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2011 International Green Schoolyard Conference: Engaging Our Grounds

September 12, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Between September 16th and 18th, the 2011 International Green Schoolyard Conference will be held in San Francisco and Berkeley. The green schoolyard movement is growing rapidly and flourishing around the world. Schools are re-imagining their grounds, replacing their extensive paved surfaces with a vibrant mosaic of outdoor learning and play opportunities. Schools in many different countries are leaders in this field, finding innovative ways to weave curricula into their landscapes, diversify their recreational offerings, enhance their local ecology, and reflect their unique location and cultural context.

“Engaging Our Grounds,” is the first International Green Schoolyard Conference held in the United States, September 16-18, 2011. Participants will hear about cutting edge schoolyards and school gardens, meet like-minded colleagues from the United States and abroad and share ideas. Participants will also tour local school grounds including the Edible Schoolyard, the City of Berkeley’s Adventure Playground, and Rosa Parks School, with a green schoolyard created by the school community.

There will be information sessions from visionary leaders of the school ground movement from Canada, England, Germany, Japan & Sweden will share their experiences, case studies, and best practices.

Speakers will include:

- Dr. Petter Åkerblom, Movium & Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala, Sweden)
- Cam Collyer, Evergreen (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
- Manfred Dietzen, Grün macht Schule (Berlin, Germany)
- Mary Jackson and Julie Mountain, Learning through Landscapes (Winchester, England)
- Dr. Ko Senda, Environment Design Institute (Tokyo, Japan)
- Bernard Spiegal, Playlink (London, England)
- Birgit Teichmann, Teichmann Landschafts Architekten (Berlin, Germany)

Engaging Our Grounds is open to the public from the United States and around the world: teachers, parents, school administrators, designers, nonprofit organizations, environmentalists, and community members.

For registration information, go to the conference website.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Green Campus Student Resources

September 07, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Environmentally conscious university and college students nationwide are looking to take matters into their own hands and improve the state of the environment by making their campuses eco-friendly. Green Campus provides comprehensive resources to assist students with their green and sustainable projects.

A forum has been created to help campuses become more environmentally friendly by linking them together and having them share their experiences. Our hope is that schools can learn from each other; students can see what works and what does not work, what is hard and what is (relatively) easy. Sharing success and failure stories are important on the road of learning and action.

Useful Links and Project Resources

Broad Interest and Networking Links
Assessment Tools and Resources
Air and Climate: Links and Programs
Green Building Links and Projects
Energy Links and Projects
Conservation and Recycling Links and Resources
Case Studies
Green Student U

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved

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Organizations and Groups in the USGBC's Center for Green Schools

September 07, 2011 Add Comment Edit

The US Green Building Council's (USGBC) Center for Green Schools is dedicated to increasing the number of green schools. Here are some of their organizations, groups and initiatives.

The Coalition for Green Schools
An alliance of the nation's leading educational and environmental associations, including the American Architectural Foundation, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, National PTA, National School Boards Association and many others, the Coalition is in pursuit of a common mission: provide every child in America with a green school. For more information or to apply click here.

The 50 for 50 Green Schools Caucus Initiative
This initiative equips state legislators with the knowledge, tools and networks they need to advance effective state policies that promote the benefits of green schools. For more information click here.

Mayors' Alliance for Green Schools
The Alliance unites mayors from major cities and small towns across the country around a common goal: bringing the benefits of green schools to their local communities. For more information click here.

USGBC Chapter Green Schools Committees
Across USGBC's national chapter network, more than 1,000 Green Schools Committee volunteers are leading local and regional campaigns to promote healthy green school buildings. Committees raise community awareness, host green schools events, give presentations, support local schools, engage educators and work with local media to share their stories. For more information click here.

USGBC Students
Representing college and university-based groups of students from all disciplines who come together to green their campuses, communities and careers, USGBC Students has 60 active groups and expects to engage more than 250 student groups nationwide over the next five years. For more information or to get involved click here.

Center for Green Schools Fellows
The Fellows program connects carefully selected and extensively trained green schools experts to serve as full-time sustainability officers to local school districts for three-year terms. Fellows provide dedicated, hands-on project and organizational support for district-wide green schools initiatives. For more information click here.

Congressional Green Schools Caucus
Under bipartisan leadership on Capitol Hill, and with programmatic support from the Center for Green Schools, the Caucus brings together nearly 60 federal legislators to educate and inform Congress on the enormous impact of greening our nation's schools. For more information click here.

Take Action
You can promote green schools in your community or school district by supporting a green schools resolution. Policies endorsing green schools have been enacted in state legislatures, by school boards, and by city councils across the country. Good first steps towards passing a green schools resolution are identifying local partners, making the case, working from a sample resolution and learning best practices from other communities . For more information click here.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved

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Green School Buildings Offer Many Benefits

September 06, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Green school construction offers many benefits including thousands of new jobs. Green schools use an average of 33% less energy and 32% less water than conventional schools. A 2006 study sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Institute of Architects, the American Lung Association, the Federation of American Scientists and USGBC found that building green would save an average school $100,000 each year in energy costs along – enough to hire two new additional full-time teachers, purchase 5,000 new textbooks, or buy 500 new computers.

Green schools have a superior indoor environment, with clean, fresh air, free of dangerous chemicals from everyday products like carpets, paints and cleaning materials.

Green school buildings make use of as much natural daylight as possible, maximizing students’ ability to concentrate and stay physically and emotionally healthy while at the same time dramatically reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Green schools’ better lighting, temperature control, ventilation and indoor air quality contribute to reduced asthma, colds, flu and absenteeism, helping improve learning, test scores and lifetime student earnings. And green schools boost morale and improve teacher retention.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved

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USGBC's Center for Green Schools

September 06, 2011 Add Comment Edit

The the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Center for Green Schools envisions green schools for everyone within this generation. To help achieve this objective the USGBC provides resources for green builders, school administrators, elected officials and community members.

S. Richard Fedrizzi, the President, CEO and Founding Chair of USGBC believes "there is no other market that speaks more powerfully to the benefits and potential of green buildings than our schools."

According to Fedrizzi, "The Center for Green Schools at USGBC is helping to engage educators in creating sustainable learning environments for their students and apply solid research to inform leadership—from school boards to college presidents—about the benefits of healthy, high-performing schools. They are working with state and local governments to draft smart, practical policies, and they provide trainings and helpful resources to those who need it most—K-12 schools serving lower-income families, under-resourced institutions and community colleges. The Center serves to convene conversations with key decision makers, collaborate with leading education and environmental associations and create tools and resources that help make green schools possible."

Fedrizzi also states that, "Advocacy tools are also being created and disseminated to support USGBC Student Groups and our nationwide network of more than 1,000 Green School Committee volunteers. We want to inspire innovation that can be replicated and deployed at lightning speed to every school and every college and university campus in this country and beyond."

The Center for Green Schools web site is filled with facts on the benefits and costs of green schools, including the ways green schools foster learning, decrease student and teacher absenteeism from respiratory and other illnesses, reduce energy and water bills, and provide models for teaching the world’s future leaders about sustainability to benefit communities for generations to come.

They provide profiles of green schools, examples of policies governments and school districts have instituted to ensure future schools are green, an extensive list of resources and links, and a social networking site where visitors share their experiences, best practices, and creative ideas.

The USGBC’s LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Schools green rating system provides green-building guidelines and offers third-party verification to ensure schools’ stakeholders that their buildings incorporate the best in science, design and technology to make their schools truly green.

For more information on the Center for Green Schools, click here.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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The Campus Green Builder Online Portal

September 05, 2011 Add Comment Edit

The Campus Green Builder (CGB) online portal provides information for academic institutions. this is a one-stop online resource on campus green building that is free and accessible to all higher education institutions. Though the information provided is relevant to all higher education institutions, the CGB is particularly geared towards under-resourced colleges and universities. It aims to level the playing field for all institutions of higher education to gain access to funding and technical resources for green building.

Under-resourced colleges often have financial constraints that make it difficult for them to embrace the shift to green building and sustainability initiatives on their campuses. The goals of the Campus Green Builder are to:

1. Advance green building at colleges and universities so that it becomes “business as usual."

2.Level the playing field for all institutions of higher education in terms of accessing funding, technical resources, and networks for green building.

3. Provide an up-to-date resource on relevant news, events and other opportunities, including grant opportunites.

4. Provide opportunities for under-resourced institutions to share their experiences and learn best practices.

Second Nature, a nonprofit organization advancing sustainability in the higher education sector, launched a strategic outreach and education program, the Advancing Green Building in Higher Education Initiative, to assist under-resourced higher education institutions, such as many Minority-Serving Institutions, community and technical colleges, and small inner-city, rural, or religiously affiliated institutions to “build green” on their campuses. The Campus Green Builder web portal is one of the principal activities within this initiative.

The Advancing Green Building in Higher Education Initiative, in collaboration with The Kresge Foundation, aimed to provide long-term capacity for under-resourced higher education institutions to advance and become leaders in the field of green building and sustainability, while encouraging them to commit to climate neutrality through the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.

Based on the success of this initiative, Second Nature has recently launched a new phase of its capacity building work. This comprehensive "Education for Sustainability Innovation Program" promotes innovation and leadership among financially strained and minority-serving colleges and universities.

The Education for Sustainability Innovation Program will help ensure that graduates are prepared to lead the changes needed to overcome the interrelated social, environmental and economic challenges of the 21st century by driving innovative approaches to Education for Sustainability (EfS).

The Campus Green Builder offers the following information and opportunities for networking:

Links to green building resource websites as well as green building experts’ directories.

Case Studies to serve as models and learning resources regarding campus green building at under-resourced colleges and universities.

Announcements of green building and campus sustainability events, conferences, workshops, webinars, courses, meetings, summits, etc.

Free user accounts in which individuals can save their favorite resources.

Campus Green Builder Blog for peer-to-peer networking.

Information on other Advancing Green Building activities and projects.

for more information click here.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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MODUL University's MSc in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy

September 20, 2010 1 Comment Edit

Vienna based, MODUL University (MU) offers Master of Science (MSc) degree programs in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy. The unique multidisciplinary approach of these programs involve research teams from three different departments: public governance and management, tourism and hospitality management and new media technology.

MU's MSc degree reviews the principles of sustainable development and the impact of environmental policies on communities, business and the economy. This environmentally oriented degree prepares students to be the leaders of the future by focusing on development issues, globalization and sustainability challenges.

Their research and teaching staff actively participate in international scholarly and professional networks and are at the forefront of their field, which enables them to bring students to the heart of scientific practice.

MSc graduates in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy qualify for positions as consultants, scientists, policy advisors, program coordinators and environmental marketing specialists in research institutes, in government, in globally presented companies or at NGOs all over the world. In addition, the MSc degree prepares students for a subsequent PhD program.
The program's strengths include, critical thinking, emergent trends and key management issues. For further information, see the folder for the MSc programs.

The Master of Science degree in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy involves full time study over 4 semesters or extended duration which is completed over 6 semesters. The study year is divided into fall and spring semesters (thesis work takes place in the 3rd and 4th semester).

The MSc degree comprises management & research core courses, courses in innovation and change management, environmental systems, and further, courses in the field of specialization. For more information on the admissions process, contact admissions@modul.ac.at.
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