taught courses across a range
of subjects, including product/process/business innovation and development; medical design and
production; energy and efficiency; computer-aided engineering, design and manufacturing; mod-
ern manufacturing technologies; manufacturing system design; material forming plasticity; and
the mechanical behavior of materials.
How the Structures of a Green Campus
Promotes the Development
of Sustainability Competences. The
Experience of the University of Bologna
Gabriella Calvano, Angelo Paletta and Alessandra Bonoli
Abstract Pursuing sustainable development in universities is not just a political
issueor management issueof theuniversities. Strategies andactionplans areonlypar-
tially useful if they are not accompanied by concrete actions in teaching, in research
and in the outreach as well as the development of physical structures that respond
to the principles and criteria of sustainability. Many universities made steps in this
direction, making green their campuses. It lacked, however, the awareness that the
“physical structures” can effect learning, allowing students to develop skills useful
to promote sustainable lifestyles and they become professionals “of the future capa-
ble of.” This paper aims to highlight the educational function that the University of
Bologna has developed through the changes implemented to the plexus structures
“Terracini” of the School of Engineering and Architecture. Through a series of inter-
views with key observers (students, faculty, staff), the paper illustrates how, even
enhancing the leading role of the students, the campus has become a real “living
lab” in which design new ideas, test participation initiatives and concrete realization
of the projects, teaching and dissemination of good practices. In other words, it is a
starting point for the promotion of social, educational and research the principles of
sustainability.
Keywords Education · Green office · Participation · Structures and places ·
Sustainable development
G. Calvano (B)
Department of Biology, Aldo Moro - University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, Bari, Italy
e-mail: gabriella.calvano@uniba.it
A. Paletta
Department of Management, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna,
Via Capo di Lucca 34, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: angelo.paletta@unibo.it
A. Bonoli
Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Alma Mater
Studiorum - University of Bologna, Via Terracini 28, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: alessandra.bonoli@unibo.it
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University
Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_3
31
32 G. Calvano et al.
1 Introduction. Sustainable Development and University:
The Importance of Make Structures and Places
Sustainable
Universities were the first institutions to work toward sustainable development
(Wright 2004; Stephens et al. 2008), expressing their commitment through the sub-
scription of numerous international declarations, such as the Talloires in 1990, when
the world commitment of universities for sustainability officially began (Huppè et al.
2013). Over the years, universities have focused on important aspects and responsi-
bilities, in line with their main missions: preparing students for the future, researching
the causes of global challenges and hypothesising solutions, developing good prac-
tices through governance and the management of resources in close relationship with
the local community.
The universities’ commitment for sustainable development is not a mere “formal”
issue, but on the contrary, it is made of concrete actions (Leal Filho 2011) such as:
curricula’s transformation, the changes in campus structures, the research towards
sustainability issues, the implementation of lifelong training courses, the implemen-
tation of concrete projects with and for the territory and the creation and management
of relevant information and knowledge (Karatzoglou 2013, p. 45).
The risk, however, that this commitment may lead to a “systems failure”, due to
the “continuing inability to sufficiently adapt to our social and economic systems to
their ecological context” (Sterling 2004), is very high, especially related to several
challenges that the university is asked to face (Leal Filho 2011):
1. the need of a wider sustainability interpretation as well as the responsibilities
that every country and every citizen has in its implementation;
2. the need to better communicate sustainability to different nations and to different
kind of public to make it understandable and to encourage the involvement of all
countries (regardless of their economic situation), as requested and underlined
by the Agenda 2030;
3. the need to make sustainability concrete and operational. Together with the con-
siderable number of studies and publications, more good practices, projects and
case studies need to be disseminated in order to show what can be done and how.
4. the need to increase the support for sustainability through (Leal Filho 2010): an
understanding of the university role in the implementation of sustainable develop-
ment, on the job training interventions for academic staff on sustainability issues,
the creation of research centres and/or working groups to discuss the best way
to pursue sustainable development through specific initiatives, the development
of partnerships and networks (inside the same institution and between different
institutions) for the exchange of ideas, experiences, best practices, creation and
implementation of specific projects.
Taking care of sustainability offers universities the opportunity not only to gener-
ate new knowledge but also to contribute to the development of sustainability skills,
and the awareness about this issue. Considering sustainability as a guiding principle
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 33
of universities can also facilitate institutional change, making it systemic and provid-
ing spaces for critical and transformative thinking, making sure that the university
itself plays an important role in the society transformation (Barth and Rieckmann
2012).
This process can be speed up if it is supported by training interventions, which are
implemented not as just a redefinition of the curricula, but including specific aspects
of sustainable development. An increasing number of universities (e.g. Oberlin and
Portland State University) use buildings and facilities as tools to educate on sus-
tainability. Campuses are considered real “living laboratories” where students can
experience the link between the theories and the knowledge learned in the classroom
and real cases from local reality. The living laboratories promote, in fact, students’
full participation in the change for sustainability through their active involvement in
the choices and actions to be performed in the campus. This participation increases
their civic commitment in the improvement of local communities’ internal sustain-
ability processes (Hansen 2017, pp. 225–226).
Although there is plenty of literature on what students should learn about sustain-
ability, there are few studies on students’ perception of the actual usability of their
learning for sustainability (Carew and Mitchell 2002) even in their own university.
Indeed, there are limited participation opportunities for students in the sustainability
development of their university (Nejati and Nejati 2013). Hicks (2002) acknowl-
edges how “the emotional impact of global issues on students learning is still a
neglected area of research” and highlights the necessity of pedagogical paths able
to develop students’ sense of hope and empowerment, because global problems also
imply emotional involvement (Hicks 2002, p. 99).
Promoting the development of a sense of responsibility through university implies
that each student perceives himself as an agent of change for sustainability and
develops skills necessary to face sustainability challenges.
This contribution aims fill this gap by presenting a university teaching experience
that enhances the role of students, their participation and their responsibility for their
university’s sustainability.
The Green Office model, born and developed in the last years in Northern Europe,
has the objective of the creation of a “hub” managed by the students with the close
collaboration and supervision of the teaching staff and administrative staff, in order to
promote sustainability actions and to propose itself as a model for the local territory.
2 Educating for Sustainable Development: Political
Dimension and Need for Participation
Sustainable development’s education, even at university level, is currently having
a strong international (both as a result of the Decade of Education of Sustainable
Development and following the definition of the UN Agenda 2030) and national
momentum (with the National Development Education Plan for Sustainability of
34 G. Calvano et al.
the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research 2017). However, there
is still much to be done: a cultural and structural change inside the universities,
which is inevitably complex and requires the involvement of the entire institutional
community, can occur more easily with a clear, precise and consistent educational
commitment on sustainable development and its challenges (Sterling 2001).
As Morin stated (2015, pp. 36–37), there is still the opposition of the current
training systems to provide the tools for questioning and reflecting on the good life,
because the teaching is still faulty and strictly associated to specific fields considered
not to be interconnected.
Educating for sustainable development is much more than teaching what sustain-
able development really is, because it involves actually experiencing sustainability:
it is practice and theory together, sustainability principles integration in everyday
life. For this reason, universities sustainability experiences are more effective when
supported by training courses focused on “a learning-by-doing approach that can
demonstrate how to answer the multiple challenges of sustainability” (Cappellaro
and Bonoli 2014). Education for sustainable development is in fact interdisciplinary,
collaborative, experiential and potentially transformative; it produces spaces to think,
inquiry, dialogue and act (Moore 2005, p. 78). From this perspective, education can
be considered as a driver for change: investing in education means investing in and
for the future.
The sustainable development education goal is, in fact, to make students able to
imagine alternative development practices and to participate in the increasingly nec-
essary processes of change. Only the full understanding of the political dimension of
sustainable development education will make it possible to acknowledge education
as a specific community and social need that requires: learning methods able for
enhancing real experience as an instrument of authentic knowledge (Dewey 2014);
development of skills for sustainability (Brundiers et al. 2010; Brundiers and Wiek
2013; Thomas 2009) and promotion of effective thinking that comes from the liv-
ing experience and constantly refers to it and that sees reality as an instrument of
continuous comparison (Mortari 2008, p. 38).
Fostering the development of a sense of responsibility through university courses
let each student perceive himself as an agent of change for sustainability. In an uncer-
tainandrapidlychangingworld, higher educationacquires anincreasinglysignificant
role in helping students to be active and responsible citizens and can become a lab-
oratory of democracy and civil commitment in which everyone contributes to the
common good: “to improve education we need to get out of the classroom and think
about our community’s problems, seeing the territory as a space for participation
and learning that commit us to develop relevant knowledge. The proposal is to stop
considering […] young people only as a hope for the future or as beneficiaries of
assistance and inclusion policies, but to offer them the opportunity to be active agents
of the present” (Nieves Tapia 2016, p. 4).
Place-based education paths are undoubtedly very useful for this purpose. In
fact, this kind of interventions contextualize knowledge, content and skills within
experiential and multidisciplinary learning environments and promote useful actions
for the community (Gruenewald 2003) and the community-building (Schild 2016,
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 35
p. 20) as they refer to direct aspects of students’ daily life (Palberg and Jari 2000;
Leeming and Porter 1997).
The creation of “good” citizens requires an education of young people to par-
ticipate in their communities life and to establish a high quality relationship with
them. Participating is “thinking together about community life problems, looking
for solutions together, comparing them, and then, through the dialogue, choose the
right option” (Mortari 2008, p. 54). For this aim, projects of living lab and active
students’ participation are very important in universities.
As stated in the 1992 Rio Conference, participation is a fundamental require-
ment for sustainable development. Chapter 36 of the Agenda 21 Document (United
Nations 1992), in fact, calls for encouraging participatory processes on sustainability
by giving undisputed value to education at all levels. Participation allows a general
change in the reference paradigm and contributes to the dissemination of sustain-
ability culture in universities.
The students are more and more aware to the themes and issues of sustainable
development (UNESCO 2014). They are thus called to interact with the other com-
munity members to develop an understanding and to set up actions able to change the
current situation. They are no longer spectators but key players for their university’s
sustainability. This is why much more needs to be done to involve students in higher
education transformation processes in order to increase their sense of responsibility,
to foster their emotional involvement and to develop empowerment and hope (Hicks
2002, p. 99).
Oneofthestrengthsisundoubtedlylinkedtothereductionofthegapbetweenwhat
it is said in the classrooms and the perceived sustainable development requirements at
an economic, social and environmental level (Kajikawa 2008). Unfortunately, there
are cases in which students “found that what they have learned is so unrelated to real
life situations not to give them any control over it” (Dewey 2014, p. 13). There is
the need of quality experiences, able of influencing further and future experiences.
The dialogue, the comparison and the interaction clearly represent an opportunity
for common growth, favoring the construction of a life project, promoting active
and democratic participation and opportunities of growth at several levels: personal,
university community, local community and global community.
3 Participation in Practice: The Experience
of the “Terracini in Transition” Living Lab
and the Creation of the University of Bologna’s Green
Office
The Green Office of the University of Bologna is intended as a hub for students as
drivers of change together with universities and cities. Based on the Northern Europe
Green Office projects, it has been designed inside the participation in an European
36 G. Calvano et al.
project Horizon 2020 about the regeneration of urban areas in the university of
Bologna zone.
The Green Office can be considered as “an organizational niche” where new
experimentation practices take place. It is a catalyst for change that allows a larger
involvement of students in the University’s efforts towards sustainability (Spira and
Backer-Shelley 2015, p. 211).
Through confrontation, students develop a strong critical thought, seen as the
development of “refined logical and argumentative skills […] on the basis of a contin-
uous confrontation with the most important social, economic and political questions”
(Mortari 2008, p. 38) related to their university. Teachers, students and technical and
administrative staff design, discuss, imagine and experiment sustainable solutions;
together they grow, together they educate themselves and feel co-responsible for the
choices and the measures to be implemented. The Green Office is therefore a dimen-
sion of personal and social growth in which each actor of university life recognizes
its role and its responsibility to start an important process of institutional, urban and
human regeneration.
The Green Office of the University of Bologna stems from the experience of the
“Terracini in Transition” Living Lab of the School of Engineering.
4 Methodology
The living lab has been studied to outline its strengths or weaknesses and to value its
replicability and its enormous potential to create more structured, broad, multidis-
ciplinary projects that involve the entire university community and deeply interact
with the city and the local territory. This study presents a “on the field” research
about “Terracini in Transition” through direct interviews with its main actors.
This research aims to investigate, through a qualitative exploratory research, the
perception of:
1. the potential that the participation to the Living Lab of “Terracini in Transition”
has for the university transition towards sustainability;
2. a possible relationship between the participation in the Living Lab and the devel-
opment of skills for the creation of the future Green Office and sustainability
actions at city level, specifying which actions are undertaken;
3. if and how knowledge and skills acquisition can be encouraged by university’s
facilities;
4. how much Green Office participation can increase sustainability in the univer-
sity’s own city.
Interviews were carried out from September 2017 to February 2018 with thir-
teen members considered privileged observers (four members of the technical and
administrative staff and nine students) of the “Terracini in Transition” Living Lab
of the School of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Bologna. This
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 37
meant that they became part of the sample of this research (reasoned sampling). The
interviews were carried out at the Terracini Campus of the University of Bologna.
Interviews were conducted according to an informed protocol including 5 ques-
tions, administered in a specific order from the most general questions to the most
sensitive ones. The questions were not provided in advance to the interviewees to
avoid any biased responses and attitudes (Vitale et al. 2008). The answers were digi-
tally recorded and manually transcribed. The interview transcription was sent to each
interviewee to be approved.
The use of semi-structured interviews facilitated the understanding of the Living
Lab experience by giving participants the opportunity to freely express themselves
and allowed to obtain rich and various data (Bryman 2012).
The content of the interviews were compared and emphasis was placed on simi-
larities and differences, as well as on relevant aspects emerged during the interviews.
A rigorous analysis of the collected material and the suspension of judgment allowed
to limit the risk of subjectivity that may arise in interpretative research.
5 Data Analysis and Main Results
5.1 Potential for University’s Transition Toward
Sustainability
Regarding the Living Lab potential in the creation of a university Green Office and
in the transition toward sustainability of the University of Bologna, no differences
were found between the administrative staff and the students. In particular, the main
detected potentials were:
1. educational
2. relational (creation of new relationship and recovery or strengthening of the
existing ones).
The educational potential is expressed in the increasing awareness on environ-
mental and sustainability issues, making clear a particular interest on these topics:
“Although there is the decentralized department of environmental engineering, the
environmental component is strong … however, entering this department no one
notices it. Instead “Terracini in Transition” means that there is clear attention to
these issues and therefore allows those who are interested to get in and collaborate.
[…] Moves consciences” (F.L.). The word “conscience” echoes in the words of S.P.
according to which “everyone should try to carry forward a sustainable conscience …
The university should support this and students should be interested in these issues”.
“Terracini in Transition” is view as a “connection for practices that can
help everybody with examples of sustainable actions” (E.F.) but also as a “big
educational and teaching tool because it changes the point of view […] the
teacher is not anymore the only one that provides knowledge and solutions
38 G. Calvano et al.
but the solutions are designed with the students […] that is how we become a com-
munity useful for other communities” (F.C.).
Participants of the project report another important potentiality of their activ-
ity: creating and reinforcing the relationships between people and disciplines. E.S.
highlights this aspect very well: “I really like the interdisciplinary … [students of]
management engineer, mechanic engineer and civil engineer understand that these
issues concern not only someone but everyone. The Living Lab allows us to know
each other outside our groups … which is an important aspect … because we are
very sectoral and we know it. It’s chance to know each other and to improve, which
is always good”.
5.2 Relationship Between Green Office Participation
and Skills Development
Sustainability undoubtedly places new challenges for our societies that require cre-
ativity, self-organization and transversal competences that the university often does
not provide but are essential to create citizens for sustainability.
The word competences describes the specific attributes that individuals need for
action and self-organization in various complex situations and contexts. They include
cognitive, affective, intentional and motivational elements; therefore, they constitute
an interaction of knowledge, skills and abilities, motivations and affective disposi-
tions (UNESCO 2017). Skills can not be taught but must be developed by the learners.
They are acquired in action, based on the experience and the reflection (UNESCO
2014).
Therearespecificskillsthatareconsideredessentialforsustainability(seedeHaan
2010; Rieckmann 2012; Wiek et al. 2011): systemic thinking, prevision, regulation,
strategic, collaborative and critical thinking, self-awareness, problem solving.
Can Green Office participation develop competences? Which competences are
involved and who develops them?
All the respondents agree that being part of the Green Office and participating in
its projects provides the development of personal skills useful also for the students’
professional future.
Even though is widely agreed that Green Office is helpful for the development
of technical competences, all the interviewee agree that it fosters “practical and
transversal competences” (D.P.) as well, in other words soft skills. In particular, E.F.
highlights that, through Green Office, it is possible to “go outside the borders of
theory and get into the real practice”. This pushes participants to “deepen topics that
are not covered in academic lectures” (S.P.) and let students from different university
courses or university staff from different roles understand the importance of looking
at problems with an interdisciplinary perspective (S.P. and F.C.).
According to the interviewees, the dialogue and the collaboration between disci-
plines and between people and institutions, represents the most developed sustain-
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 39
ability competence in the Green Office. The University of Bologna considers this
competence very important, not surprisingly the Green Office has scheduled a series
of training sessions on team working (F.C.), based on the fact that is one of most
requested competences by companies. This tendency to promote collaborative com-
petences between companies and the world of work has also emerged from the words
of E.F., who underlines how this collaboration is “new and more intense” compared
to university everyday life: “this is a great added value, in fact the Green Office is a
real link between university and the labor market”.
The other soft skills that are most likely to be developed through the Green Office
are:
• Problem solving competence linked to forecasting. “The opportunity to think and
try to implement specific projects let you clash with reality … And then you have to
meet technicians and politicians and maybe you argue with them and they ask you
to go through long and difficult bureaucratic procedures […] Participating in the
Green Office puts you to the test … and makes you realize how real life projects are
difficult to manage and you have to consider always the negative aspects” (E.S.).
• Design and project management that pushes to “apply the knowledge learned
during the lessons in real situations that are closer to the world of work than
students’ life” (F.C).
The Green Office represents, therefore, a tool of self-education (for participants)
and of education (institutions, organizations, businesses that work together) to sus-
tainability and, according to the interviewed technical and administrative staff, rep-
resents especially for the non-teaching staff an added value in terms of commitment
to sustainability.
5.3 University Facilities for Training to Sustainability
The project “Terracini in Transition” and the students’ Living Lab were born to
address the issues of “concrete” sustainability: “What can we do for the sustainability
of the Via Terracini Engineering and Architecture School? Are there any places in
this facility that communicate sustainability? Which are these places? Which are the
difficult places? How can we improve them?” (F.C.).
Starting from the Transition Towns Movement principles, Terracini’s Transition
project shows how is possible to make a change and to educate starting from the
places: “a vegetable garden … a abandoned place that is regenerated … the transfor-
mation of places has a very important impact on the participation and the involvement
of citizens and students in sustainability and transition projects”, continues FC “If
there are places and structures where sustainability has been taken care of, people
will wonder why. It is a start … A practical way to wake up consciences”.
The places are, therefore, a crucial element to educate to sustainability because
they allow people to “touch” (P.D.) and to “visualize” sustainability (M.C.). In partic-
ular, those who took part of Terracini in Transition of the University of Bologna have
40 G. Calvano et al.
designed an experimental “green roof”, which represents an interesting example of
sustainable solutions placed into concrete actions of teaching and applied research.
Through the Terracini in Transition green roof project the group had the oppor-
tunity to participate to important European projects, to be known also in the city
context, and to make themselves available to the community. “We are a very small
reality that has grown a lot … Being well known outside is a great resource […]
a great victory. The practices we developed with the Green Office are laboratory
practices for the growth of sustainability in the city of Bologna” (E.S.).
TheimportanceofwhathasbeendoneinTerracini’sfacilityshouldfocustheatten-
tion on keep working in an overall University perspective through the development
of a true student Green Office that is multidisciplinary and strongly contextualized
within the city, sharing common competences and objectives, because “if it is true
that much has been done … it is equally true that there is still much more to do”
(D.P.).
5.4 What the University Green Office Can Do for City
of Bologna’s Sustainability
The city is the main place where the future of sustainability and human beings is
played. It is fundamental, then, that the university offers its services to the city and
starts a dialogue with it to plan together solutions for the local territory.
This is what arises from the interviewee when were asked if the link between the
Green Office and the city of Bologna allows a sustainability growth.
The majority of respondents (eight) recognize the strong link between the city of
Bologna and its university: unlike campuses in Northern Europe where the model of
the Green Office was born, Bologna is “the ultimate university city: the university is
inside the city and Bologna would not be what it is without its university” (F.C.).
Despite this, actually the bond established between students and the city is not
ideal. Students end up not fully living the city and they give back very little as a
consequence. The Green Office can be a tool where “the student (even those who
live outside the city) can feel part of Bologna, a citizen of Bologna because he is
committed to the well-being of the city” (J.L.) and can “get involved … with all the
knowledge learned in class” (F.L.). Once again, comes out the strong educational
value of the Green Office, an experience that arises from confrontation but also from
the sharing of what one knows and what one is. It is no coincidence that “without the
relationship with the Municipality and the city, the Green Office would be an end in
itself” (M.C.) and “there would be no sustainability” (E.F).
Everyone benefits from this link: all the interviewees think that:
• the city benefits because the Green Office work “produces solutions that benefit
also the city … the developed practices can be repeated in other places … For
example it would be great if the municipality recognizes the importance of green
roofs and decided to create a network of green roofs …” (F.C.);
How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 41
• studentsanduniversitycommunitiescitizensandfuturegenerationsbenefit(M.C.);
• associations benefit because “the Green Office is a tool for dialogue between
associations that deal with sustainability but often fail to collaborate” (E.F.).
Clearly, as almost all the interviewees point out, there are “inevitable bureaucratic
and coordination problems as they are big institutions … and … it is difficult to
establish a dialogue” (F.L.). At the same time, however, everyone is aware that a full
collaboration requires both institutions to give up on their self-centeredness.
Only in this way, the University and the Green Office can be a “locomotive of
sustainability” within the city (M.C.).
6 Conclusions
The experience of the Green Office of the University of Bologna, described in this
paper, strongly highlights the importance of the role of education for a campus that
wants to define itself as “green”. This education goes beyond lectures and requires
innovative approaches that can guarantee a better understanding of sustainability and
how it should be designed in all areas of university life.
What makes the Green Office a highly educational experience is that all the
participants bring their own life, experiences, previous knowledge, skills to make
them the best use and to build new ones (Calvano 2017):
• It benefits students: they learn how to design solutions and make the best use
of the knowledge learned during their studies; they have the opportunity to get
in touch with companies, institutions, associations, local authorities, developing
social, relational, problem solving and transversal skills; they perceive themselves
as a living and active part of their university. No longer just students but main
actors of their university community.
• It benefits teachers which can count on their students’ creativity and commitment
for the design of new strategies and solutions; which can consider their teaching
in light of the skills required of students from the real problems they are facing.
• It benefits the technical and administrative staff who, working for the growth of
their university’s sustainability, find themselves, like the students, as main actors
of the university community and the creators of change.
• It benefits the whole university, in a third mission view able to go beyond
the assumption that innovation is the exclusively technology, rediscovering the
inevitably social nature, where the dimension of service to the community is the
“sine qua non” condition for everyone’s growth.
This study underlined the support that a living lab like the Green Office can give
not only to the sustainability development of the university and the city, but also to
the students’ increase of participation and responsibility toward this issue.
Although the results of this work are positive, there are some undeniable limita-
tions:
42 G. Calvano et al.
• as a case study, it is strictly related to a specific contest and time. It would be
necessary to repeat the research longitudinally (interviewing new students of the
Green Office of the University of Bologna in 3 years) and in different places
(repeating the study with students from other universities where there is a Green
Office);
• there is the possibility that the enthusiasm about sustainability development is
mainly of the teachers that took part to the Green Office and less of the students
who’s commitment could be just a compliance to teachers’ requests;
• it can not be excluded that students empowerment experience about sustainability’s
issues can be limited to Green Office and to the university context and does not
transfer into a concrete commitment in their everyday, personal and professional
life.
Further studies, currently ongoing, are trying to fill these gaps.
References
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Manag 1:161–165
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sustainability. Eur J Eng Educ 27(4):349–361
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works. Int Rev Educ 56(2):315–328
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W et al (eds) Handbook of theory and practice of sustainable development in higher education.
Springer International Publishing, pp 223–239
Hicks D (2002) Lesson for the future: the missing dimension in education. Routledge Falmer
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pdf/2013/education_sd_mb_colleges_universities.pdf. Accessed 12 Mar 2018
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Karatzoglou B (2013) An in-depth literature review of the evolving roles and contributions of
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Leal FW (2011) About the role of universities and their contribution to sustainable development.
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needs. J Balt Sea Educ 9(4):273–284
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The yeoman happily spilled his inside dope to the fleet gob: "Lee
Bennet. Smuggled over here couple months ago by D.A.R. The
hottest thing that ever hit Naval Intelligence. Very small potato in the
Syndic—knows all the families, who does what, who's a figurehead
and who's a worker. Terrific! Inside stuff! Hates the Syndic. A gang of
big-timers did her dirt."
"Thanks," Charles said, and wandered off down the street.
It wasn't surprising. He should have expected it.
Noblesse oblige.
Pride of the Falcaro line. She wouldn't send anybody into deadly peril
unless she were ready to go herself.
Only somehow the trigger that would have snapped neurotic,
synthetic Lee Bennet into Lee Falcaro hadn't worked.
He wandered on aimlessly, wondering whether it would be minutes or
hours before he'd be picked up and executed as a spy.
PART II
X
It took minutes only.
He had headed back to the waterfront, afraid to run, with some
vague notion of stealing a boat. Before he reached the row of saloons
and joints, a smart-looking squad of eight tall men overtook him.
"Hold it, mister," a sergeant said. "Are you Orsino?"
"No," he said hopelessly. "That crazy woman began to yell at me that
I was Orsino, but my name's Wyman. What's this about?"
The other men fell in beside and behind him. "We're stepping over to
O.N.I.," the sergeant said.
"There's the son of a bitch!" somebody bawled. Suddenly there were
a dozen sweatered Guardsmen around them. Their leader was the
thug Orsino had beaten in a fair fight. He said silkily to the sergeant:
"We want that boy, leatherneck. Blow."
The sergeant went pale. "He's wanted for questioning by the O.N.I.,"
he said stolidly.
"Get the marine three-striper!" the Guardsman chortled. He stuck his
jaw into the sergeant's face. "Tell your squad to blow. You marines
ought to know by now that you don't mess with the Guard."
A very junior officer appeared. "What's going on here, you men?" he
shrilled. "Atten-shun!" He was ignored as Guardsman and marines
measured one another with their eyes. "I said attention! Dammit,
sergeant, report!" There was no reaction. The officer yelled: "You
men may think you can get away with this but by God, you're
wrong!" He strode away, his fists clenched and his face very red.
Orsino saw him stride through a gate into a lot marked Bupers Motor
Pool. And he felt a sudden wave of communal understanding that
there were only seconds to go. The sergeant played for time: "I'll be
glad to surrender the prisoner," he started, "if you have anything to
show in the way of—"
The Guardsman kicked for the pit of the sergeant's stomach. He was
a sucker Orsino thought abstractedly as he saw the sergeant catch
his foot, dump him and pivot to block another Guardsman. Then he
was fighting for his life himself, against three bellowing Guardsmen.
A ripping, hammering noise filled the air suddenly. Like cold magic, it
froze the milling mob where it stood. Fifty-caliber noise.
The jaygee was back, this time in a jeep with a twin fifty. And he was
glaring down its barrels into the crowd. People were beginning to
stream from the saloons, joints and shipfitting shops.
The jaygee cocked his cap rakishly over one eye. "Fall in!" he rasped,
and a haunting air of familiarity came over Orsino.
The waiting jeep, almost bucking in its eagerness to be let loose—
Orsino on the ground, knees trembling with tension—a perfect
change of mount scene in a polo match. He reacted automatically.
There was a surrealist flash of the jaygee's face before he clipped
him into the back of the square little truck. There was another flash
of spectators scrambling as he roared the jeep down the road.
From then on it was just a question of hanging onto the wheel with
one hand, trying to secure the free-traversing twin-fifty with the
other, glancing back to see if the jaygee was still out, avoiding
yapping dogs and pedestrians, staying on the rutted road, pushing all
possible speed out of the jeep, noting landmarks, estimating the
possibility of dangerous pursuit. For a two-goal polo player, a dull
little practice session.
The road, such as it was, wound five miles inland through scrubby
woodland and terminated at a lumber camp where chained men in
rags were dragging logs.
Orsino back tracked a quarter-mile from the camp and jolted
overland in a kidney-cracking hare and hounds course at fifty per.
The jeep took it for an hour in the fading afternoon light and then
bucked to a halt. Orsino turned for an overdue check on the jaygee
and found him conscious, but greenly clinging to the sides of the
vehicle. But he saw Orsino staring and gamely struggled to his feet,
standing in the truck bed. "You're under arrest, sailor," he said.
"Striking an officer, abuse of government property, driving a
government vehicle without a trip-ticket—" His legs betrayed him and
he sat down, hard.
Orsino thought very briefly of letting him have a burst from the twin-
fifty, and abandoned the idea.
He seemed to have bitched up everything so far, but he was still on a
mission. He had a commissioned officer of the Government
approximately in his power. He snapped: "Nonsense. You're under
arrest."
The jaygee seemed to be reviewing rapidly any transgressions he
may have committed, and asked at last, cautiously: "By what
authority?"
"I represent the Syndic."
It was a block-buster. The jaygee stammered: "But you can't—But
there isn't any way—But how—"
"Never mind how."
"You're crazy. You must be, or you wouldn't stop here. I don't believe
you're from the continent and I don't believe the jeep's broken
down." He was beginning to sound just a little hysterical. "It can't
break down here. We must be more than thirty miles inland."
"What's special about thirty miles inland?"
"The natives, you fool!"
The natives again. "I'm not worried about natives. Not with a pair of
fifties."
"You don't understand," the jaygee said, forcing calm into his voice.
"This is The Outback. They're in charge here. We can't do a thing
with them. They jump people in the dark and skewer them. Now fix
this damn jeep and let's get rolling!"
"Into a firing squad? Don't be silly, lieutenant. I presume you won't
slug me while I check the engine?"
The jaygee was looking around him. "My God, no," he said. "You may
be a gangster, but—" He trailed off.
Orsino stiffened. Gangster was semi-dirty talk. "Listen, pirate," he
said nastily, "I don't believe—"
"Pirate?" the jaygee roared indignantly, and then shut his mouth with
a click, looking apprehensively about. The gesture wasn't faked; it
alarmed Orsino.
"Tell me about your wildmen," he said.
"Go to hell," the jaygee said sulkily.
"Look, you called me a gangster first. What about these natives? You
were trying to trick me, weren't you?"
"Kiss my royal North American eyeball, gangster."
"Don't be childish," Charles reproved him, feeling adult and superior.
(The jaygee looked a couple of years younger than he.) He climbed
out of his seat and lifted the hood. The damage was trivial; a shear
pin in the transmission had given way. He reported mournfully:
"Cracked block. The jeep's through forever. You can get on your way,
lieutenant. I won't try to hold you."
The jaygee fumed: "You couldn't hold me if you wanted to, gangster.
If you think I'm going to try and hoof back to the base alone in the
dark, you're crazy. We're sticking together. Two of us may be able to
hold them off for the night. In the morning, we'll see."
Well, maybe the officer did believe there were wildmen in the woods.
That didn't mean there were.
The jaygee got out and looked under the hood uncertainly. It was
obvious that in the first place he was no mechanic and in the second
place he couldn't conceive of anybody voluntarily risking the woods
rather than the naval base. "Uh-huh," he said. "Dismount that gun
while I get a fire started."
"Yes, sir," Charles said sardonically, saluting. The jaygee absently
returned the salute and began to collect twigs.
Orsino asked: "How do these aborigines of yours operate?"
"Sneak up in the dark. They have spears and a few stolen guns.
Usually they don't have cartridges for them but you can't count on
that. But they have ... witches."
Orsino snorted. He was getting very hungry indeed. "Do you know
any of the local plants we might eat?"
The jaygee said confidently: "I guess we can get by on roots until
morning."
Orsino dubiously pulled up a shrub, dabbed clods off its root and
tasted it. It tasted exactly like a root. He sighed and changed the
subject. "What do we do with the fifties when I get them both off the
mount?"
"The jeep mount breaks down some damn way or other into two low-
mount tripods. See if you can figure it out while I get the fire going."
The jaygee had a small, smoky fire barely going in twenty minutes.
Orsino was still struggling with the jeep gun mount. It came apart,
but it couldn't go together again. The jaygee strolled over at last
contemptuously to lend a hand. He couldn't make it work either.
Two lost tempers and four split fingernails later it developed the
"elevating screw" really held the two front legs on and that you
elevated by adjusting the rear tripod leg. "A hell of an officer you
are," Orsino sulked.
It began to rain, putting the fire out with a hiss. They wound up
prone under the jeep, not on speaking terms, each tending a gun,
each presumably responsible for 180 degrees of perimeter.
Charles was fairly dry, except for a trickle of icy water following a
contour that meandered to his left knee. After an hour of eye-
straining—nothing to be seen—and ear-straining—only the patter of
rain—he heard a snore and kicked the jaygee.
The jaygee cursed wearily and said: "I guess we'd better talk to keep
awake."
"I'm not having any trouble, pirate."
"Oh, knock it off—where do you get that pirate bit, gangster?"
"You're outlaws, aren't you?"
"Like hell we are. You're the outlaws. You rebelled against the
lawfully constituted North American Government. Just because you
won—for the time being—doesn't mean you were right."
"The fact that we won does mean that we were right. The fact that
your so-called Government lives by raiding and scavenging off us
means you were wrong. God, the things I've seen since I joined up
with you thugs!"
"I'll bet. Respect for the home, sanctity of marriage, sexual morality,
law and order—you never saw anything like that back home, did you
gangster?" He looked very smug.
Orsino clenched his teeth. "Somebody's been telling you a pack of
lies," he said. "There's just as much home and family life and morality
and order back in Syndic Territory as there is here. And probably a lot
more."
"Bull. I've seen intelligence reports; I know how you people live. Are
you telling me you don't have sexual promiscuity? Polygamy?
Polyandry? Open gambling? Uncontrolled liquor trade? Corruption and
shakedowns?"
Orsino squinted along the barrel of the gun into the rain. "Look," he
said, "take me as an average young man from Syndic Territory. I
know maybe a hundred people. I know just three women and two
men who are what you'd call promiscuous. I know one family with
two wives and one husband. I don't really know any people
personally who go in for polyandry, but I've met three casually. And
the rest are ordinary middle-aged couples."
"Ah-hah! Middle-aged! Do you mean to tell me you're just leaving out
anybody under middle age when you talk about morality?"
"Naturally," Charles said, baffled. "Wouldn't you?"
The only answer was a snort.
"What are bupers?" Charles asked.
"Bu-Pers," the jaygee said distinctly. "Bureau of Personnel, North
American Navy."
"What do you do there?"
"What would a personnel bureau do?" the jaygee said patiently. "We
recruit, classify, assign, promote and train personnel."
"Paperwork, huh? No wonder you don't know how to shoot or drive."
"If I didn't need you to cover my back, I'd shove this MG down your
silly throat. For your information, gangster, all officers do a tour of
duty on paperwork before they're assigned to their permanent
branch. I'm going into the pigboats."
"Why?"
"Family. My father commands a sub. He's Captain Van Dellen."
Oh, God. Van Dellen. The sub commander Grinnel—and he—had
murdered. The kid hadn't heard yet that his father had been "lost" in
an emergency dive.
The rain ceased to fall; the pattering drizzle gave way to irregular,
splashing drops from leaves and branches.
"Van Dellen," Charles said. "There's something you ought to know."
"It'll keep," the jaygee answered in a grim whisper. The bolt of his
gun clicked. "I hear them out there."
XI
She felt the power of the goddess working in her, but feebly. Dark ...
so dark ... and so tired ... how old was she? More than eight hundred
moons had waxed and waned above her head since birth. And she
had run at the head of her spearmen to the motor sounds. A motor
meant the smithymen from the sea, and you killed smithymen when
you could.
She let out a short shrill chuckle in the dark. There was a rustling of
branches. One of the spearmen had turned to stare at the sound.
She knew his face was worried. "Tend to business, you fool!" she
wheezed. "Or by Bridget—" His breath went in with a hiss and she
chuckled again. You had to let them know who was the cook and
who was the potatoes every now and then. Kill the fool? Not now;
not when there were smithymen with guns waiting to be taken.
The power of the goddess worked stronger in her withered breast as
her rage grew at their impudence. Coming into her woods with their
stinking metal!
There were two of them. A grin slit her face. She had not taken two
smithymen together for thirty moons. For all her wrinkles and creaks,
what a fine vessel she was for the power, to be sure! Her worthless,
slow-to-learn niece could run and jump and she had a certain air, but
she'd never be such a vessel. Her sister—the crone spat—these were
degenerate days. In the old days, the sister would have been spitted
when she refused the ordeal in her youth. The little one now,
whatever her name was, she would make a fine vessel for the power
when she was gathered to the goddess. If her sister or her niece
didn't hold her head under water too long, or have a spear shoved
too deep into her gut or hit her on the head with too heavy a rock.
These were degenerate days. She had poisoned her own mother to
become the vessel of power.
The spearmen to her right and left shifted uneasily. She heard a faint
mumble of the two smithymen talking. Let them talk! Doubtless they
were cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the
smithymen all did when their mouths were not stuffed with food.
She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and
arrowpoints for her people—he was a strange one, touched by the
goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn
the head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to
get on with it. She wished the power were working stronger in her;
she was tired and could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess
there would be two new heads over her holy hut come dawn. She
could hardly see, but the goddess wouldn't fail her....
She quavered like a screech-owl, and the spearmen began to slip
forward through the brush. She was not allowed to eat honey lest its
sweetness clash with the power in her, but the taste of power was
sweeter than the taste of honey.
With frightful suddenness there was an ear-splitting shriek and a
trampling rush of feet. By sheer reflex, Orsino clamped down on the
trigger of his fifty, and his brain rocked at its thunder. Shadowy
figures were blotted out by the orange muzzle-flash. You're supposed
to fire neat, spaced bursts of eight he told himself. I wonder what old
Gilby would say if he could see his star pupil burning out a barrel and
swinging his gun like a fire hose?
The gun stopped firing; end of the belt. Twenty, fifty or a hundred
rounds? He didn't remember. He clawed for another belt and
smoothly, in the dark, loaded again and listened.
"You all right, gangster?" the jaygee said behind him, making him
jump.
"Yes," he said. "Will they come back?"
"I don't know."
"You filthy swine," an agonized voice wheezed from the darkness.
"Me back is broke, you stinking lice." The voice began to sob.
They listened to it in silence for perhaps a minute. At last he said to
the jaygee: "If the rest are gone maybe we can at least—make him
comfortable."
"Too risky," the jaygee said after a long pause.
The sobbing went on. As the excitement of the attack drained from
Orsino, he felt deathly tired, cramped and thirsty. The thirst he could
do something about. He scooped water from the muddy runnel by his
knee and sucked it from his palms twice. The third time, he thought
of the thirst that the sobbing creature out in the dark must be
feeling, and his hand wouldn't go to his mouth.
"I'm going to get him," he whispered to the jaygee.
"Stay where you are! That's an order!"
He didn't answer, but began to work his cramped and aching body
from under the jeep. The jaygee, a couple of years younger and
lither than he, slid out first from his own side. Orsino sighed and
relaxed as he heard his footsteps cautiously circle the jeep.
"Finish me off!" the wounded man was sobbing. "For the love of the
goddess, finish me off, you bitches' bastards! You've broke me back—
ah!" That was a cry of savage delight.
There was a strangled noise from the jaygee and then only a soft,
deadly thrashing noise from the dark. Hell, Orsino thought bitterly. It
was my idea. He snaked out from under the jeep and raced through
wet brush.
The two of them were a tangled knot of darkness rolling on the
ground. A naked back came uppermost; Orsino fell on it and clawed
at its head. He felt a huge beard, took two hand-fulls of it and pulled
as hard as he could. There was a wild screech and a flailing of arms.
The jaygee broke away and stood up, panting hoarsely. Charles heard
a sharp crunch and a snap, and the flailing sweaty figure, beneath
him lay still.
"Back to the guns," the jaygee choked. He swayed, and Orsino took
him by the arm.... On the way back to the jeep, they stumbled over
something that was certainly a body.
Orsino's flesh shrank from lying down again in the mud behind his
gun, but he did, shivering. He heard the jaygee thud wearily into
position. "What did you do to him?" he asked. "Is he dead?"
"Kicked him," the jaygee choked. "His head snapped back and there
was that crack. I guess he's dead. I never heard of that broken-wing
trick before. I guess he wanted to take one more with him. They
have a kind of religion."
The jaygee sounded as though he was teetering on the edge of
breakdown. Make him mad, intuition said to Orsino. He might go
howling off among the trees unless he snaps out of it.
"It's a hell of way to run an island," he said nastily. "You beggars
were chased out of North America because you couldn't run it right
and now you can't even control a lousy little island for more than five
miles inland." He added with deliberate, superior amusement: "Of
course, they've got witches."
"Shut your mouth, gangster—I'm warning you." The note of hysteria
was still there. And then the jaygee said dully: "I didn't mean that.
I'm sorry. You did come out and help me after all."
"Surprised?"
"Yes. Twice. First time when you wanted to go out yourself. I suppose
you can't help being born where you were. Maybe if you came over
to us all the way, the Government would forgive and forget. But no—I
suppose not." He paused, obviously casting about for a change of
subject. He still seemed sublimely confident that they'd get back to
the naval base with him in charge of the detail. "What ship did you
cross in?"
"Atom sub Taft," Orsino said. He could have bitten his tongue out.
"Taft? That's my father's pigboat! Captain Van Dellen. How is he? I
was going down to the dock when—"
"He's dead," Orsino said flatly. "He was caught on deck during an
emergency dive."
The jaygee said nothing for a while and then uttered an unconvincing
laugh of disbelief. "You're lying," he said. "His crew'd never let that
happen. They'd let the ship be blown to hell before they took her
down without the skipper."
"Grinnel had the con. He ordered the dive and roared down the crew
when they wanted to get your father inboard. I'm sorry."
"Grinnel," the jaygee whispered. "Grinnel. Yes, I know Commander
Grinnel. He's—he's a good officer. He must have done it because he
had to. Tell me about it, please."
It was more than Orsino could bear. "Your father was murdered," he
said harshly. "I know because Grinnel put me on radar watch—and I
don't know a God-damned thing about reading a radarscope. He told
me to sing out 'enemy planes' and I did because I didn't know what
the hell was going on. He used that as an excuse to crash-dive while
your father was sleeping on deck. Your good officer murdered him."
He heard the jaygee sobbing hoarsely. At last he asked Orsino in a
dry, choked voice: "Politics?"
"Politics," Orsino said.
Orsino jumped wildly as the jaygee's machine gun began to roar a
long burst of twenty, but he didn't fire himself. He knew that there
was no enemy out there in the dark, and that the bullets were aimed
only at an absent phantom.
"We've got to get to Iceland," the jaygee said at last, soberly. "It's
our only chance."
"Iceland?"
"This is one for the C.C. of the Constitutionists. The Central
Committee. It's a breach of the Freiberg Compromise. It means we
call the Sociocrats, and if they don't make full restitution—war."
"What do you mean, we?"
"You and I. You're the source of the story; you're the one who'd be
lie-tested."
You've got him, Orsino told himself, but don't be fool enough to count
on it. He's been light-headed from hunger and no sleep and the
shock of his father's death. You helped him in a death struggle and
there's team spirit working on him. The guy covering my back, how
can I fail to trust him, how could I dare not to trust him? But don't be
fool enough to count on it after he's slept. Meanwhile, push it for all
it's worth.
"What are your plans?" he asked gravely.
"We've got to slip out of Ireland by sub or plane," the jaygee
brooded. "We can't go to the New Portsmouth or Com-Surf
organizations; they're Sociocrat, and Grinnel will have passed the
word to the Sociocrats that you're out of control."
"What does that mean?"
"Death," the jaygee said.
XII
Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to a
joint. It wasn't until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendly
O.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house.
"What?" Grinnel roared. "Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me
to her at once!"
"Commander!" the lieutenant said aghast. "I just got here!"
"You heard me, mister! At once!"
While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant
dutifully scoured his memory. "Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger
deal, Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander
Jacobi was in Syndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and
reconnaissance mission and one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him.
A real Syndic member. Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this
fellow as Charles Orsino, another Syndic. Why are you so interested,
if I may ask?"
The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: "You may not,"
but didn't dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint
that he had anything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the
knife. "The man's my baby, lieutenant," he said. "Either your girl's
mistaken or Van Dellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by
a brand-new technique." That was nice work, he congratulated
himself. Got in Van Dellen and the tech.... Maybe, come to think of it,
the tech was crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded
perfectly under scop.
O.N.I.'s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed,
beginning to rot already in the eternal Irish damp.
"We've got her on the third floor, Commander," the lieutenant said.
"You get there by a ladder."
"In God's name, why?" They walked past the Charge of Quarters,
who snapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the
deserted offices of the first and second floors.
"Frankly, we've had a little trouble hanging on to her."
"She runs away?"
"No, nothing like that—not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and Guard
Intelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First with
requisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word
gets to Iceland. Then, naturally, we'll be out in the cold."
The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not.
The door and lock on Lee Bennet's quarters were impressive. The
lieutenant rapped. "Are you awake, Lee? There's an officer here who
wants to talk to you."
"Come in," she said.
The lieutenant's hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open.
The girl was sitting in the dark.
"I'm Commander Grinnel, my dear," he said. After eight hours in the
joint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. "If the time isn't quite
convenient—"
"It's all right," she said listlessly. "What do you want to know?"
"The man you identify as Orsino—it was quite a shock to me.
Commander Van Dellen, who died a hero's death only days ago
accepted him as authentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed
both scop and polygraph."
"I can't help that," she said. "He came right up to me and told me
who he was. I recognized him, of course. He's a polo player. I've seen
him play on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He's not
much in the Syndic, but he's close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino's an orphan.
I don't know whether Taylor's actually adopted him or not. I think
not."
"No—possible—mistake?"
"No possible mistake." She began to tremble. "My God, Commander
Whoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damned
sneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detector
again! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won't be called a
liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!"
"Please," the Commander soothed. "I do believe you, my dear.
Nobody could doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and
good night." He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the
door closed he snapped at him: "Well, mister?"
The lieutenant shrugged. "The lie detector always bears her out.
We've stopped using it on her. We're convinced that she's on our
side. Almost deserving of citizenship."
"Come, now," the Commander said. "You know better than that."
Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed,
dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not since
those three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility as
males and their immunity as Syndics on her ... she couldn't cry any
more.
Charles Orsino—another one of them. She hoped they caught him
and killed him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she
feel like a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why,
why, why?
Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline of
treetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him
and at last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half-
naked bodies. One of them was a woman's, mangled by fifty-caliber
slugs. The other was the body of a bearded giant—the one with
whom they had struggled in the dark.
Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was—had been—a stringy,
white haired crone. Some animal's skull was tied to her pate with
sinews as a head-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents.
The jaygee joined him standing over her and said: "One of their
witches. Part of the religion, if you can call it that."
"A brand-new religion?" Charles asked dubiously. "Made up out of
whole cloth?"
"No," the jaygee said. "I understand it's an old religion—pre-
Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles. Then it
flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animal sacrifices
every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can you
expect from people like that?"
Charles reminded himself that the jaygee's fellow-citizens boiled
recalcitrant slaves. "I'll see what I can do about the jeep," he said.
The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. "What the hell's the use?" he
mumbled wearily. "Even if you get it running again. Even if we get
back to the base. They'll be gunning for you. Maybe they'll be
gunning for me if they killed my father." He tried to smile. "You got
any aces in the hole, gangster?"
"Maybe," Orsino said slowly. "What do you know about a woman
named Lee—Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?"
"Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She's
a little nuts, too. What have you got on her?"
"Does she swing any weight? Is she a citizen?"
"No weight. They're just using her over at Intelligence to fill out the
picture of the Syndic. And she couldn't be a citizen. A woman has to
marry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her,
for God's sake? Did you know her on the other side? She's death to
the Syndic; she can't do anything for you."
Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on Lee
Falcaro's conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was for
his. And it hadn't been tripped because this pirate gang didn't
particularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens.
A small part of the Government's cultural complex—but one that
could trap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute
for a personality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman,
no subsequent oath.
"I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other
side. She turned me in...." He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily;
the water eased hunger cramps a little. "I'll see what I can do with
the jeep."
He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen was
dropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin
from the jeep's winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way
in the transmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering.
Cracked block, he thought contemptuously. An officer and he
couldn't tell whether the block was cracked or not. If I ever get out
of this we'll sweep them from the face of the earth—or more likely
just get rid of their tom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest
are probably all right. Except maybe for those bastards of
Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let's hope they get killed in the fighting.
The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and
felt cold metal.
"Turn slowly or you'll be spitted like a pig," a bass voice growled.
He turned slowly. The cold metal now at his chest, was the leaf-
shaped blade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red-
bearded, barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold
as death.
"Tie that one," somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his
wrists behind him and lashed them together with cords.
"Hobble his feet." It was a woman's voice. A length of cord or sinew
was knotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk
but not run. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside.
The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of
the North American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and
confusions. They had skewered him to the turf while he slept.
Charles hoped he had not felt the blow.
The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20
tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch
and knotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino's
numbed understanding, it was clearly an act of the highest
significance. It subtly changed the composition of the six-men group
in the little glade. They had been a small mob until she put on the
skull, but the moment she did they moved instinctively—one a step
or two, the other merely turning a bit, perhaps—to orient on her.
There was no doubt that she was in charge.
A witch, Orsino thought. "It kept going underground until the
Troubles." "A filthy business—human sacrifices twice a year."
She approached him and, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the
group fell into a new pattern of which she was still the focus. Charles
thought he had never seen a face so humorlessly conscious of
power. The petty ruler of a few barbarians, she carried herself as
though she were empress of the universe. Nor did a large gray louse
that crawled from her hairline across her forehead and back again
affect her in the slightest. She wore a greasy animal hide as though
it were royal purple. It added up to either insanity or a limitless
pretension to religious authority. And her eyes were not mad.
"You," she said coldly. "What about the jeep and the guns? Do they
go?"
He laughed suddenly and idiotically at these words from the mouth
of a stone-age goddess. A raised spear sobered him instantly. "Yes,"
he said.
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Sustainability On University Campuses Learning Skills Building And Best Practices 1st Ed Walter Leal Filho

  • 1. Sustainability On University Campuses Learning Skills Building And Best Practices 1st Ed Walter Leal Filho download https://ebookbell.com/product/sustainability-on-university- campuses-learning-skills-building-and-best-practices-1st-ed- walter-leal-filho-10486946 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
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  • 5. 123 World Sustainability Series Walter Leal Filho Ugo Bardi Editors Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices
  • 6. World Sustainability Series Series Editor Prof. Walter Leal Filho, European School of Sustainability Science and Research, Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management”, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany
  • 7. Due to its scope and nature, sustainable development is a matter which is very interdisciplinary, and draws from knowledge and inputs from the social sciences and environmental sciences on the one hand, but also from physical sciences and arts on the other. As such, there is a perceived need to foster integrative approaches, whereby the combination of inputs from various fields may contribute to a better understanding of what sustainability is, and means to people. But despite the need for and the relevance of integrative approaches towards sustainable development, there is a paucity of literature which address matters related to sustainability in an integrated way. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13384
  • 8. Walter Leal Filho • Ugo Bardi Editors Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices 123
  • 9. Editors Walter Leal Filho European School of Sustainability Science and Research HAW Hamburg Hamburg, Germany Ugo Bardi Department of Chemistry University of Florence Florence, Italy ISSN 2199-7373 ISSN 2199-7381 (electronic) World Sustainability Series ISBN 978-3-030-15863-7 ISBN 978-3-030-15864-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934514 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
  • 10. Preface There is much which universities can do, to make their campuses more sustainable, either with or without an institutional policy behind it. Starting from measures to reduce use energy more efficiently and reduce energy consumption, and going into waste prevention and management, the range of action possible may also include sustainable transportation and other measures to benefit the environment and reduce the footprint of campuses. Much can be gained if one can demonstrate how campus sustainability may be put into practice. With this need in mind, the book Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practice showcases examples of campus-based research and teaching projects, regenerative campus design, waste prevention, and resilient transport, among others. It demonstrates the role of campuses as platforms for transformative social learning and research, and explores the means via which university campuses can be made more sustainable. The aims of this book are as follows: i. to present a variety of works on campus greening and sustainable campus development; ii. to offer a platform for the dissemination of ideas and experiences acquired in the execution of research, teaching and projects on campus greening and design, especially successful initiatives and good practice; iii. to introduce methodological approaches and projects which aim to integrate the topic of sustainable development in campus design and operations; Last but not least, a further aim of the book is to document and disseminate the wealth of experiences available today. We hope the experiences gathered on this book will serve as inspiration to many universities, and may encourage those not yet engaged, to start new projects and other initiatives in this central area of university life. Hamburg, Germany Walter Leal Filho Florence, Italy Ugo Bardi Summer 2019 v
  • 11. Contents Part I Institutional Practices and Frameworks Engaging Students and Campus Community in Sustainability Activities in a Major Canadian University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tatiana Teslenko A Review on Integrated Information System and Sustainability Implementation Framework in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Mona M. Al-Kuwari and Muammer Koç How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development of Sustainability Competences. The Experience of the University of Bologna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Gabriella Calvano, Angelo Paletta and Alessandra Bonoli Generating a New Idea of Public Mission for Universities. A Sustainable Communication Paradigm for Community Building . . . . 45 Viola Davini, Ilaria Marchionne and Eugenio Pandolfini Involving Students in Implementing a Campus Culture of Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Madhavi Venkatesan and Julia Crooijmans University of São Paulo Environmental Policy: Master Plan and Pilot Projects for Pirassununga and Ribeirão Preto Campuses . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Patrícia Faga Iglecias Lemos, Fernanda da Rocha Brando and Tamara Maria Gomes Mind the Gap! Developing the Campus as a Living Lab for Student Experiential Learning in Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Tela Favaloro, Tamara Ball and Ronnie D. Lipschutz A Pragmatic Framework for Setting Up Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research On-Campus That Can Make a Difference . . . . 115 Griet Ceulemans and Nathal Severijns vii
  • 12. The Brazilian Educational System: An Analysis of a Hypothetical Full Shift to Distance Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 José Hugo de Oliveira and Cecília Maria Villas Bôas de Almeida Using the Learning in Future Environments (LiFE) Index to Assess James Cook University’s Progress in Supporting and Embedding Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Colin J. Macgregor, Adam Connell, Kerryn O’Conor and Marenn Sagar How Green Can You Go? Initiatives of Dark Green Universities in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Jocelyn C. Cuaresma Green Campus and Environmental Preservation on a Brazilian University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Evanisa Fátima Reginato Quevedo Melo, Marcos Antonio Leite Frandoloso and Ricardo Henryque Reginato Quevedo Melo Sustainable Universities: A Comparison of the Ecological Footprint, Happiness and Academic Performance Among Students of Different Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 M. J. Alves-Pinto Jr. and B. F. Giannetti Sustainability in Higher Education: The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Followers’ Innovative Outcomes A Framework Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Reem S. Al-Mansoori and Muammer Koç Part II Initiatives, Projects and Case Studies The ECOMAPS Project: How the Academy Can Get Involved in Local Waste Management Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Sara Falsini and Ugo Bardi National Sustainability Transitions and the Role of University Campuses: Ireland as a Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 William Horan, Rachel Shawe, Richard Moles and Bernadette O’Regan Closing Graduates’ Sustainability Skills Gaps by Using the University as a Live Sustainability Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Kay Emblen-Perry Socio-productive Inclusion of Waste Pickers on Segregated Solid Waste Collection in Brazilian Universities as an Instrument for Sustainability Promotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Isabella Pimentel Pincelli, Sara Meireles and Armando Borges de Castilhos Júnior viii Contents
  • 13. Adapting the Economy for the Common Good for Research Institutions—Case Studies from the IGC Bremen and IASS Potsdam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 David Löw Beer, Sara Franzeck, Tim Goydke and Daniel Oppold Healthcare Waste Management in a Brazilian Higher Education and Health Research Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Ana Maria Maniero Moreira and Wanda M. Risso Günther “Salomone Sostenibile”: An Award to ‘Communicate’ the University’s Leading Role in Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Luca Toschi, Marco Sbardella and Gianluca Simonetta Engaging Students in Cross-Disciplinary Research and Education—A Processual Approach to Educational Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Ulla A. Saari, Saku J. Mäkinen, Pertti Järventausta, Matti Vilkko, Kari Systä, Kirsi Kotilainen, Jussi Valta, Tomas Björkqvist and Teemu Laukkarinen Campus Interface: Creating Collaborative Spaces to Foster Education for Sustainable Development in a Multidisciplinary Campus in a Mexican Higher Education Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Jairo Agustín Reyes-Plata and Ilane Hernández-Morales Moving Toward Zero Waste Cities: A Nexus for International Zero Waste Academic Collaboration (NIZAC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Jonathan Hannon, Atiq Zaman, Gustavo Rittl, Raphael Rossi, Sara Meireles and Fernanda Elisa Demore Palandi Towards Regional Circular Economies. ‘Greening the University Canteen’ by Sustainability Innovation Labs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Susanne Maria Weber and Marc-André Heidelmann Students’ Opinion About Green Campus Initiatives: A South American University Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 João Marcelo Pereira Ribeiro, Lenoir Hoeckesfeld, Stephane Louise BocaSanta, Giovanna Guilhen Mazaro Araujo, Ana Valquiria Jonck, Issa Ibrahim Berchin and José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra Open Source and Sustainability: The Role of University . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 Giorgio F. Signorini Promoting Sustainability and CSR Initiatives to Engage Business and Economic Students at University: A Study on Students’ Perceptions About Extracurricular National Events Hosted at the Local University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 Marco Tortora Contents ix
  • 14. University Campuses as Town-Like Institutions: Promoting Sustainable Development in Cities Using the Water-Sensitive Urban Design Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 Vitor Gantuss Rabêlo, Issa Ibrahim Berchin, Marleny De León, José Humberto Dias de Toledo, Liane Ramos da Silva and José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra The Fisherman and the Farmer: How to Enliven the Concept of Sustainability by Means of a Theatre Piece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi Whale HUB: Museum Collections and Contemporary Art to Promote Sustainability Among Higher Education Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 Valeria D’Ambrosio and Stefano Dominici UNIFAAT Solid Waste Management Plan: Education and Environmental Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 Estevão Brasil Ruas Vernalha, Micheli Kowalczuk Machado and João Luiz de Moraes Hoefel Taking the Students to the Landfill—The Role of Universities in Disseminating Knowledge About Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 Sara Falsini, Sandra Ristori and Ugo Bardi Green Design, Identity or Both? Factors Affecting Environmentally Responsible Behaviors in Student Residences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 Martyna Mokrzecka and Krzysztof Nowak Sustainability in University Campuses: The Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . 577 Walter Leal Filho x Contents
  • 16. Engaging Students and Campus Community in Sustainability Activities in a Major Canadian University Tatiana Teslenko Abstract Higher education institutions (HEI) have the potential to engage local and global communities in transformative learning for sustainable principles and practices. However, transforming a university campus into a model of sustainable development and best practice is a challenging task. It is only possible by engag- ing students, faculty, staff, and the campus community, as well as local and global partners. During the last decade Canadian universities have ramped up their efforts in order to support community engagement and partnerships. They aim to connect their research and innovation capacity with the policy and implementation chal- lenges of partner organizations. The University of British Columbia (UBC) has actively pursued sustainability goals and targets for over twenty years. By estab- lishing the University Sustainability Initiative (USI), UBC went a step further than other Canadian universities. The paper presents an overview of the evolution of the university’s sustainability strategy and focuses on sustainability-related develop- ments within the last decade. It discusses five on-campus and off-campus engagement programs that contribute to UBC’s sustainability goals: the SEEDS program, Sus- tainability Ambassadors, “UBC Reads Sustainability”, Student Sustainability Coun- cil, and Sustainability-in-Residence, the Greenest City Scholars at the Point Grey campus in Vancouver, Canada. These programs exemplify joint efforts for promot- ing sustainable behaviors and practices that contribute to a net-positive campus and promote human and ecological wellbeing. Developments and findings discussed in the paper could be of value for many HEI interested in successful ways to engage students, staff, faculty, and the broader community in the practice of sustainability. Keywords Education · Community engagement · Transformative learning · University · Living lab · Agent of change · Sustainability · Partnership · Action research T. Teslenko (B) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science, University of British Columbia, Applied Science Lane, Vancouver, BC 2054-6250, V6T1Z4, Canada e-mail: tteslenko@gmail.com © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_1 3
  • 17. 4 T. Teslenko 1 Introduction It is common knowledge that the world’s future will be shaped by today’s educa- tional experiences of our students. For this reason, higher education institutions (HEI) have an important function as agents of social transformation and change. In order to address today’s most pressing challenges on a global level, HEI should develop con- temporary problem-driven and solution-oriented curricula (Robinson 2008; Sarewitz and Kriebel 2010). Along with the potential for transformational action, HEI are in a position to addressvariousdimensionsofsustainabilityanddevelopintegratedknowledge(Wiek et al. 2011). Nurturing world-leading research, supporting innovative pedagogy, and mobilizing partners and resources are important vehicles for enacting positive change and promoting sustainability (Cortese 2003). This paper first presents its theoretical framework, methodology, socio- ethnographic context and research questions. It then considers key ESD develop- ments within the last decade at the University of British Columbia in Canada (UBC), a global centre in research and innovation. Further discussion highlights sustainability-related pedagogical innovations and advances in research, student and community engagement. Three topics are exam- ined: establishing partnerships on the university campus and beyond, transforming the campus into a living lab, and positioning the university as an agent of change. The effect of these innovations and advances on building a sustainable work-live-learn campus is examined. An important contribution of this study lies in the consideration of the socio- ethnographic context and collaboration with the local aboriginal community. Another contributionliesindemonstratinghowa“wholeuniversity”approachhasbeenimple- mented on a large multicultural campus, and how positive change has been advanced in an integrated and holistic way. A third contribution is the examination of recent community engagement strategies related to human and environmental wellbeing. The paper discusses several examples of sustainability-related programs dedicated to the engagement of students and the community. These programs enable the univer- sity to enhance global and local partnerships and offer every student the opportunity for transformative learning, inspirational research, and rewarding student life. 2 Theory and Methodology The theoretical framework for the study comprises transformative learning theory (TLT), emancipatory action research (EAR), and case-study approach. Transfor- mative learning can be defined as “the capacity to change existing patterns and world-views, to construct new knowledge collectively, to challenge and improve practice, and to critique and examine sustainability issues” (Sterling 2004). Dis- cussing the theoretical basis for the learning process, Mezirow’s TLT emphasizes
  • 18. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 5 critical reflection, dialogue and holistic learning (Mezirow 2009). In particular, TLT distinguishes between three types of reflection: content reflection, process reflec- tion, and premise reflection. Learning takes place within the social and emotional contexts of each student’s life through analysis, exploration of contrasting theories, and critical reflection. Therefore, examination of this context is essential for devel- oping sustainability-related curricula and involving students in sustainability-related research, pedagogical innovation, and community engagement initiatives (Coops et al. 2015; Reilly and Teslenko 2015). Transformative learning is thought-provoking because it challenges wide-spread beliefs and leads to a whole reconstruction of meaning (Sterling 2013). A shift from conformative (or even reformative) learning to transformative learning constitutes a shift to higher order learning. During this shift, multiple changes happen at a fast pace, questioning traditional methodologies and promoting capacity building and empowerment (Disterheft et al. 2015). As pointed by Howlett et al. (2016), transformation should occur among academics in the first place. Changes of view- points empower them to transcend disciplinary boundaries and integrate academic research with non-academic expertise and systems of knowledge. As the saying goes, “knowledge is power”, and the power of transformative learning is evident when students and faculty critically assess and challenge their world view, assumptions and beliefs (Howlett et al. 2016). The value of integrating TLT with ESD has been widely discussed in literature (Ryan and Cotton 2013) as a way to engage the faculty, staff, students and campus community. When this happens, a university changes from a knowledge-transfer cen- tre to a “place of mind”, i.e., a site for rigorous reflection, critical thinking and trans- formational learning. The combination of whole curriculum reform and individual specialized courses supports ESD integration in HEI because interpretive flexibility and openness for variations offer a substantial opportunity for pedagogical innova- tion. According to Leal Filho et al. (2015, 2018), about 600 universities around the world have adopted the new vision of ESD integration in HEI. In Canada, many public sector education (PSE) institutions require that their students should be famil- iar with the concept of sustainability (Teslenko 2012; Vaughter et al. 2016). Of 220 accredited HEI, 110 (that is, 50%) have sustainability policies in place (Beveridge et al. 2015). Traditionally, these policies have a Brundtland (i.e. intergenerational) and/or three-pillar (e.g. economic, environmental and social) orientation to sustain- ability(Vaughteretal.2016).However,recentresearchidentifiedtheneedtointegrate non-traditional aspects of sustainability in the public discourse in order for HEI to act as a catalyst for economic and social transformation (Leal Filho et al. 2018). These aspects are related to human, societal, and environmental wellbeing; they include ethics, aesthetics and culture, as well as non-material values, e.g., mutual help, solidarity, and compassion. For example, Burford et al. (2013) have identi- fied several cultural aspects: aesthetic, political-institutional and religious-spiritual (e.g., intercultural fluency, diversity and equality). These new aspects contribute to a fourth pillar that will expand the scope of the traditional three-pillar approach. Some Canadian HEI, including UBC, now include this fourth pillar in their sustainability policies.
  • 19. 6 T. Teslenko The dimensions of this fourth pillar can be explored through action research, an important participatory approach that is useful in projects involving community and industry partners. Action research illuminates the impact of transformational learning on students’ understanding of core competencies and skills (Reilly and Teslenko 2015). It can contribute to the transformation of professional practice, gen- erate new knowledge and lead to pedagogical transformation (Cohen et al. 2000; Cebrián et al. 2012; Somekh 2006). Action research and interdisciplinary collab- oration have unique transformational properties; they can address complex, multi- stakeholder problems with high social and environmental relevance. Action research promotes emancipatory rather than technical change, so it is can help faculty and staff to embed ESD in the curriculum (Reilly and Teslenko 2015). It can be undertaken by a group of instructors working at the same university, researchers within the same institution, students and advisers (Cebrián et al. 2012; Somekh 2006). Therefore, emancipatory action research (EAR) was chosen for this study due to its potential to engage participants in a learn-by-doing process accompanied by critical reflection, clarification of essential values, and exploration of contrasting viewpoints (Cohen et al. 2000; Somekh 2006). Both TLT and EAR can be combined with observation, interviewing, and pedagogical reflection (Teslenko 2012) and are integral to devel- oping a flexible learner-centered approach for student and community engagement. This flexible approach incorporates self-reflection on the transformative potential of universities and the role of faculty, staff and students as agents of change. As noted in literature, self-reflection of this type is necessary for integrating ESD in higher education and for societal transformation in the 21st century. Another important methodological approach used in this study is the case study approach. As noted by Leal Filho et al. (2018), this approach offers the possibil- ity to study all participants and documents which either empower or prevent HEI from moving forward towards ESD. There are four basic constituents of a case: the problem, the context, the audience, and constraints; all of them are considered in our study of student and community engagement in sustainability-related activities at UBC. Data about students’ and community engagement were collected through literature and document review, observations, program participant evaluation sur- veys, and analysis of institutional and program resources. This analysis focused on the university’s initiatives, achievements, strategic documents and reports for the last decade (2008–2018). 3 Research Questions Related to Student and Community Engagement Solving the challenges of sustainability requires collaboration between local and global partners at a large scale. Discussing the foundations of “sustainable universi- ty”, Sterling and Maxey (2013) conclude that the relationship between higher edu- cation and the external community “needs to change for the benefit of both entities;
  • 20. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 7 that there needs to be a much better congruence between these two realities” (p. 304). For this change to occur, universities must actively seek partnerships as opportunities to enact positive and sustainable change. Indeed, partnerships between universities, government and industry are a popular element of international and national decla- rations about ESD (Wright 2004). A partnership is an important mechanism through which organizations and businesses can address complex sustainability challenges and minimize economic, environmental and social impacts (Haanaes et al. 2012). In fact, it has been argued that universities have an obligation to form such community partnerships (Cortese 2003). In their analysis of 70 university partnerships in Europe, Asia and North America for advancing sustainability, Trencher et al., (2014) note that most of such relationships occur at the town/city level, with the local/neighborhood scale the next most frequent. Partnerships between universities and communities take many forms, including “internships, academic service projects, applied research, organization and community capacity building” (Clifford and Petrescu 2012, p. 78). Such partnerships can advance sustainability goals for both organizations (Bilodeau et al. 2014). Importantly, in 2015 the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada included partnerships, excellence and collaboration among key commitments of PSE institutions to address societal needs: 1. To equip all students with the skills and knowledge they need to flourish in work and life, empowering them to contribute to Canada’s economic, social and intellectual success. 2. To pursue excellence in all aspects of learning, discovery and community engagement. 3. To deliver a broad range of enriched learning experiences. 4. To put [our] best minds to the most pressing problems — whether global, national, regional or local. 5. To help build a stronger Canada through collaboration and partnerships with the private sector,communities,government andothereducational institutionsinCanada andaround the world (Universities Canada 2015). The University of British Columbia is one of three top Canadian universities, and it is consistently ranked among the 40 best universities in the world (UBC 2018c). It has two campuses: the Point Grey campus and the Okanagan campus. This paper discusses sustainability initiatives at the Point Grey campus which is situated in a 2.4-million city of Vancouver in Canada. The university consistently builds connec- tions across both campuses and creates synergies with local and global partners. One of these partners is the municipal administration of the City of Vancouver. In July 2011 the City of Vancouver has set an aspirational goal to become the greenest city on the planet by 2020 (City of Vancouver 2018). The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan (GCAP) prepares Vancouver for the potential impact of climate change, while build- ing a vibrant community, a thriving economy, and a healthier city. GCAP comprises ten smaller plans, each with a long-term goal to 2050 and medium-term targets to 2020. These goals include the following: green economy, climate leadership, green buildings, green transportation, zero waste, access to nature, lighter footprint, clean water, clean air, and local food (City of Vancouver and UBC 2010).
  • 21. 8 T. Teslenko The residents of the City and the UBC community proudly acknowledge that Vancouverites live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem Nations. The University Endowment Lands are situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam Indian Band (UBC 2018a). “Unceded” means that this territory was not formally surrendered by the First Nations people and it belongs to them. This land has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam people, who for thousands of years have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site. The following quote from an aboriginal prayer demonstrates sustainability-related philosophy of the First Nations people: This land doesn’t belong to us. This land belongs to seven generations down the road. I pray that the water that we drink, the water that we swim in, will be there for our great great great grandchildren. As well as all over the world. I pray that the land that we walk on, the trees that we enjoy, will be there for our generations to come. These things, they all come together with health. Health of humans. Health of the animals. And health of the Mother Earth (Okanagan Charter 2015). Since its inception in 1910 UBC has actively promoted a paradigm shift towards embracing collaboration and promoting positive and sustainable change. A signif- icant step in promoting social sustainability on campus was the signing of a mem- orandum of understanding with the Musqueam Nation in 2006. UBC recognizes the importance of this land to the Musqueam people and continuously reinforces its commitment to aboriginal engagement (UBC 2012, 2015), especially through com- munity involvement and through the transformation of campus into a living lab. It is important to note that UBC sustainability strategy was developed in consultation with the campus community, the University Neighbourhood Association (UNA), the Musqueam First Nation, and external community partners. Based on these consid- erations, the following research questions have been formulated for this study: 1. What engagement strategies are instrumental in building a sustainable work-live- learn campus community? 2. How can a “whole university” approach be implemented on a large multicultural campus? How can positive change be advanced in an integrated and holistic way? 3. What factors are important for turning a university into a living lab? 4. What strategies are useful for empowering students to be agents of positive and sustainable change? The limitations of this study are as follows: (1) it does not address all ten goals articulated by the City of Vancouver; instead, it explores student and community engagement at UBC; (2) it discusses sustainability-related developments on only one of the two university campuses, specifically, the Point Grey campus in Vancouver; (3) it touches upon initiatives within the last two decades and focuses on sustainability- related developments within the last decade (2008–2018).
  • 22. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 9 4 Key Sustainability Initiatives at the University of British Columbia In 1990, along with other leading educational institutions who signed the Talloires Declaration (University Leaders for a Sustainable Future 2015), UBC pledged to make sustainability the foundation for campus operations, research, teaching and community engagement (UBC 2014). In 1997, UBC adopted a sustainable develop- ment policy that encouraged ESD, as well as sustainable practices in its daily opera- tions (Moore et al. 2005). In November 2007, the Province of British Columbia intro- duced British Columbia’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act (British Columbia Ministry of Environment 2007). The Act required that the university and all BC pub- lic sector organizations be carbon neutral in operations from 2010 (Bilodeau et al. 2014). In response, UBC ramped up its efforts in sustainability teaching, research and operations. The last decade (2008–2018) saw an unprecedented growth of UBC campus infrastructure and a substantial increase in the number of employees and students. The 2009 UBC official strategic plan, “Place and Promise”, reinforced a high-level commitment to sustainability. It identified sustainability as one of six areas that support the university’s three priorities: student learning, research excellence and community engagement (SAS 2009; UBC 2012). In 2009 UBC prepared a strategic document entitled “Sustainability Academic Strategy” (SAS 2009; UBC 2012). It provided a vision and goals for enhancing sus- tainability across the university, as well as a framework for the implementation of key sustainability initiatives on campus. It is important to note that the plan was developed in broad consultation with all members of the campus community, including advisory and committee meetings, town hall forums, focus group sessions and opportunities for feedback through social media sites. In 2010, the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) was created. This strategic unit had a mission to integrate sustainability efforts across the University and ensure that ESD, research and operations would indeed advance in an integrated and holistic way. UBC established ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets and mobilized the work of many units across its campuses. It initiated numerous sustainability-related advances, such as the ecological footprint (Rees and Wackernagel 1994), regenerative sustainability (Robinson et al. 2011) and shifting baselines (Pauly 2011). UBC was also the originator of the University and College Presidents’ Climate Change Statement of Action for Canadian Universities (University and College Presidents’ Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada 2012). In 2011 UBC became Canada’s 1st Fair Trade campus and earned Canada’s 1st Gold in the STARS sustainability rating system (AASHE 2015; UBC 2018c). Inadditiontoinitiativesrelatedtoincreasingoperationalefficiencies,environmen- tal stewardship and utility savings, sustainability is an active area of research and study at UBC. Over 21% of faculty have sustainability research interests. 65% of departments have courses with sustainability content. Across the university, admin- istrative units pursue sustainability in their operations, and their strategic and opera- tional plans include goals which are directly related to sustainability (UBC 2015). In 2015theuniversityforegroundedthreeinterconnectedthemes—inclusion,collabora-
  • 23. 10 T. Teslenko tion and innovation. They were articulated in the new official strategic plan, “Shaping UBC’s Next Century” (UBC 2015) and linked to four core target areas with signif- icant transformational potential: (a) people and places, (b) research excellence and collaborative clusters, (c) innovative pedagogy and transformative learning, (d) local and global engagement leading to thriving campus communities.1 The new 20-year Sustainability Strategy (2015–2035) for UBC’s Vancouver campus was developed in the spirit of respectful collaboration with the Musqueam First Nation (UBC 2018a). It builds on the previous UBC’s Sustainability Academic Strategy (SAS 2009) and outlines UBC’s sustainability vision and aspirations for the period of 2015–2035. 5 Collective Action as a Foundation for Creating a Vibrant Community A sustainable campus is a place where sustainability is part of strategic university decisions, where the university tries to improve the life of the local community (Moore et al. 2005), and the local community is actively engaged in this process through collaboration, inclusion and connectivity. But how can “the whole university approach” be implemented on such a large cam- pus? UBC comprises 17 Faculties, 17 Schools and 2 Colleges, with the student popu- lation of 65,012, with 5,471 faculty, and 10,618 staff members. It has two campuses, UBC Point Grey in Vancouver and UBC Okanagan in Kelowna (UBC 2018b). The UBC community comprises residents of neighbourhoods on both campuses, includ- ing students, faculty, staff and non-affiliated residents, as well as non-residents who work or study on campus. UBC Point Grey campus is situated on the westernmost tip of the Vancouver peninsula; it is about a 30-min bus ride from Downtown Vancouver. This is a big site, at 993 acres or 4 km2 , and the campus is surrounded by 2,000 acres of dense forest, known as Pacific Spirit Park (UBC 2018b). Altogether, this area forms much of the 3,000 acres of the University Endowment Lands in Vancouver Point Grey area. These lands were given by the government to UBC in 1908 when the university was founded (The Daily Hive 2013). The University supports a resilient and engaged campus community that addresses changecollectivelyandcollaboratively.SpecificconditionsonthePointGreycampus have cultivated an entrepreneurial culture that supports the development of sustain- ability initiatives. This culture embraces compassion, wellbeing and social justice; intercultural fluency, diversity and equality are integrated into UBC’s social sustain- ability efforts. The campus accommodates a thriving multicultural community of over 70,000 students, faculty, staff, and local residents. It has one of the most diverse 1Greatpeople —nurturingourglobalcommunityoffaculty,staffandstudents.Enhancinginclusion within the UBC community and deepening our engagement with Indigenous partners. Collabora- tive clusters — interdisciplinary research clusters focusing on problems of societal importance. Innovative pedagogy — enriching experiential learning and research opportunities as ways to master valuable competencies. Thriving campus communities — focusing on the wellbeing of our UBC community, including sustainability and connectivity to our campuses. (UBC 2014).
  • 24. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 11 populations of international students in Canada—in 2018, 26.3% of students were international, which amounted to 16,188 international students from 156 countries2 (UBC 2018b). As a direct result of participating in the entrepreneurial culture at UBC, these students acquire sustainability skills during their studies and rapidly disseminate them on a global scale. Indeed, UBC has over 325,000 alumni in 140 countries (UBC 2018c). Two specific ways of community engagement are discussed below: campus as a living lab and university as an agent of change. 6 Transforming the Campus into a Living Lab An effective strategy of community involvement is to transform the campus into a living lab and to nurture a thriving work-live-learn community. It means creating public spaces, parks and amenities, as well as using operational, educational and research capabilities in a way that “empowers the faculty, staff and students to study and share lessons learned, technologies created and policies developed” (UBC Sus- tainability 2017a). Two initiatives are discussed below: Sustainability-in-Residence and Human and Environmental Wellbeing at UBC (UBC Sustainability 2017a). 6.1 Sustainability-in-Residence UBC houses more than 10,000 students in 13 residential complexes and is actively engaged in cultivating community and promoting green lifestyle choices (UBC 2018b). Every student living on campus can get involved in sustainability activi- ties in the residence that range from integrating sustainability into their daily life to joining the local sustainability committee. These committees present important leadership opportunities. Students learn to organize events and activities that pro- mote ecological and social sustainability topics in residence, such as reducing water, waste and energy use; making sustainable food choices; using green cleaning prod- ucts; recycling and composting. Sustainability-in-Residence activities are organized collaboratively with partners on campus and beyond. As the program evolved over the years, it engaged with many off-campus partners that work with campus resi- dents, UBC staff, faculty and students in implementing and deriving lessons from the “sustainable community living lab” experiment. Importantly, this program helps to engage students in a way that stimulates their passions and empowers their collective action towards making the Point Grey campus a model of a vibrant and sustainable neighbourhood (UBC Sustainability 2017a). This kind of engagement and interac- tion enhances transformative learning and leads to a reconstruction of meaning of sustainable practice and the creation and dissemination of new knowledge. 2The top five countries where international students come form are China, the U.S.A., India, Repub- lic of Korea, and Japan.
  • 25. 12 T. Teslenko 6.2 Human and Environmental Wellbeing at UBC In 2013 UBC began a comprehensive eight-month process to develop a strategy for next generation sustainability at UBC’s Vancouver campus. The process directly engaged over 2,000 people and helped inform the new 20-year Sustainability Strategy (2015–2035). In partnership with the University Neighborhoods Association (UNA), UBC set up a goal to change from a commuter campus to a live-work-learn com- munity. In October 2016 UBC announced a formal commitment and an investment of one million dollars in ongoing funding to support wellbeing at its two campuses. It became one of the first universities in the world to adopt the Okanagan Char- ter (Okanagan Charter 2015). This Charter is an outcome of the 2015 International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges. It provides the following definition of health promoting universities: Health promoting universities and colleges infuse health into everyday operations, business practices and academic mandates. By doing so, health promoting universities and colleges enhance the success of our institutions; create campus cultures of compassion, well-being, equity and social justice; improve the health of the people who live, learn, work, play and love on our campuses; and strengthen the ecological, social and economic sustainability of our communities and wider society (Okanagan Charter 2015). UBC’s deeply-held commitment to human and environmental wellbeing is reflected in the following goals set out in its strategic plan for the period of 2015–2035 (UBC 2016): 1. The campus housing and community development policies enable diverse and more affordable housing options for faculty, staff and students reducing commut- ing and financial stress, and supporting the development of a compact, complete and adaptive community. 2. Integration of social sustainability demonstrates improvements in health, pro- ductivity and quality of life of the UBC community. 3. Innovative engagement programs strengthen linkages across the campus to gener- ateasenseofplaceandsupportthecreationofavibrant,animated,andsustainable live-work-learn community. By promoting human and ecological wellbeing in a holistic and regenerative way, UBC empowers graduates, faculty and staff for long-term success (UBC Sustain- ability 2017b). 7 University as an Agent of Change Transformative learning is the basis for another important strategy for community engagement: to position and promote the university as an agent of change. This flex- ible, learner-centered strategy presents three opportunities: (1) to train future sus- tainability leaders; (2) to work with private, public, NGO, industry, government, and
  • 26. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 13 community partners; (3) to foster sustainability in the larger community beyond the campus. In 2018 the university had 1,342 research projects with industry partners and 1,112 research contracts and agreements with government and non-profit organiza- tions. This allowed 73% of students participate in enriched educational experiences (UBC 2018c). Several on-campus partnerships are described below: the SEEDS program, Sustainability Ambassadors, UBC Reads Sustainability, and the Student Sustainability Council. In addition, one off-campus partnership is discussed: the Greenest City Scholars program. 7.1 The SEEDS Sustainability Program: Experiential Learning The SEEDS Sustainability program serves as a gateway to collaboration for staff, faculty, and community partners by providing a necessary link between the admin- istrative, academic, and community engagement spheres of the university. It also provides an experiential learning opportunity to students and promotes the vision of the campus as a living lab. The goal is to support UBC’s efforts to advance sus- tainability and contribute to its international commitments. The program is admin- istered by UBC’s Campus Community Planning Department; it engages approx- imately one thousand students, faculty, staff and on-campus partners in over 100 impactful research projects, including the Zero Waste Action Plan, Climate Action Plan, Green Building Plan, and Wellbeing. It also leads the Campus Biodiversity Initiative: Research and Demonstration (CBIRD) with the Faculty of Science and campus stakeholders (UBC Sustainability 2017a). The faculty are encouraged to develop sustainability-related curricula by tapping into the existing networks on campus and to align research projects with classroom learning outcomes. Departments are encouraged to create opportunities for students to gain professional mentorship, experience and skills. Project managers are able to frame sustainability challenges into well-scoped projects that meet staff needs and inform strategic operational frameworks of the university. Students are empow- ered to go beyond the classroom and gain professional experience and skills with potential implications for future employment, as well as lead active research projects. Involving students and the campus community in the social action of ESD empowers them to construct knowledge through engagement and interaction. The power shifts from instructors to students and further to community members; they start learning from one another while they share their approaches to problems and find solutions. The role of the instructor then expands to include the roles of the mentor, resource provider, facilitator of the learning transfer and co-learner. In this way the princi- ples of sustainability are integrated university-wide in research, teaching, campus operations and community engagement.
  • 27. 14 T. Teslenko 7.2 Sustainability Ambassadors: Outreach Activity “Sustainability Ambassadors” is an educational outreach activity developed by the Teaching, Learning, and Research Office of the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI). Volunteer Ambassadors work with the Sustainability Student Engagement Manager as part of a team to deliver sustainability programming to fellow students on the Point Grey campus. They network with various student sustainability-oriented groups to encourage their interconnectivity on campus (UBC Sustainability 2017a). In this way they help to organize and promote sustainability-related events and develop a passionate commitment in their approach to sustainability. The program helps to raise awareness of sustainability, to inspire the campus community to learn more about it, and to explore sustainability principles and practices in their own lives. In this was the campus community is engaged in holistic learning and conscientious living through collaboration and critical thinking. This is another successful example of implementing a flexible learner-centered approach. 7.3 UBC Reads Sustainability: Learning Beyond the Classroom The “UBC Reads Sustainability” initiative invites famous sustainability authors to engage in a campus-wide discussion. It is not just a book club, lecture series, or an opportunity to learn beyond the classroom—it provides a forum for students across disciplines to discuss sustainability issues. Each year leading sustainability books are selected. The program staff works with instructors in order to integrate these books into courses, and to bring the authors to UBC for a public lecture series (UBC Sustainability 2017a). It has been proven in literature that a discussion of sustainability issues in the local context may lead to discussion of global issues, thus improving the students’ understanding of complex topics through a “global” approach. Students’ engagement with sustainability issues brings a fresh perspective and enthusiasm to this discourse; students shift from an “outsider” position, through a “participant-observer” position, to the position of a “leader” and a “passionate supporter” of sustainable practices. Participation in the program enhances ESD in students’ academic programs and helps them to experience real-world situations. It also promotes clarification of essential values, exploration of contrasting viewpoints, dialogue and holistic learning. 7.4 Student Sustainability Council: Leadership Opportunities Founded in 2009, the Student Sustainability Council (SSC) is a select board of students representing a wide range of organizations on campus. It manages funds
  • 28. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 15 collected from the student environmental stewardship fee and allocates them for a variety of sustainability projects. Importantly, any member of the community can submit a proposal for funding support (UBC Sustainability 2017a). The administra- tion and coordination of these projects provide important leadership opportunities for student council members, improving their personal attitude towards sustainabil- ity, promoting collective action, and enhancing critical reflection. Over the years an increasing number of students got involved in the ongoing development of sustain- abilityinitiativesoncampus:formercouncilmembersassumetheroleofcoordinators for new student-led sustainability groups. In this way, work on the council provides another transformational learning experience and encourages students’ commitment and passion toward the development of sustainable practices. 7.5 Off-Campus Program: The Greenest City Scholars More diverse opportunities for transformative learning exist in off-campus partner- ships. The university has extended its reach to the off-campus community by devel- oping a partnership project with the City of Vancouver (Munro et al. 2016). The Greenest City Scholars program brought together members of the campus and the city to support sustainable community development and enjoyed success due to a strong relationship between the university and the city, shared sustainability goals, and sup- port from senior administrators (Munro et al. 2016). In 2010 the City of Vancouver and BC signed a Memorandum of Understanding and partnership (Munro et al. 2016) for a duration of ten years (2010–2020). It outlines shared sustainability objectives, guiding principles, administration, and implementation milestones. Key areas are teaching and learning, applied research, community engagement, transforming the campus and the city into a living laboratory, and hosting the world/communications. Each key area has a set of suggested activities. The Greenest City Scholars program was developed within the “Teaching and Learning” set of activities and was initially called the “Green City Action Team/Mayor’s Fellows Program” (City of Vancouver and UBC 2010, p. 3). The idea of pairing UBC graduate students with the City staff emerged in the early days of the discussions between the City and UBC because it offered benefits for both parties: (1) the City appreciated UBC students’ research capacity that helped City’s staff to advance its sustainability agenda; (2) UBC welcomed the potential to provide students with valuable professional experience with real-world issues (Munro et al. 2016). Through this partnership, UBC could act as a “catalyst for economic and social transformation” (O’Mara 2012, p. 235) and an agent of change for sustainability in the community, which were some of the key principles expressed by the university in its strategic plans (UBC 2012, 2015). In subsequent years the City of Vancouver matched the funding of the program and provided the impetus for UBC to work with other regional partners. This extra funding resulted in the tripling of the number of student positions (Munro et al. 2016). In 2014, graduate student sustainability internships, called “Sustainability Scholars”, were piloted with the provincial hydro-
  • 29. 16 T. Teslenko electric power authority, a gas utility, a local First Nations community and several on-campus departments. Overall, participation in the Greenest City Scholars program helped UBC stu- dents to broaden their sustainability education and led to significant outcomes to the university and to the City (Munro et al. 2016): 1. It helped graduate students to acquire important competencies, e.g., an ability to apply the knowledge from their own program to real-world problems, and an opportunity to develop as agents of change. 2. It built an active bridge between the university and the City and allowed students to play an important role in strengthening the partnership (Daneri et al. 2015). 3. It provided highly valued ESD-related work experience and allowed students to make important research and policy contributions. 4. It was expanded because the City helped to establish connections with the City’s other partners to encourage them to work with UBC. Consequently, the impact of the Scholars program occurred on three levels: (a) at an individual level—through the training and education provided to students; (b) at an organizational level—through the contributions of individual projects to pol- icy development; (c) at a broader level—as a mechanism to promote partnerships required for societal transformation (Munro et al. 2016). These findings are consis- tent with the principles of the guiding framework of desired outcomes for students graduating from ESD programs (Marcus et al. 2015; Munro et al. 2016). 8 Conclusions The University of British Columbia rightfully occupies an important place in the globalnetworkofHEIthathaveturnedtheircampusesintoresearch,developmentand demonstration sites for sustainable behaviour, infrastructure and community. UBC is proud to share its 20-year-long track record of successful pursuit of operational sus- tainability goals and targets. This paper briefly reviewed sustainability initiatives for a period of two decades and foregrounded sustainability-related developments within the last decade. It described activities that led towards student engagement and the creation of a vibrant, healthy and resilient community and highlighted an important part of this engagement—an on-going ecological conversation about sustainability. This conversation helped to develop a shared understanding of ecological, social and economic consequences of individual actions and collective action. The paper dis- cussed two important developments: transforming the university into a living lab and positioning it as an agent of change. It discussed the following important outcomes that show how the University of British Columbia has successfully implemented “the whole university approach” for embedding ESD through societal conversation, collective action, collaboration and partnerships: 1. The transformation from a place of learning to a vibrant and sustainable work- live-learn campus was facilitated by leveraging the community’s best assets and
  • 30. Engaging Students and Campus Community … 17 diverse skills of students, faculty, staff and local residents. This was achieved through delivering programming for all ages, building community capacity, and engaging the community with outreach initiatives and local partnerships. 2. The university has deeply engaged with its local and global partners. Impor- tantly, it has nurtured and supported a mutually respectful relationship with the Musqueam people, the local First Nations Band on whose traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories the Point Grey campus is located. 3. UBC joined other campuses that act as living labs, implementing ESD in ways that empower students, faculty, and staff to become global agents of change and influence sustainability practices around the world. 4. The university leveraged the introduction of the Provincial Government’s Carbon Neutral Mandate as an opportunity to work collaboratively with its administrative units, faculty, and students toward carbon emission reductions and associated cost savings. 5. The growth and development of the campus created the opportunity to further develop innovative practices: a. On the research level, UBC researchers advanced sustainability scholarship. b. On the curriculum and extra-curriculum levels, hundreds of ESD-related courses, programs and educational events were developed for faculty, staff and students. c. On the organizational level, UBC committed to a deep integration of its operational and academic efforts. 6. UBC’s strong commitment to promoting human and environmental wellbeing has signified a major cultural shift. Wellbeing has become an important avenue for creating a healthier, happier and more sustainable work-live-learn community. Through these developments, every person in the campus community is empow- ered to achieve their full potential in teaching, learning, research, and community engagement. The University of British Columbia continues to build on its achieve- ments, to study the problems and issues involved in implementing sustainable prac- tices, and to prepare students with sustainability-related knowledge and skills. References Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) (2015) STARS participants and reports. https://stars.aashe.org/institutions/participants-and-reports. Accessed 30 June 2018 Beveridge D, McKenzie M, Vaughter P, Wright T (2015) Sustainability in Canadian post-secondary institutions:theinterrelationshipsamongsustainabilityinitiativesandgeographicandinstitutional characteristics. Int J Sustain High Educ 16(5):611–638 Bilodeau L, Podger J, Abd-El-Aziz A (2014) Advancing campus and community sustainability: strategic alliances in action. Int J Sustain High Educ 15(2):157–168
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  • 33. 20 T. Teslenko University Leaders for a Sustainable Future (2015) Talloires Declaration. http://ulsf.org/talloires- declaration/. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2012) Place and promise: the UBC plan. Annual Report 2011–2012. https://strategicplan.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2009/08/2011-12-Place- and-Promise-Annual-Report-Final-June-2012.pdf. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2014) 20-Year sustainability strategy for the univer- sity of British Columbia Vancouver campus. http://sustain.ubc.ca.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ sites/sustain.ubc.ca/files/uploads/CampusSustainability/CS_PDFs/PlansReports/Plans/20-Year- Sustainability-Strategy-UBC.pdf. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2015) UBC’s strategic plan: shaping UBC’s next century. https://strategicplan.ubc.ca. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2016) Annual Sustainability Report 2015–2016. http:// report.sustain.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2015-16-Annual-Sustainability-Report1.pdf. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2018a) Musqueam and UBC. http://aboriginal.ubc.ca/ community-youth/musqueam-and-ubc. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2018b) UBC Campuses. https://www.ubc.ca/our-campuses/ index.html. Accessed 30 June 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC) (2018c) UBC Overview and Facts. https://www.ubc.ca/ about/facts.html. Accessed 30 June 2018 VaughterP,McKenzieM,LidstoneL,WrightT(2016)CampussustainabilitygovernanceinCanada: a content analysis of post-secondary institutions’ sustainability policies. Int J Sustain High Educ 17(1):16–39 Wiek A, Withycombe L, Redman CL, Mills SB (2011) Moving forward on competencies in sus- tainability. Environ Sci Policy Sustain Dev 53:3–13 Wright T (2004) The evolution of sustainability declarations in higher education. In: Corcoran PB, Wals A (eds) Higher education and the challenge of sustainability: problematics, promise and practice. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Berlin, pp 7–19 Tatiana Teslenko Dr. Tatiana Teslenko holds a Kandydat of Philological Sciences degree from Odessa University, Ukraine (1989) and a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University in Canada (2000). She is Professor of Teaching at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include education for sustainable development, engi- neering communication, and experiential learning. Dr. Teslenko authored four books and dozens of papers in communication studies and transformative learning pedagogy. She designed and launched several programs for international students (such as ASSIST UBC and the Graduate Teaching Assistants training program). She was the founder and inaugural Director of the Cen- tre for Professional Skills Development at the Faculty of Applied Science.
  • 34. A Review on Integrated Information System and Sustainability Implementation Framework in Higher Education Mona M. Al-Kuwari and Muammer Koç Abstract Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) hold an essential societal position as a micro model for the larger community of cities, countries, and the World in demonstrating a commitment to, contribution for, and transformational example of sustainability. HEIs have a significant prospect for enabling change towards a sustain- able future and development. An extensive number of studies present sustainability ideation and implementation in HEIs with a large variety of approaches along with an emphasis on the main factors affecting its implementation. In addition, other studies report on different strategies used for aligning information systems (IS) with sus- tainability. This present study is a review aiming at investigating the existing gaps and identifying opportunities for future research towards developing an effective and integrated IS framework to enhance and support sustainability implementation in HEIs. Findings reveal that there is a necessity for further investigation on the link- age between all phases of implementing sustainability in HEIs through integrating sustainability and IS frameworks while considering all main factors that influence this shift. Keywords Sustainability implementation · Higher education · Information system · Implementation framework · Assessment system 1 Introduction In the past decade, a number of international studies, reports and conferences related to sustainability raised critical issues about incorporating sustainability into educa- tional systems (Shrivastava 2010). Although sustainable development (SD) in HEI is M. M. Al-Kuwari (B) · M. Koç Division of Sustainable Development (DSD), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar Foundation (QF), Education City, Doha, Qatar e-mail: monalkuwari@hbku.edu.qa M. Koç e-mail: mkoc@hbku.edu.qa © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_2 21
  • 35. 22 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç not a new debate, it has only started to gain attention in recent years. For this reason, there is an essential need to conduct additional and targeted research in order to estab- lish new ways and means to develop sustainable practices in HEIs as they set perfect examples and act as drivers for the rest of the society. On the international level, in 2000, the United States established the Association for the Advancement of Sustain- ability in Higher Education (AASHE), which organized HEIs to lead the initiative of sustainability conversion. The main roles of this organization are to provide resources and a network of support and professional development to facilitate modeling and advancing sustainability to HEIs in their activities. Another successful initiative in this aspect is the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) by UNESCO, which aimed to encourage behavioral change by embed- ding sustainable development into all education practices (UNESCO 2005). All over the world, most of the HEIs started addressing issues around sustainabil- ity through introducing this concept into their mainstream activities, research and courses (Stephens and Graham 2010). Hereafter, HEIs were recognized for their great contributions in supporting sustainability initiatives across their domains (Karat- zoglou 2013). Accordingly, there are some successful examples of HEIs embedding sustainability strategies into all of their educational activities such as curriculum development, research, operations and activities. According to Goni et al. (2017) an extensive number of studies highlighting sustainability in higher education have been conducted, most of which have been concerned with surveying the substantial role of HEIs in integrating sustainability, sustainability assessment, and sustainabil- ity integration into education. However, in the context of higher education only a few studies have investigated the function of IS in assessing all procedures used for processing sustainability data (Gómez et al. 2015; Jorge et al. 2015). Leal Filho (2011) mentioned that although over 600 universities signed interna- tional agreements and conventions to commit themselves towards sustainable behav- iors, many of them partially failed in implementing the framework of sustainability into practice. According to Spira et al. (2013), most of higher education institutions are following non-structured frameworks to integrate sustainability development. In fact, he referred to a need to identify and formulate a generic and scalable framework as well as to identify different influencing factors. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid a focus on addressing specific needs of each organization, and instead to work towards a holistic thinking to adapt and tackle sustainability issues (Nawaz and Koç 2018). In addition, an integral understanding of every system is mandatory to iden- tify diverse factors hindering the implementation of sustainability in HEIs (Gómez et al. 2015). Thus, it is important to cover all sustainability related dimensions by considering how these factors can be related to an HEI’s system. Recent technological advances have increased the availability, volume and capa- bility of information management; decision makers require the availability of infor- mation and data for both planning and decision making. An Information System (IS) is a software that provides the information necessary to manage an organization effectively by organizing and analyzing its data to move it into synthesized and useful knowledge and functional actions for further continuous improvement. An IS gives an overall picture of the company, acting as a communication and planning tool that
  • 36. A Review on Integrated Information System … 23 assists decision makers to adapt to any changes. In addition to that, the IS is consid- ered as a key facilitator to evaluate the performance and to monitor progress in order to enhance business processes in any sector (Chofreh et al. 2016b). Therefore, the evolution of sustainability practices in HEIs can be facilitated and improved with a framework aligning sustainability goals, its implementation stages and IS; or it can be adversely affected by the misalignment between sustainability and IS. Time waste and excessive costs during sustainability implementation are two examples of the possible misalignment that might lead to unsuccessful and inefficient sustainability implementation. In contrast, the sustainability practices which are supported by IS can lead to achieve sustainability goals and objectives in HEIs rapidly and efficiently setting positive examples for the rest of society and other organizations. This study summarizes findings from literature concerning the current state of research in sustainability implementation by covering different concepts of pro- posed frameworks and various strategies of IS in HEIs. A systematic review has been conducted. The first step was to search for relevant articles from databases such as ScienceDirect and ResearchGate using selected keyword including sustainability, university, HEI, information systems in different combinations in addition to some papers that were recommended by expert in the field of sustainability. Most of selec- tions are scientific papers from journals, and the search resulted in around 100 + documents. The second step was an analysis of the content of selected documents by reviewing the title, authors and abstracts, a process which resulted in the number of relevant articles being reduced to around 50. Out of these, only around 22 were found to be addressing common issues of sustainability and IS issues in HEI at the time of this search between November 2017 and January 2018. The paper is divided into three sections. Section one covers findings from literature review. Section two provides further research opportunities. Finally, the last section presents conclusions and recommendations. 2 Implementing Sustainability in HEIs Appling sustainability in HEIs is not a mere policy changing process. It is a major transformation, which requires development and implementing a myriad of proce- dures. In fact, implementing sustainability requires strategic planning, organizational restructuring and decision-making that is supported by leadership vision. Different perspectives of developing sustainability implementation frameworks and explana- tions of how they would be mapped within IS in HEIs are presented in this section. 2.1 Sustainability Implementation Frameworks for HEIs Sustainabilityhasemergedasanessentialtopicinhighereducation;therefore,numer- ous researches have proposed schemes to introduce the sustainability concept into
  • 37. 24 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç their mainstream courses, activities and research, while other studies have analyzed different factors that might influence the implementation process. In this respect, in 2015, two studies were published: Jorge et al. (2015) conducted a research focusing on analyzing the application of sustainability in higher education in Spain, and they investigated the factors influencing sustainability practices; while Milutinović and Nikolić (2014) studied the implementation process of sustainability in higher educa- tion in Serbia, evaluated recent developments in theoretical concepts and practices, and studied their potential impacts on Serbia’s overall HEIs practices. Both stud- ies discovered the importance of universities increasing their commitment towards sustainability application. They advised that this should be initiated by university planners and decision makers and facilitated through acts of commitment such as signing declarations similar to the College Sustainability Report Card (2011). Fur- thermore, they concluded that HEIs require pursuing innovative ways to create links with the society, mainly by the restoration of programs and a new research plan (Jorge et al. 2015; Milutinović and Nikolić 2014). Verhulst and Lambrechts (2015) established a framework and a model for sustain- ability implementation based on some specific factors related to humans. In addition, theyprovidedessentialguidelinestoembedsustainabledevelopmentinhighereduca- tion. The authors focused on analyzing human factors influencing the implementation of sustainability at the Belgian University. Resistance against change and internal communication on changes were two examples of these human related factors. The study showed that the theoretical model provided an explanation of the human related barriers which, therefore, affected the integration of sustainability in higher educa- tion. The authors showed the interlinkages between the discovered barriers and the different phases of the implementation process. Finally, the study emphasized the essential role of the continuous support by sustainable development representatives and ambassadors within HEIs to enhance sustainability implementations. Holdsworth and Thomas (2016) carried out a research similar to the aforemen- tioned study. They developed a framework based on the theoretical Sustainability Education Academic Development (SEAD) in order to identify requirements neces- sary for educational development programs to apply sustainability in higher educa- tion. These proposed frameworks considered the three main elements of an educa- tional development program, academic development and organisational change; that need to be taken into account in sustainability implementation in HEIs. However, this study missed the guideline needed for this integration. Over the last decade, the awareness of the impact of human activities has increased significantly. This brought more clarity and pushed organizations to take responsi- bility and be committed toward achieving SD goals. Furthermore, stakeholders were highly engaged in the process of building sustainable future (Daub 2007). Therefore, in order to support organizations and societies in their movements towards achieving SD, accurate data collection in sustainability reports are needed to track performance, share values, and take actions. To achieve this, assessment system and sustainability practice should be aligned in one strategy. Suggestions for sustainability assessment systems and its strategies are provided in the next section.
  • 38. A Review on Integrated Information System … 25 2.2 The Information System Strategy for Assessing Sustainability in HEIs Darnall et al. (2008) mention that some studies noticed the integration of IS strategies or existing assessment systems could be insufficient to achieve sustainability goals. Moreover, applying conceptual sustainability models is very challenging if it is not backed with some proper tools that are incorporated with theoretical framework. Therefore, integration of multidisciplinary goals could assist towards sustain- ability implementation and assessment. Moreover, IS strategies are different from each other in design and scope, therefore ‘perfect sustainability circle’ will never be reached. In the same context, Nawaz and Koç (2018) proposed a generic sustainabil- ity management framework emphasizing the harmony between the suggested scheme and established international standardized guidelines. The study also focused on the importance of embedding the proposed framework with an assessment tool. The pro- posed model creates strong relationship between diverse procedures necessary for a systematic sustainability management. Gómez et al. (2015) presented the issue of sustainability assessment by intro- ducing an “Adaptable Model” for assessing the sustainability practices in several application phases and data availability. This proposed model designed was based on sustainability implementation experiences in higher education and takes into con- sideration numerous assessment models and international declarations. The proposed model is divided into four hierarchical layers with three main standards “institutional commitment, example setting, and advancing sustainability” (Gómez et al. 2015). They concluded that the assessment model is flexible and allows for comparison within a group of organizations with common features. Although Goni et al. (2017) mention the significance of managing sustainability through assessment system, the concept of strategic alignment between the appli- cation of sustainability in higher education and information system is neglected. Goni et al (2017), focused on highlighting the important role of IS in supporting sustainability activities towards building a sustainable environment for education. The authors proposed the strategic alignment that should be established between sustainability and IS in order to take all related activities of HEIs to a higher level. They found that no IS strategies were considered during the initial phases of sustain- ability implementation to support their practices, which would affect achievement of sustainability targets. Conversely, this could be more beneficial for higher education as it can develop the effectiveness of sustainability activities, as well as it can reduce the implementation time and cost. Regarding the issue of assessment systems to implement sustainability, Sustain- able Enterprise Resource Planning (S-ERP) systems are important to be implemented in sustainable organizations’ practices to assist them in avoiding the segregation issue over extended value chain. However, organizations face difficulty in implementing S- ERP system because of the lack of clear guidelines that explain the whole process of applying the system (Chofreh et al. 2016a). For this reason, some articles addressed this lack of guidelines through establishing the concept of the S-ERP as comprehen-
  • 39. 26 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç sive plan. Chofreh et al. (2016c) indicate that it is necessary to provide a compre- hensive plan and direction to implement the integrated system to avoid ineffective and inefficient organizational activities. Authors tackled this subject by providing certain components, such as a roadmap, framework, and guidelines. These S-ERP components were verified by experts, and could be generally applied to various types of organizations. Consequently, implementing S-ERP system in organizations could be facilitated by this roadmap. 3 Further Research Needs and Opportunities There were many existing studies concerned with sustainability implementation in higher education, but only few of these studies have put forward generic, detailed and applicable frameworks that can serve as guidelines towards a successful imple- mentation to sustainable higher education. Many of them have presented theoretical frameworks or focused on defining implementation frameworks at the level of a particular university or even a university program in a specific country (Maas et al. 2016a). Couple other studies have concentrated on the development and applica- tion of sustainability frameworks from the perspective of IS strategies and systems in HEIs. However, additional and advanced studies still require in-depth research regarding framework that considers all the components essential for the design and implementation of sustainability and incorporation of IS strategies, along with estab- lishing standardized guidelines for introducing sustainability in higher education. Therefore, a holistic consideration of different processes when implementing sus- tainability is essential, such as the effect of organisational changes. As a result, there is a need to investigate more on sustainability implementation processes in HEIs from the perspective of different influencing success factors that should be considered in the framework and might affect the implementation. Further- more, in order to succeed this integrated framework into HEIs, IS strategies should be considered from the beginning of the implementation process by embedding all sustainability practices using assessment systems. According to Gusmão Caiado et al. (2018), although the results of this study find that there are five guidelines, which can tackle sustainability challenges in order to facilities the implementation of sustainability, there is an essential need for more investigation on sustainability implementation issues in context of unsolved problems. Due to lack of standardized guidelines for applying the assessment system to support sustainability activities in higher education, more focus should be put on establishing the strategic alignment for providing suitable guidelines for higher education. This will assist in performing life cycle assessment and provide high quality information available in sustainability reports to all stakeholders. As a result, the segregation issue that faced the higher education while implementing sustainability would be solved. In order to provide the decision makers with impact of social and environmental challenges and changes on business and to reduce the consumption of natural recourses as well as promote a healthy work environment, Battaglia et al. (2016) mentioned the important of using
  • 40. A Review on Integrated Information System … 27 the assessment system to integrate sustainability into organizational strategy. How- ever, the whole integration process of sustainability into the organizational strategy was neglected due to cognitive barriers which led to stifled the cognitive enablers and have disabled the integration process. The needs of a research work are raised in order to fill gaps related to the lack of integration of sustainability implementation framework in HEIs from the perspective of all the effective factors and provide the strategic alignment concept with IS by considering the best practices of implementing a system. According to Maas et al. (2016b), most of research focused clearly on the IS in the context of environmental and sustainability issues but the integration of sustainability by embedding all sus- tainability practices that applied in an organization by using IS was marginalized. Therefore, one of the challenges that can hinder the future research is to empirically examine how organizations applied IS and what kind of tools they used. 4 Conclusions Even if the sustainability is one of the most essential issues affecting society world- wide, awareness about it and a sense of worthiness of its significance is still confined to HEIs. However, the implementation of sustainable development at HEIs faces many challenges. For instance, complexity of sustainability is in one hand of the most important problems that has largely been underestimated, implementation of sustainability, on the other hand, is a challenge that needs multidisciplinary skills, information, politics, and collaboration between all levels in HEIs. This study presents a review of the current literature on sustainability implementa- tion in higher education to provide an overall summary and guidance on the topic and uncovering the gaps in the literature. Findings of the literature review reveal that many researches proposed various concepts for a sustainability implementation framework in HEIs based on each of organizational point of view. In addition, it is clear that each study considered different variables in their proposed frameworks. For this reason, considering generic standers that could assist in developing sustainability frame- works, it would be useful to be integrated with other components such as the various influencing factors and information system strategies to coordinate the sustainability transformation procedures in a successful way. Other studies separately proposed assessment systems to facilitate management of applying sustainability practices in higher education, such as S-ERP. These systems need standardized guidelines to be aligned with strategies of HEIs. This study also aimed at highlighting the knowledge gap in the linkage between all components that are essential in implementing sustainability in HEIs. It is identified that there is a need for further studies to develop a generic formulation to apply sus- tainability framework with the underlined Information Systems (IS) strategy as one of the important components and core facilitator of this implementation. In addition, for a better implementation with an accuracy and accessibility of sustainability data and information, higher education needs to take into account the assessment systems.
  • 41. 28 M. M. Al-Kuwari and M. Koç As this study focus more on grab the attention to this issue, further applied research through real life surveys and interviews needs to be conducted for suitable solutions. In addition, due to different in geographical areas and cultures, any proposed frame- works, guidelines, and assessment system should be empirically validated and tested at national and international level. References Battaglia M, Passetti E, Bianchi L, Frey M (2016) Managing for integration: a longitudinal analysis of management control for sustainability. J Clean Prod 136:213–225 Chofreh AG, Goni FA, Ismail S, Mohamed Shaharoun A, Klemeš JJ, Zeinalnezhad M (2016a) A master plan for the implementation of sustainable enterprise resource planning systems (part I): concept and methodology. J Clean Prod 136:176–182 Chofreh AG, Goni FA, Klemeš JJ (2016b) A master plan for the implementation of sustainable enterprise resource planning systems (part II): development of a roadmap. Chem Eng Trans 1099–1104 Chofreh AG, Goni FA, Klemeš JJ (2016c) A master plan for the implementation of sustainable enter- prise resource planning systems (part III): evaluation of a roadmap. Chem Eng Trans 1105–1110 Darnall N, Henriques I, Sadorsky P (2008) Do environmental management systems improve busi- ness performance in an international setting? J Int Manag 14(4):364–376 Daub CH (2007) Assessing the quality of sustainability reporting: an alternative methodological approach. J Clean Prod 15(1):75–85 Gómez FU, Sáez-Navarrete C, Lioi SR, Marzuca VI (2015) Adaptable model for assessing sustain- ability in higher education. J Clean Prod 107:475–485 Goni FA, Chofreh AG, Mukhtar M, Sahran S, Shukor SA, Klemeš JJ (2017) Strategic alignment between sustainability and information systems: a case analysis in Malaysian Public Higher Education Institutions. J Clean Prod 168:263–270 Gusmão Caiado RG, Leal Filho W, Quelhas OLG, Luiz de Mattos Nascimento D, Ávila LV (2018) A literature-based review on potentials and constraints in the implementation of the sustainable development goals. J Clean Prod 198:1276–1288 Holdsworth S, Thomas I (2016) A sustainability education academic development framework (SEAD). Environ Educ Res 22(8):1073–1097 Jorge ML, Madueño JH, Calzado Cejas MY, Andrades Peña FJ (2015) An approach to the imple- mentation of sustainability practices in Spanish universities. J Clean Prod 106:34–44 Karatzoglou B (2013) An in-depth literature review of the evolving roles and contributions of universities to education for sustainable development. J Clean Prod 49:44–53 Leal Filho W (2011) About the role of universities and their contribution to sustainable development. High Educ Policy 24(4):427–438 Maas K, Schaltegger S, Crutzen N (2016a) Advancing the integration of corporate sustainability measurement, management and reporting. J Clean Prod 133:859–862 Maas K, Schaltegger S, Crutzen N (2016b) Integrating corporate sustainability assessment, man- agement accounting, control, and reporting. J Clean Prod 136:237–248 Milutinović S, Nikolić V (2014) Rethinking higher education for sustainable development in Serbia: an assessment of Copernicus charter principles in current higher education practices. J Clean Prod 62:107–113 Nawaz W, Koç M (2018) Development of a systematic framework for sustainability management of organizations. J Clean Prod 171:1255–1274 Shrivastava P (2010) Pedagogy of passion for sustainability. Acad Manag Learn Educ 9(3):443–455 Stephens JC, Graham AC (2010) Toward an empirical research agenda for sustainability in higher education: exploring the transition management framework. J Clean Prod 18(7):611–618
  • 42. A Review on Integrated Information System … 29 Spira F, Tappeser V, Meyer A (2013) Perspectives on sustainability governance from universities in the USA, UK, and Germany: how do change agents employ different tools to alter organizational cultures and structures. In: Caeiro S, Leal Filho W, Jabbour C, Azeiteiro U (eds) Sustainability assessment tools in higher education institutions. Mapping trends and good practice around the world. Springer, pp 175–188 UNESCO (2005) United nations decade of education for sustainable development (2005–2014). International implementation scheme. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001486/148654e. pdf. Accessed 01 Nov 2017 Verhulst E, Lambrechts W (2015) Fostering the incorporation of sustainable development in higher education. Lessons learned from a change management perspective. J Clean Prod 106:189–204 Ms. Mona M. Al-Kuwari hold a Master degree in computing from the College of Engineering and Bachelor Degree in Statistics from the College of Science both from Qatar University. Her Master’s thesis was entitled “The National Students Information System (SIS)” and it examined the impact of the N-SIS on the learning environment in the Qatari schools. She is currently in her second year of her Ph.D. in Sustainability studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. In 2014, she joined Qatar Foundation as Program Analyst in QNRF and one of her main responsibilities is to invest in QNRF data by managing and analyzing research data. Before joining QNRF, she has spent over eight years as a statistician holding the position of Head of Statistical Department, conducting research in Ministry of Education and Higher Education, on education system in Qatar. Dr. Muammer Koç is a founding professor of sustainability at HBKU in 2014. Before, he held professor, director, chair and dean positions at different universities in Turkey and the USA between 2000–2014. He has a Ph.D. degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Ohio State University (1999) and an Executive MBA degree from the University of Sheffield, UK (2014). He has published 130 + publications in various international journals and conferences; edited three books; organized, chaired, and co-chaired various international conferences, work- shops and seminars on design, manufacturing and product development. In addition to his aca- demic and educational activities, he provides consulting services to industry, government and edu- cational institutes for strategic transformation, business optimization, organizational efficiency, lean operations, restructuring and reengineering initiatives. He has taught courses across a range of subjects, including product/process/business innovation and development; medical design and production; energy and efficiency; computer-aided engineering, design and manufacturing; mod- ern manufacturing technologies; manufacturing system design; material forming plasticity; and the mechanical behavior of materials.
  • 43. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development of Sustainability Competences. The Experience of the University of Bologna Gabriella Calvano, Angelo Paletta and Alessandra Bonoli Abstract Pursuing sustainable development in universities is not just a political issueor management issueof theuniversities. Strategies andactionplans areonlypar- tially useful if they are not accompanied by concrete actions in teaching, in research and in the outreach as well as the development of physical structures that respond to the principles and criteria of sustainability. Many universities made steps in this direction, making green their campuses. It lacked, however, the awareness that the “physical structures” can effect learning, allowing students to develop skills useful to promote sustainable lifestyles and they become professionals “of the future capa- ble of.” This paper aims to highlight the educational function that the University of Bologna has developed through the changes implemented to the plexus structures “Terracini” of the School of Engineering and Architecture. Through a series of inter- views with key observers (students, faculty, staff), the paper illustrates how, even enhancing the leading role of the students, the campus has become a real “living lab” in which design new ideas, test participation initiatives and concrete realization of the projects, teaching and dissemination of good practices. In other words, it is a starting point for the promotion of social, educational and research the principles of sustainability. Keywords Education · Green office · Participation · Structures and places · Sustainable development G. Calvano (B) Department of Biology, Aldo Moro - University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, Bari, Italy e-mail: gabriella.calvano@uniba.it A. Paletta Department of Management, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Via Capo di Lucca 34, Bologna, Italy e-mail: angelo.paletta@unibo.it A. Bonoli Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Via Terracini 28, Bologna, Italy e-mail: alessandra.bonoli@unibo.it © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 W. Leal Filho and U. Bardi (eds.), Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15864-4_3 31
  • 44. 32 G. Calvano et al. 1 Introduction. Sustainable Development and University: The Importance of Make Structures and Places Sustainable Universities were the first institutions to work toward sustainable development (Wright 2004; Stephens et al. 2008), expressing their commitment through the sub- scription of numerous international declarations, such as the Talloires in 1990, when the world commitment of universities for sustainability officially began (Huppè et al. 2013). Over the years, universities have focused on important aspects and responsi- bilities, in line with their main missions: preparing students for the future, researching the causes of global challenges and hypothesising solutions, developing good prac- tices through governance and the management of resources in close relationship with the local community. The universities’ commitment for sustainable development is not a mere “formal” issue, but on the contrary, it is made of concrete actions (Leal Filho 2011) such as: curricula’s transformation, the changes in campus structures, the research towards sustainability issues, the implementation of lifelong training courses, the implemen- tation of concrete projects with and for the territory and the creation and management of relevant information and knowledge (Karatzoglou 2013, p. 45). The risk, however, that this commitment may lead to a “systems failure”, due to the “continuing inability to sufficiently adapt to our social and economic systems to their ecological context” (Sterling 2004), is very high, especially related to several challenges that the university is asked to face (Leal Filho 2011): 1. the need of a wider sustainability interpretation as well as the responsibilities that every country and every citizen has in its implementation; 2. the need to better communicate sustainability to different nations and to different kind of public to make it understandable and to encourage the involvement of all countries (regardless of their economic situation), as requested and underlined by the Agenda 2030; 3. the need to make sustainability concrete and operational. Together with the con- siderable number of studies and publications, more good practices, projects and case studies need to be disseminated in order to show what can be done and how. 4. the need to increase the support for sustainability through (Leal Filho 2010): an understanding of the university role in the implementation of sustainable develop- ment, on the job training interventions for academic staff on sustainability issues, the creation of research centres and/or working groups to discuss the best way to pursue sustainable development through specific initiatives, the development of partnerships and networks (inside the same institution and between different institutions) for the exchange of ideas, experiences, best practices, creation and implementation of specific projects. Taking care of sustainability offers universities the opportunity not only to gener- ate new knowledge but also to contribute to the development of sustainability skills, and the awareness about this issue. Considering sustainability as a guiding principle
  • 45. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 33 of universities can also facilitate institutional change, making it systemic and provid- ing spaces for critical and transformative thinking, making sure that the university itself plays an important role in the society transformation (Barth and Rieckmann 2012). This process can be speed up if it is supported by training interventions, which are implemented not as just a redefinition of the curricula, but including specific aspects of sustainable development. An increasing number of universities (e.g. Oberlin and Portland State University) use buildings and facilities as tools to educate on sus- tainability. Campuses are considered real “living laboratories” where students can experience the link between the theories and the knowledge learned in the classroom and real cases from local reality. The living laboratories promote, in fact, students’ full participation in the change for sustainability through their active involvement in the choices and actions to be performed in the campus. This participation increases their civic commitment in the improvement of local communities’ internal sustain- ability processes (Hansen 2017, pp. 225–226). Although there is plenty of literature on what students should learn about sustain- ability, there are few studies on students’ perception of the actual usability of their learning for sustainability (Carew and Mitchell 2002) even in their own university. Indeed, there are limited participation opportunities for students in the sustainability development of their university (Nejati and Nejati 2013). Hicks (2002) acknowl- edges how “the emotional impact of global issues on students learning is still a neglected area of research” and highlights the necessity of pedagogical paths able to develop students’ sense of hope and empowerment, because global problems also imply emotional involvement (Hicks 2002, p. 99). Promoting the development of a sense of responsibility through university implies that each student perceives himself as an agent of change for sustainability and develops skills necessary to face sustainability challenges. This contribution aims fill this gap by presenting a university teaching experience that enhances the role of students, their participation and their responsibility for their university’s sustainability. The Green Office model, born and developed in the last years in Northern Europe, has the objective of the creation of a “hub” managed by the students with the close collaboration and supervision of the teaching staff and administrative staff, in order to promote sustainability actions and to propose itself as a model for the local territory. 2 Educating for Sustainable Development: Political Dimension and Need for Participation Sustainable development’s education, even at university level, is currently having a strong international (both as a result of the Decade of Education of Sustainable Development and following the definition of the UN Agenda 2030) and national momentum (with the National Development Education Plan for Sustainability of
  • 46. 34 G. Calvano et al. the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research 2017). However, there is still much to be done: a cultural and structural change inside the universities, which is inevitably complex and requires the involvement of the entire institutional community, can occur more easily with a clear, precise and consistent educational commitment on sustainable development and its challenges (Sterling 2001). As Morin stated (2015, pp. 36–37), there is still the opposition of the current training systems to provide the tools for questioning and reflecting on the good life, because the teaching is still faulty and strictly associated to specific fields considered not to be interconnected. Educating for sustainable development is much more than teaching what sustain- able development really is, because it involves actually experiencing sustainability: it is practice and theory together, sustainability principles integration in everyday life. For this reason, universities sustainability experiences are more effective when supported by training courses focused on “a learning-by-doing approach that can demonstrate how to answer the multiple challenges of sustainability” (Cappellaro and Bonoli 2014). Education for sustainable development is in fact interdisciplinary, collaborative, experiential and potentially transformative; it produces spaces to think, inquiry, dialogue and act (Moore 2005, p. 78). From this perspective, education can be considered as a driver for change: investing in education means investing in and for the future. The sustainable development education goal is, in fact, to make students able to imagine alternative development practices and to participate in the increasingly nec- essary processes of change. Only the full understanding of the political dimension of sustainable development education will make it possible to acknowledge education as a specific community and social need that requires: learning methods able for enhancing real experience as an instrument of authentic knowledge (Dewey 2014); development of skills for sustainability (Brundiers et al. 2010; Brundiers and Wiek 2013; Thomas 2009) and promotion of effective thinking that comes from the liv- ing experience and constantly refers to it and that sees reality as an instrument of continuous comparison (Mortari 2008, p. 38). Fostering the development of a sense of responsibility through university courses let each student perceive himself as an agent of change for sustainability. In an uncer- tainandrapidlychangingworld, higher educationacquires anincreasinglysignificant role in helping students to be active and responsible citizens and can become a lab- oratory of democracy and civil commitment in which everyone contributes to the common good: “to improve education we need to get out of the classroom and think about our community’s problems, seeing the territory as a space for participation and learning that commit us to develop relevant knowledge. The proposal is to stop considering […] young people only as a hope for the future or as beneficiaries of assistance and inclusion policies, but to offer them the opportunity to be active agents of the present” (Nieves Tapia 2016, p. 4). Place-based education paths are undoubtedly very useful for this purpose. In fact, this kind of interventions contextualize knowledge, content and skills within experiential and multidisciplinary learning environments and promote useful actions for the community (Gruenewald 2003) and the community-building (Schild 2016,
  • 47. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 35 p. 20) as they refer to direct aspects of students’ daily life (Palberg and Jari 2000; Leeming and Porter 1997). The creation of “good” citizens requires an education of young people to par- ticipate in their communities life and to establish a high quality relationship with them. Participating is “thinking together about community life problems, looking for solutions together, comparing them, and then, through the dialogue, choose the right option” (Mortari 2008, p. 54). For this aim, projects of living lab and active students’ participation are very important in universities. As stated in the 1992 Rio Conference, participation is a fundamental require- ment for sustainable development. Chapter 36 of the Agenda 21 Document (United Nations 1992), in fact, calls for encouraging participatory processes on sustainability by giving undisputed value to education at all levels. Participation allows a general change in the reference paradigm and contributes to the dissemination of sustain- ability culture in universities. The students are more and more aware to the themes and issues of sustainable development (UNESCO 2014). They are thus called to interact with the other com- munity members to develop an understanding and to set up actions able to change the current situation. They are no longer spectators but key players for their university’s sustainability. This is why much more needs to be done to involve students in higher education transformation processes in order to increase their sense of responsibility, to foster their emotional involvement and to develop empowerment and hope (Hicks 2002, p. 99). Oneofthestrengthsisundoubtedlylinkedtothereductionofthegapbetweenwhat it is said in the classrooms and the perceived sustainable development requirements at an economic, social and environmental level (Kajikawa 2008). Unfortunately, there are cases in which students “found that what they have learned is so unrelated to real life situations not to give them any control over it” (Dewey 2014, p. 13). There is the need of quality experiences, able of influencing further and future experiences. The dialogue, the comparison and the interaction clearly represent an opportunity for common growth, favoring the construction of a life project, promoting active and democratic participation and opportunities of growth at several levels: personal, university community, local community and global community. 3 Participation in Practice: The Experience of the “Terracini in Transition” Living Lab and the Creation of the University of Bologna’s Green Office The Green Office of the University of Bologna is intended as a hub for students as drivers of change together with universities and cities. Based on the Northern Europe Green Office projects, it has been designed inside the participation in an European
  • 48. 36 G. Calvano et al. project Horizon 2020 about the regeneration of urban areas in the university of Bologna zone. The Green Office can be considered as “an organizational niche” where new experimentation practices take place. It is a catalyst for change that allows a larger involvement of students in the University’s efforts towards sustainability (Spira and Backer-Shelley 2015, p. 211). Through confrontation, students develop a strong critical thought, seen as the development of “refined logical and argumentative skills […] on the basis of a contin- uous confrontation with the most important social, economic and political questions” (Mortari 2008, p. 38) related to their university. Teachers, students and technical and administrative staff design, discuss, imagine and experiment sustainable solutions; together they grow, together they educate themselves and feel co-responsible for the choices and the measures to be implemented. The Green Office is therefore a dimen- sion of personal and social growth in which each actor of university life recognizes its role and its responsibility to start an important process of institutional, urban and human regeneration. The Green Office of the University of Bologna stems from the experience of the “Terracini in Transition” Living Lab of the School of Engineering. 4 Methodology The living lab has been studied to outline its strengths or weaknesses and to value its replicability and its enormous potential to create more structured, broad, multidis- ciplinary projects that involve the entire university community and deeply interact with the city and the local territory. This study presents a “on the field” research about “Terracini in Transition” through direct interviews with its main actors. This research aims to investigate, through a qualitative exploratory research, the perception of: 1. the potential that the participation to the Living Lab of “Terracini in Transition” has for the university transition towards sustainability; 2. a possible relationship between the participation in the Living Lab and the devel- opment of skills for the creation of the future Green Office and sustainability actions at city level, specifying which actions are undertaken; 3. if and how knowledge and skills acquisition can be encouraged by university’s facilities; 4. how much Green Office participation can increase sustainability in the univer- sity’s own city. Interviews were carried out from September 2017 to February 2018 with thir- teen members considered privileged observers (four members of the technical and administrative staff and nine students) of the “Terracini in Transition” Living Lab of the School of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Bologna. This
  • 49. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 37 meant that they became part of the sample of this research (reasoned sampling). The interviews were carried out at the Terracini Campus of the University of Bologna. Interviews were conducted according to an informed protocol including 5 ques- tions, administered in a specific order from the most general questions to the most sensitive ones. The questions were not provided in advance to the interviewees to avoid any biased responses and attitudes (Vitale et al. 2008). The answers were digi- tally recorded and manually transcribed. The interview transcription was sent to each interviewee to be approved. The use of semi-structured interviews facilitated the understanding of the Living Lab experience by giving participants the opportunity to freely express themselves and allowed to obtain rich and various data (Bryman 2012). The content of the interviews were compared and emphasis was placed on simi- larities and differences, as well as on relevant aspects emerged during the interviews. A rigorous analysis of the collected material and the suspension of judgment allowed to limit the risk of subjectivity that may arise in interpretative research. 5 Data Analysis and Main Results 5.1 Potential for University’s Transition Toward Sustainability Regarding the Living Lab potential in the creation of a university Green Office and in the transition toward sustainability of the University of Bologna, no differences were found between the administrative staff and the students. In particular, the main detected potentials were: 1. educational 2. relational (creation of new relationship and recovery or strengthening of the existing ones). The educational potential is expressed in the increasing awareness on environ- mental and sustainability issues, making clear a particular interest on these topics: “Although there is the decentralized department of environmental engineering, the environmental component is strong … however, entering this department no one notices it. Instead “Terracini in Transition” means that there is clear attention to these issues and therefore allows those who are interested to get in and collaborate. […] Moves consciences” (F.L.). The word “conscience” echoes in the words of S.P. according to which “everyone should try to carry forward a sustainable conscience … The university should support this and students should be interested in these issues”. “Terracini in Transition” is view as a “connection for practices that can help everybody with examples of sustainable actions” (E.F.) but also as a “big educational and teaching tool because it changes the point of view […] the teacher is not anymore the only one that provides knowledge and solutions
  • 50. 38 G. Calvano et al. but the solutions are designed with the students […] that is how we become a com- munity useful for other communities” (F.C.). Participants of the project report another important potentiality of their activ- ity: creating and reinforcing the relationships between people and disciplines. E.S. highlights this aspect very well: “I really like the interdisciplinary … [students of] management engineer, mechanic engineer and civil engineer understand that these issues concern not only someone but everyone. The Living Lab allows us to know each other outside our groups … which is an important aspect … because we are very sectoral and we know it. It’s chance to know each other and to improve, which is always good”. 5.2 Relationship Between Green Office Participation and Skills Development Sustainability undoubtedly places new challenges for our societies that require cre- ativity, self-organization and transversal competences that the university often does not provide but are essential to create citizens for sustainability. The word competences describes the specific attributes that individuals need for action and self-organization in various complex situations and contexts. They include cognitive, affective, intentional and motivational elements; therefore, they constitute an interaction of knowledge, skills and abilities, motivations and affective disposi- tions (UNESCO 2017). Skills can not be taught but must be developed by the learners. They are acquired in action, based on the experience and the reflection (UNESCO 2014). Therearespecificskillsthatareconsideredessentialforsustainability(seedeHaan 2010; Rieckmann 2012; Wiek et al. 2011): systemic thinking, prevision, regulation, strategic, collaborative and critical thinking, self-awareness, problem solving. Can Green Office participation develop competences? Which competences are involved and who develops them? All the respondents agree that being part of the Green Office and participating in its projects provides the development of personal skills useful also for the students’ professional future. Even though is widely agreed that Green Office is helpful for the development of technical competences, all the interviewee agree that it fosters “practical and transversal competences” (D.P.) as well, in other words soft skills. In particular, E.F. highlights that, through Green Office, it is possible to “go outside the borders of theory and get into the real practice”. This pushes participants to “deepen topics that are not covered in academic lectures” (S.P.) and let students from different university courses or university staff from different roles understand the importance of looking at problems with an interdisciplinary perspective (S.P. and F.C.). According to the interviewees, the dialogue and the collaboration between disci- plines and between people and institutions, represents the most developed sustain-
  • 51. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 39 ability competence in the Green Office. The University of Bologna considers this competence very important, not surprisingly the Green Office has scheduled a series of training sessions on team working (F.C.), based on the fact that is one of most requested competences by companies. This tendency to promote collaborative com- petences between companies and the world of work has also emerged from the words of E.F., who underlines how this collaboration is “new and more intense” compared to university everyday life: “this is a great added value, in fact the Green Office is a real link between university and the labor market”. The other soft skills that are most likely to be developed through the Green Office are: • Problem solving competence linked to forecasting. “The opportunity to think and try to implement specific projects let you clash with reality … And then you have to meet technicians and politicians and maybe you argue with them and they ask you to go through long and difficult bureaucratic procedures […] Participating in the Green Office puts you to the test … and makes you realize how real life projects are difficult to manage and you have to consider always the negative aspects” (E.S.). • Design and project management that pushes to “apply the knowledge learned during the lessons in real situations that are closer to the world of work than students’ life” (F.C). The Green Office represents, therefore, a tool of self-education (for participants) and of education (institutions, organizations, businesses that work together) to sus- tainability and, according to the interviewed technical and administrative staff, rep- resents especially for the non-teaching staff an added value in terms of commitment to sustainability. 5.3 University Facilities for Training to Sustainability The project “Terracini in Transition” and the students’ Living Lab were born to address the issues of “concrete” sustainability: “What can we do for the sustainability of the Via Terracini Engineering and Architecture School? Are there any places in this facility that communicate sustainability? Which are these places? Which are the difficult places? How can we improve them?” (F.C.). Starting from the Transition Towns Movement principles, Terracini’s Transition project shows how is possible to make a change and to educate starting from the places: “a vegetable garden … a abandoned place that is regenerated … the transfor- mation of places has a very important impact on the participation and the involvement of citizens and students in sustainability and transition projects”, continues FC “If there are places and structures where sustainability has been taken care of, people will wonder why. It is a start … A practical way to wake up consciences”. The places are, therefore, a crucial element to educate to sustainability because they allow people to “touch” (P.D.) and to “visualize” sustainability (M.C.). In partic- ular, those who took part of Terracini in Transition of the University of Bologna have
  • 52. 40 G. Calvano et al. designed an experimental “green roof”, which represents an interesting example of sustainable solutions placed into concrete actions of teaching and applied research. Through the Terracini in Transition green roof project the group had the oppor- tunity to participate to important European projects, to be known also in the city context, and to make themselves available to the community. “We are a very small reality that has grown a lot … Being well known outside is a great resource […] a great victory. The practices we developed with the Green Office are laboratory practices for the growth of sustainability in the city of Bologna” (E.S.). TheimportanceofwhathasbeendoneinTerracini’sfacilityshouldfocustheatten- tion on keep working in an overall University perspective through the development of a true student Green Office that is multidisciplinary and strongly contextualized within the city, sharing common competences and objectives, because “if it is true that much has been done … it is equally true that there is still much more to do” (D.P.). 5.4 What the University Green Office Can Do for City of Bologna’s Sustainability The city is the main place where the future of sustainability and human beings is played. It is fundamental, then, that the university offers its services to the city and starts a dialogue with it to plan together solutions for the local territory. This is what arises from the interviewee when were asked if the link between the Green Office and the city of Bologna allows a sustainability growth. The majority of respondents (eight) recognize the strong link between the city of Bologna and its university: unlike campuses in Northern Europe where the model of the Green Office was born, Bologna is “the ultimate university city: the university is inside the city and Bologna would not be what it is without its university” (F.C.). Despite this, actually the bond established between students and the city is not ideal. Students end up not fully living the city and they give back very little as a consequence. The Green Office can be a tool where “the student (even those who live outside the city) can feel part of Bologna, a citizen of Bologna because he is committed to the well-being of the city” (J.L.) and can “get involved … with all the knowledge learned in class” (F.L.). Once again, comes out the strong educational value of the Green Office, an experience that arises from confrontation but also from the sharing of what one knows and what one is. It is no coincidence that “without the relationship with the Municipality and the city, the Green Office would be an end in itself” (M.C.) and “there would be no sustainability” (E.F). Everyone benefits from this link: all the interviewees think that: • the city benefits because the Green Office work “produces solutions that benefit also the city … the developed practices can be repeated in other places … For example it would be great if the municipality recognizes the importance of green roofs and decided to create a network of green roofs …” (F.C.);
  • 53. How the Structures of a Green Campus Promotes the Development … 41 • studentsanduniversitycommunitiescitizensandfuturegenerationsbenefit(M.C.); • associations benefit because “the Green Office is a tool for dialogue between associations that deal with sustainability but often fail to collaborate” (E.F.). Clearly, as almost all the interviewees point out, there are “inevitable bureaucratic and coordination problems as they are big institutions … and … it is difficult to establish a dialogue” (F.L.). At the same time, however, everyone is aware that a full collaboration requires both institutions to give up on their self-centeredness. Only in this way, the University and the Green Office can be a “locomotive of sustainability” within the city (M.C.). 6 Conclusions The experience of the Green Office of the University of Bologna, described in this paper, strongly highlights the importance of the role of education for a campus that wants to define itself as “green”. This education goes beyond lectures and requires innovative approaches that can guarantee a better understanding of sustainability and how it should be designed in all areas of university life. What makes the Green Office a highly educational experience is that all the participants bring their own life, experiences, previous knowledge, skills to make them the best use and to build new ones (Calvano 2017): • It benefits students: they learn how to design solutions and make the best use of the knowledge learned during their studies; they have the opportunity to get in touch with companies, institutions, associations, local authorities, developing social, relational, problem solving and transversal skills; they perceive themselves as a living and active part of their university. No longer just students but main actors of their university community. • It benefits teachers which can count on their students’ creativity and commitment for the design of new strategies and solutions; which can consider their teaching in light of the skills required of students from the real problems they are facing. • It benefits the technical and administrative staff who, working for the growth of their university’s sustainability, find themselves, like the students, as main actors of the university community and the creators of change. • It benefits the whole university, in a third mission view able to go beyond the assumption that innovation is the exclusively technology, rediscovering the inevitably social nature, where the dimension of service to the community is the “sine qua non” condition for everyone’s growth. This study underlined the support that a living lab like the Green Office can give not only to the sustainability development of the university and the city, but also to the students’ increase of participation and responsibility toward this issue. Although the results of this work are positive, there are some undeniable limita- tions:
  • 54. 42 G. Calvano et al. • as a case study, it is strictly related to a specific contest and time. It would be necessary to repeat the research longitudinally (interviewing new students of the Green Office of the University of Bologna in 3 years) and in different places (repeating the study with students from other universities where there is a Green Office); • there is the possibility that the enthusiasm about sustainability development is mainly of the teachers that took part to the Green Office and less of the students who’s commitment could be just a compliance to teachers’ requests; • it can not be excluded that students empowerment experience about sustainability’s issues can be limited to Green Office and to the university context and does not transfer into a concrete commitment in their everyday, personal and professional life. Further studies, currently ongoing, are trying to fill these gaps. References Barth M, Rieckmann M (2012) Academic staff development as a catalyst for curriculum change toward education for sustainable development: an output perspective. J Clean Prod 26:28–36 Brundiers K, Wiek A (2013) Do we teach what we preach? an international comparison of problem- and project-based learning in sustainability. Sustainability 8:53–68 Brundiers K, Wiek A, Redman C (2010) Real-world learning opportunities in sustainability: from classroom into the real world. Int J Sustain High Educ 11:308–324 Bryman A (2012) Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press Calvano G (2017) Educare per lo sviluppo sostenibile. L’impegno degli Atenei Italiani, Aracne Cappellaro F, Bonoli A (2014) Transition thinking supporting system innovation towards sustainable university: experiences from the European programme climate-KIC. Procedia Environ Sci Eng Manag 1:161–165 Carew A, Mitchell C (2002) Characterizing undergraduate engineering students’ understanding of sustainability. Eur J Eng Educ 27(4):349–361 Dewey J (2014) Esperienza ed educazione, Raffaello Cortina de Haan G (2010) The development of ESD-related competencies in supportive institutional frame- works. Int Rev Educ 56(2):315–328 Gruenewald D (2003) The best both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place. Educ Res 32(4):3–12 Hansen SS (2017) The campus as living laboratory: Macalester college case study. In: Leal Filho W et al (eds) Handbook of theory and practice of sustainable development in higher education. Springer International Publishing, pp 223–239 Hicks D (2002) Lesson for the future: the missing dimension in education. Routledge Falmer Huppè GA, Creech H, Buckler C (2013) Education for sustainable development at Manitoba Col- leges and Universities. International Institute for Sustainable Development. http://www.iisd.org/ pdf/2013/education_sd_mb_colleges_universities.pdf. Accessed 12 Mar 2018 Kajikawa Y (2008) Research core and framework of sustainability science. Sustain Sci 3:215–239 Karatzoglou B (2013) An in-depth literature review of the evolving roles and contributions of universities to education for sustainable development. J Clean Prod 49:44–53 Leal FW (2011) About the role of universities and their contribution to sustainable development. High Educ Policy 24:427–438 Leal FW (2010) Teaching sustainable development at university level: current trends and future needs. J Balt Sea Educ 9(4):273–284
  • 55. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
  • 56. The yeoman happily spilled his inside dope to the fleet gob: "Lee Bennet. Smuggled over here couple months ago by D.A.R. The hottest thing that ever hit Naval Intelligence. Very small potato in the Syndic—knows all the families, who does what, who's a figurehead and who's a worker. Terrific! Inside stuff! Hates the Syndic. A gang of big-timers did her dirt." "Thanks," Charles said, and wandered off down the street. It wasn't surprising. He should have expected it. Noblesse oblige. Pride of the Falcaro line. She wouldn't send anybody into deadly peril unless she were ready to go herself. Only somehow the trigger that would have snapped neurotic, synthetic Lee Bennet into Lee Falcaro hadn't worked. He wandered on aimlessly, wondering whether it would be minutes or hours before he'd be picked up and executed as a spy.
  • 58. X It took minutes only. He had headed back to the waterfront, afraid to run, with some vague notion of stealing a boat. Before he reached the row of saloons and joints, a smart-looking squad of eight tall men overtook him. "Hold it, mister," a sergeant said. "Are you Orsino?" "No," he said hopelessly. "That crazy woman began to yell at me that I was Orsino, but my name's Wyman. What's this about?" The other men fell in beside and behind him. "We're stepping over to O.N.I.," the sergeant said. "There's the son of a bitch!" somebody bawled. Suddenly there were a dozen sweatered Guardsmen around them. Their leader was the thug Orsino had beaten in a fair fight. He said silkily to the sergeant: "We want that boy, leatherneck. Blow." The sergeant went pale. "He's wanted for questioning by the O.N.I.," he said stolidly. "Get the marine three-striper!" the Guardsman chortled. He stuck his jaw into the sergeant's face. "Tell your squad to blow. You marines ought to know by now that you don't mess with the Guard." A very junior officer appeared. "What's going on here, you men?" he shrilled. "Atten-shun!" He was ignored as Guardsman and marines measured one another with their eyes. "I said attention! Dammit, sergeant, report!" There was no reaction. The officer yelled: "You
  • 59. men may think you can get away with this but by God, you're wrong!" He strode away, his fists clenched and his face very red. Orsino saw him stride through a gate into a lot marked Bupers Motor Pool. And he felt a sudden wave of communal understanding that there were only seconds to go. The sergeant played for time: "I'll be glad to surrender the prisoner," he started, "if you have anything to show in the way of—" The Guardsman kicked for the pit of the sergeant's stomach. He was a sucker Orsino thought abstractedly as he saw the sergeant catch his foot, dump him and pivot to block another Guardsman. Then he was fighting for his life himself, against three bellowing Guardsmen. A ripping, hammering noise filled the air suddenly. Like cold magic, it froze the milling mob where it stood. Fifty-caliber noise. The jaygee was back, this time in a jeep with a twin fifty. And he was glaring down its barrels into the crowd. People were beginning to stream from the saloons, joints and shipfitting shops. The jaygee cocked his cap rakishly over one eye. "Fall in!" he rasped, and a haunting air of familiarity came over Orsino. The waiting jeep, almost bucking in its eagerness to be let loose— Orsino on the ground, knees trembling with tension—a perfect change of mount scene in a polo match. He reacted automatically. There was a surrealist flash of the jaygee's face before he clipped him into the back of the square little truck. There was another flash of spectators scrambling as he roared the jeep down the road. From then on it was just a question of hanging onto the wheel with one hand, trying to secure the free-traversing twin-fifty with the other, glancing back to see if the jaygee was still out, avoiding yapping dogs and pedestrians, staying on the rutted road, pushing all possible speed out of the jeep, noting landmarks, estimating the possibility of dangerous pursuit. For a two-goal polo player, a dull little practice session.
  • 60. The road, such as it was, wound five miles inland through scrubby woodland and terminated at a lumber camp where chained men in rags were dragging logs. Orsino back tracked a quarter-mile from the camp and jolted overland in a kidney-cracking hare and hounds course at fifty per. The jeep took it for an hour in the fading afternoon light and then bucked to a halt. Orsino turned for an overdue check on the jaygee and found him conscious, but greenly clinging to the sides of the vehicle. But he saw Orsino staring and gamely struggled to his feet, standing in the truck bed. "You're under arrest, sailor," he said. "Striking an officer, abuse of government property, driving a government vehicle without a trip-ticket—" His legs betrayed him and he sat down, hard. Orsino thought very briefly of letting him have a burst from the twin- fifty, and abandoned the idea. He seemed to have bitched up everything so far, but he was still on a mission. He had a commissioned officer of the Government approximately in his power. He snapped: "Nonsense. You're under arrest." The jaygee seemed to be reviewing rapidly any transgressions he may have committed, and asked at last, cautiously: "By what authority?" "I represent the Syndic." It was a block-buster. The jaygee stammered: "But you can't—But there isn't any way—But how—" "Never mind how." "You're crazy. You must be, or you wouldn't stop here. I don't believe you're from the continent and I don't believe the jeep's broken down." He was beginning to sound just a little hysterical. "It can't break down here. We must be more than thirty miles inland."
  • 61. "What's special about thirty miles inland?" "The natives, you fool!" The natives again. "I'm not worried about natives. Not with a pair of fifties." "You don't understand," the jaygee said, forcing calm into his voice. "This is The Outback. They're in charge here. We can't do a thing with them. They jump people in the dark and skewer them. Now fix this damn jeep and let's get rolling!" "Into a firing squad? Don't be silly, lieutenant. I presume you won't slug me while I check the engine?" The jaygee was looking around him. "My God, no," he said. "You may be a gangster, but—" He trailed off. Orsino stiffened. Gangster was semi-dirty talk. "Listen, pirate," he said nastily, "I don't believe—" "Pirate?" the jaygee roared indignantly, and then shut his mouth with a click, looking apprehensively about. The gesture wasn't faked; it alarmed Orsino. "Tell me about your wildmen," he said. "Go to hell," the jaygee said sulkily. "Look, you called me a gangster first. What about these natives? You were trying to trick me, weren't you?" "Kiss my royal North American eyeball, gangster." "Don't be childish," Charles reproved him, feeling adult and superior. (The jaygee looked a couple of years younger than he.) He climbed out of his seat and lifted the hood. The damage was trivial; a shear pin in the transmission had given way. He reported mournfully: "Cracked block. The jeep's through forever. You can get on your way, lieutenant. I won't try to hold you."
  • 62. The jaygee fumed: "You couldn't hold me if you wanted to, gangster. If you think I'm going to try and hoof back to the base alone in the dark, you're crazy. We're sticking together. Two of us may be able to hold them off for the night. In the morning, we'll see." Well, maybe the officer did believe there were wildmen in the woods. That didn't mean there were. The jaygee got out and looked under the hood uncertainly. It was obvious that in the first place he was no mechanic and in the second place he couldn't conceive of anybody voluntarily risking the woods rather than the naval base. "Uh-huh," he said. "Dismount that gun while I get a fire started." "Yes, sir," Charles said sardonically, saluting. The jaygee absently returned the salute and began to collect twigs. Orsino asked: "How do these aborigines of yours operate?" "Sneak up in the dark. They have spears and a few stolen guns. Usually they don't have cartridges for them but you can't count on that. But they have ... witches." Orsino snorted. He was getting very hungry indeed. "Do you know any of the local plants we might eat?" The jaygee said confidently: "I guess we can get by on roots until morning." Orsino dubiously pulled up a shrub, dabbed clods off its root and tasted it. It tasted exactly like a root. He sighed and changed the subject. "What do we do with the fifties when I get them both off the mount?" "The jeep mount breaks down some damn way or other into two low- mount tripods. See if you can figure it out while I get the fire going." The jaygee had a small, smoky fire barely going in twenty minutes. Orsino was still struggling with the jeep gun mount. It came apart,
  • 63. but it couldn't go together again. The jaygee strolled over at last contemptuously to lend a hand. He couldn't make it work either. Two lost tempers and four split fingernails later it developed the "elevating screw" really held the two front legs on and that you elevated by adjusting the rear tripod leg. "A hell of an officer you are," Orsino sulked. It began to rain, putting the fire out with a hiss. They wound up prone under the jeep, not on speaking terms, each tending a gun, each presumably responsible for 180 degrees of perimeter. Charles was fairly dry, except for a trickle of icy water following a contour that meandered to his left knee. After an hour of eye- straining—nothing to be seen—and ear-straining—only the patter of rain—he heard a snore and kicked the jaygee. The jaygee cursed wearily and said: "I guess we'd better talk to keep awake." "I'm not having any trouble, pirate." "Oh, knock it off—where do you get that pirate bit, gangster?" "You're outlaws, aren't you?" "Like hell we are. You're the outlaws. You rebelled against the lawfully constituted North American Government. Just because you won—for the time being—doesn't mean you were right." "The fact that we won does mean that we were right. The fact that your so-called Government lives by raiding and scavenging off us means you were wrong. God, the things I've seen since I joined up with you thugs!" "I'll bet. Respect for the home, sanctity of marriage, sexual morality, law and order—you never saw anything like that back home, did you
  • 64. gangster?" He looked very smug. Orsino clenched his teeth. "Somebody's been telling you a pack of lies," he said. "There's just as much home and family life and morality and order back in Syndic Territory as there is here. And probably a lot more." "Bull. I've seen intelligence reports; I know how you people live. Are you telling me you don't have sexual promiscuity? Polygamy? Polyandry? Open gambling? Uncontrolled liquor trade? Corruption and shakedowns?" Orsino squinted along the barrel of the gun into the rain. "Look," he said, "take me as an average young man from Syndic Territory. I know maybe a hundred people. I know just three women and two men who are what you'd call promiscuous. I know one family with two wives and one husband. I don't really know any people personally who go in for polyandry, but I've met three casually. And the rest are ordinary middle-aged couples." "Ah-hah! Middle-aged! Do you mean to tell me you're just leaving out anybody under middle age when you talk about morality?" "Naturally," Charles said, baffled. "Wouldn't you?" The only answer was a snort. "What are bupers?" Charles asked. "Bu-Pers," the jaygee said distinctly. "Bureau of Personnel, North American Navy." "What do you do there?" "What would a personnel bureau do?" the jaygee said patiently. "We recruit, classify, assign, promote and train personnel." "Paperwork, huh? No wonder you don't know how to shoot or drive."
  • 65. "If I didn't need you to cover my back, I'd shove this MG down your silly throat. For your information, gangster, all officers do a tour of duty on paperwork before they're assigned to their permanent branch. I'm going into the pigboats." "Why?" "Family. My father commands a sub. He's Captain Van Dellen." Oh, God. Van Dellen. The sub commander Grinnel—and he—had murdered. The kid hadn't heard yet that his father had been "lost" in an emergency dive. The rain ceased to fall; the pattering drizzle gave way to irregular, splashing drops from leaves and branches. "Van Dellen," Charles said. "There's something you ought to know." "It'll keep," the jaygee answered in a grim whisper. The bolt of his gun clicked. "I hear them out there."
  • 66. XI She felt the power of the goddess working in her, but feebly. Dark ... so dark ... and so tired ... how old was she? More than eight hundred moons had waxed and waned above her head since birth. And she had run at the head of her spearmen to the motor sounds. A motor meant the smithymen from the sea, and you killed smithymen when you could. She let out a short shrill chuckle in the dark. There was a rustling of branches. One of the spearmen had turned to stare at the sound. She knew his face was worried. "Tend to business, you fool!" she wheezed. "Or by Bridget—" His breath went in with a hiss and she chuckled again. You had to let them know who was the cook and who was the potatoes every now and then. Kill the fool? Not now; not when there were smithymen with guns waiting to be taken. The power of the goddess worked stronger in her withered breast as her rage grew at their impudence. Coming into her woods with their stinking metal! There were two of them. A grin slit her face. She had not taken two smithymen together for thirty moons. For all her wrinkles and creaks, what a fine vessel she was for the power, to be sure! Her worthless, slow-to-learn niece could run and jump and she had a certain air, but she'd never be such a vessel. Her sister—the crone spat—these were degenerate days. In the old days, the sister would have been spitted when she refused the ordeal in her youth. The little one now, whatever her name was, she would make a fine vessel for the power when she was gathered to the goddess. If her sister or her niece didn't hold her head under water too long, or have a spear shoved too deep into her gut or hit her on the head with too heavy a rock.
  • 67. These were degenerate days. She had poisoned her own mother to become the vessel of power. The spearmen to her right and left shifted uneasily. She heard a faint mumble of the two smithymen talking. Let them talk! Doubtless they were cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the smithymen all did when their mouths were not stuffed with food. She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and arrowpoints for her people—he was a strange one, touched by the goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn the head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to get on with it. She wished the power were working stronger in her; she was tired and could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess there would be two new heads over her holy hut come dawn. She could hardly see, but the goddess wouldn't fail her.... She quavered like a screech-owl, and the spearmen began to slip forward through the brush. She was not allowed to eat honey lest its sweetness clash with the power in her, but the taste of power was sweeter than the taste of honey. With frightful suddenness there was an ear-splitting shriek and a trampling rush of feet. By sheer reflex, Orsino clamped down on the trigger of his fifty, and his brain rocked at its thunder. Shadowy figures were blotted out by the orange muzzle-flash. You're supposed to fire neat, spaced bursts of eight he told himself. I wonder what old Gilby would say if he could see his star pupil burning out a barrel and swinging his gun like a fire hose? The gun stopped firing; end of the belt. Twenty, fifty or a hundred rounds? He didn't remember. He clawed for another belt and smoothly, in the dark, loaded again and listened.
  • 68. "You all right, gangster?" the jaygee said behind him, making him jump. "Yes," he said. "Will they come back?" "I don't know." "You filthy swine," an agonized voice wheezed from the darkness. "Me back is broke, you stinking lice." The voice began to sob. They listened to it in silence for perhaps a minute. At last he said to the jaygee: "If the rest are gone maybe we can at least—make him comfortable." "Too risky," the jaygee said after a long pause. The sobbing went on. As the excitement of the attack drained from Orsino, he felt deathly tired, cramped and thirsty. The thirst he could do something about. He scooped water from the muddy runnel by his knee and sucked it from his palms twice. The third time, he thought of the thirst that the sobbing creature out in the dark must be feeling, and his hand wouldn't go to his mouth. "I'm going to get him," he whispered to the jaygee. "Stay where you are! That's an order!" He didn't answer, but began to work his cramped and aching body from under the jeep. The jaygee, a couple of years younger and lither than he, slid out first from his own side. Orsino sighed and relaxed as he heard his footsteps cautiously circle the jeep. "Finish me off!" the wounded man was sobbing. "For the love of the goddess, finish me off, you bitches' bastards! You've broke me back— ah!" That was a cry of savage delight. There was a strangled noise from the jaygee and then only a soft, deadly thrashing noise from the dark. Hell, Orsino thought bitterly. It was my idea. He snaked out from under the jeep and raced through wet brush.
  • 69. The two of them were a tangled knot of darkness rolling on the ground. A naked back came uppermost; Orsino fell on it and clawed at its head. He felt a huge beard, took two hand-fulls of it and pulled as hard as he could. There was a wild screech and a flailing of arms. The jaygee broke away and stood up, panting hoarsely. Charles heard a sharp crunch and a snap, and the flailing sweaty figure, beneath him lay still. "Back to the guns," the jaygee choked. He swayed, and Orsino took him by the arm.... On the way back to the jeep, they stumbled over something that was certainly a body. Orsino's flesh shrank from lying down again in the mud behind his gun, but he did, shivering. He heard the jaygee thud wearily into position. "What did you do to him?" he asked. "Is he dead?" "Kicked him," the jaygee choked. "His head snapped back and there was that crack. I guess he's dead. I never heard of that broken-wing trick before. I guess he wanted to take one more with him. They have a kind of religion." The jaygee sounded as though he was teetering on the edge of breakdown. Make him mad, intuition said to Orsino. He might go howling off among the trees unless he snaps out of it. "It's a hell of way to run an island," he said nastily. "You beggars were chased out of North America because you couldn't run it right and now you can't even control a lousy little island for more than five miles inland." He added with deliberate, superior amusement: "Of course, they've got witches." "Shut your mouth, gangster—I'm warning you." The note of hysteria was still there. And then the jaygee said dully: "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. You did come out and help me after all." "Surprised?" "Yes. Twice. First time when you wanted to go out yourself. I suppose you can't help being born where you were. Maybe if you came over
  • 70. to us all the way, the Government would forgive and forget. But no—I suppose not." He paused, obviously casting about for a change of subject. He still seemed sublimely confident that they'd get back to the naval base with him in charge of the detail. "What ship did you cross in?" "Atom sub Taft," Orsino said. He could have bitten his tongue out. "Taft? That's my father's pigboat! Captain Van Dellen. How is he? I was going down to the dock when—" "He's dead," Orsino said flatly. "He was caught on deck during an emergency dive." The jaygee said nothing for a while and then uttered an unconvincing laugh of disbelief. "You're lying," he said. "His crew'd never let that happen. They'd let the ship be blown to hell before they took her down without the skipper." "Grinnel had the con. He ordered the dive and roared down the crew when they wanted to get your father inboard. I'm sorry." "Grinnel," the jaygee whispered. "Grinnel. Yes, I know Commander Grinnel. He's—he's a good officer. He must have done it because he had to. Tell me about it, please." It was more than Orsino could bear. "Your father was murdered," he said harshly. "I know because Grinnel put me on radar watch—and I don't know a God-damned thing about reading a radarscope. He told me to sing out 'enemy planes' and I did because I didn't know what the hell was going on. He used that as an excuse to crash-dive while your father was sleeping on deck. Your good officer murdered him." He heard the jaygee sobbing hoarsely. At last he asked Orsino in a dry, choked voice: "Politics?" "Politics," Orsino said. Orsino jumped wildly as the jaygee's machine gun began to roar a long burst of twenty, but he didn't fire himself. He knew that there
  • 71. was no enemy out there in the dark, and that the bullets were aimed only at an absent phantom. "We've got to get to Iceland," the jaygee said at last, soberly. "It's our only chance." "Iceland?" "This is one for the C.C. of the Constitutionists. The Central Committee. It's a breach of the Freiberg Compromise. It means we call the Sociocrats, and if they don't make full restitution—war." "What do you mean, we?" "You and I. You're the source of the story; you're the one who'd be lie-tested." You've got him, Orsino told himself, but don't be fool enough to count on it. He's been light-headed from hunger and no sleep and the shock of his father's death. You helped him in a death struggle and there's team spirit working on him. The guy covering my back, how can I fail to trust him, how could I dare not to trust him? But don't be fool enough to count on it after he's slept. Meanwhile, push it for all it's worth. "What are your plans?" he asked gravely. "We've got to slip out of Ireland by sub or plane," the jaygee brooded. "We can't go to the New Portsmouth or Com-Surf organizations; they're Sociocrat, and Grinnel will have passed the word to the Sociocrats that you're out of control." "What does that mean?" "Death," the jaygee said.
  • 72. XII Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to a joint. It wasn't until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendly O.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house. "What?" Grinnel roared. "Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me to her at once!" "Commander!" the lieutenant said aghast. "I just got here!" "You heard me, mister! At once!" While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant dutifully scoured his memory. "Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger deal, Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander Jacobi was in Syndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and reconnaissance mission and one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him. A real Syndic member. Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this fellow as Charles Orsino, another Syndic. Why are you so interested, if I may ask?" The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: "You may not," but didn't dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint that he had anything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the knife. "The man's my baby, lieutenant," he said. "Either your girl's mistaken or Van Dellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by a brand-new technique." That was nice work, he congratulated himself. Got in Van Dellen and the tech.... Maybe, come to think of it, the tech was crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded perfectly under scop. O.N.I.'s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed, beginning to rot already in the eternal Irish damp.
  • 73. "We've got her on the third floor, Commander," the lieutenant said. "You get there by a ladder." "In God's name, why?" They walked past the Charge of Quarters, who snapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the deserted offices of the first and second floors. "Frankly, we've had a little trouble hanging on to her." "She runs away?" "No, nothing like that—not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and Guard Intelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First with requisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word gets to Iceland. Then, naturally, we'll be out in the cold." The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not. The door and lock on Lee Bennet's quarters were impressive. The lieutenant rapped. "Are you awake, Lee? There's an officer here who wants to talk to you." "Come in," she said. The lieutenant's hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open. The girl was sitting in the dark. "I'm Commander Grinnel, my dear," he said. After eight hours in the joint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. "If the time isn't quite convenient—" "It's all right," she said listlessly. "What do you want to know?" "The man you identify as Orsino—it was quite a shock to me. Commander Van Dellen, who died a hero's death only days ago accepted him as authentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed both scop and polygraph." "I can't help that," she said. "He came right up to me and told me who he was. I recognized him, of course. He's a polo player. I've seen
  • 74. him play on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He's not much in the Syndic, but he's close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino's an orphan. I don't know whether Taylor's actually adopted him or not. I think not." "No—possible—mistake?" "No possible mistake." She began to tremble. "My God, Commander Whoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damned sneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detector again! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won't be called a liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!" "Please," the Commander soothed. "I do believe you, my dear. Nobody could doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and good night." He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the door closed he snapped at him: "Well, mister?" The lieutenant shrugged. "The lie detector always bears her out. We've stopped using it on her. We're convinced that she's on our side. Almost deserving of citizenship." "Come, now," the Commander said. "You know better than that." Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed, dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not since those three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility as males and their immunity as Syndics on her ... she couldn't cry any more.
  • 75. Charles Orsino—another one of them. She hoped they caught him and killed him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she feel like a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why, why, why? Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline of treetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him and at last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half- naked bodies. One of them was a woman's, mangled by fifty-caliber slugs. The other was the body of a bearded giant—the one with whom they had struggled in the dark.
  • 76. Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was—had been—a stringy, white haired crone. Some animal's skull was tied to her pate with sinews as a head-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents. The jaygee joined him standing over her and said: "One of their witches. Part of the religion, if you can call it that." "A brand-new religion?" Charles asked dubiously. "Made up out of whole cloth?" "No," the jaygee said. "I understand it's an old religion—pre- Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles. Then it flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animal sacrifices every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can you expect from people like that?" Charles reminded himself that the jaygee's fellow-citizens boiled recalcitrant slaves. "I'll see what I can do about the jeep," he said. The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. "What the hell's the use?" he mumbled wearily. "Even if you get it running again. Even if we get back to the base. They'll be gunning for you. Maybe they'll be gunning for me if they killed my father." He tried to smile. "You got any aces in the hole, gangster?" "Maybe," Orsino said slowly. "What do you know about a woman named Lee—Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?" "Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She's a little nuts, too. What have you got on her?" "Does she swing any weight? Is she a citizen?" "No weight. They're just using her over at Intelligence to fill out the picture of the Syndic. And she couldn't be a citizen. A woman has to marry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her, for God's sake? Did you know her on the other side? She's death to the Syndic; she can't do anything for you."
  • 77. Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on Lee Falcaro's conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was for his. And it hadn't been tripped because this pirate gang didn't particularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens. A small part of the Government's cultural complex—but one that could trap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute for a personality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman, no subsequent oath. "I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other side. She turned me in...." He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily; the water eased hunger cramps a little. "I'll see what I can do with the jeep." He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen was dropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin from the jeep's winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way in the transmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering. Cracked block, he thought contemptuously. An officer and he couldn't tell whether the block was cracked or not. If I ever get out of this we'll sweep them from the face of the earth—or more likely just get rid of their tom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest are probably all right. Except maybe for those bastards of Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let's hope they get killed in the fighting. The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and felt cold metal. "Turn slowly or you'll be spitted like a pig," a bass voice growled. He turned slowly. The cold metal now at his chest, was the leaf- shaped blade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red- bearded, barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold as death. "Tie that one," somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his wrists behind him and lashed them together with cords.
  • 78. "Hobble his feet." It was a woman's voice. A length of cord or sinew was knotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk but not run. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside. The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of the North American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and confusions. They had skewered him to the turf while he slept. Charles hoped he had not felt the blow. The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20 tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch and knotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino's numbed understanding, it was clearly an act of the highest significance. It subtly changed the composition of the six-men group in the little glade. They had been a small mob until she put on the skull, but the moment she did they moved instinctively—one a step or two, the other merely turning a bit, perhaps—to orient on her. There was no doubt that she was in charge. A witch, Orsino thought. "It kept going underground until the Troubles." "A filthy business—human sacrifices twice a year." She approached him and, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the group fell into a new pattern of which she was still the focus. Charles thought he had never seen a face so humorlessly conscious of power. The petty ruler of a few barbarians, she carried herself as though she were empress of the universe. Nor did a large gray louse that crawled from her hairline across her forehead and back again affect her in the slightest. She wore a greasy animal hide as though it were royal purple. It added up to either insanity or a limitless pretension to religious authority. And her eyes were not mad. "You," she said coldly. "What about the jeep and the guns? Do they go?" He laughed suddenly and idiotically at these words from the mouth of a stone-age goddess. A raised spear sobered him instantly. "Yes," he said.
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