DePaul Engages Community in Sustainability Efforts
What role can university communities play in responding to the social and environmental crisis?
By Sergio Godinez
On Wednesday October 26th, I had the pleasure of attending DePaul University’s 2022 Sustainability Town Hall, co-sponsored by the President’s Sustainability Committee and Just DePaul. Walking into the room, conversations buzzed all around as individuals discussed their personal reasons for attending the event.
The event began with speakers from the President’s Sustainability Committee — Father “Memo” Campuzano Valez, Mark Potasnak, Jim Montgomery, Hugh Bartling, Barbara Willard, Rich Wiltse — speaking to a room packed with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members about the ways in which DePaul has prioritized and continues to prioritize sustainability. DePaul has taken a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to sustainability, focusing on five key areas: Curriculum, Operations, Administration and Planning, Research, and Engagement.
Town Hall attendees then participated in a collaborative idea-generating activity around these five key areas, followed by discussion. The format of the event emphasized an overarching message: sustainability must be collaborative. Centered in DePaul’s Mission Statement and Vincentian Values, the Town Hall moved beyond the dreadful “doomsday” narrative of environmentalism, connecting individuals to the collective and creating meaningful structural approaches to sustainability.
Each of the key areas play a role in this overarching goal of DePaul’s sustainability vision.
Curriculum
Speakers at the Town Hall asked attendees to think critically about the university’s role as an institute of higher education. As a place dedicated to creating tomorrow’s leaders, how do we build sustainability into their education? While time was taken to applaud accomplishments, like the establishment of the Sustainable Urban Development master’s program, the conversation turned to the future, and to interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability.
In attendance were professors from myriad departments, among them English, Film & Television, and Accountancy. Faculty shared ideas about how to integrate sustainability into their core programs in transformative ways. I found it heartening to see professors from departments that rarely if ever interact wanting to collaborate on a broad and integrative sustainability curriculum.
Operations
DePaul seeks a more expansive view than the traditional notions of sustainability that focus on operations alone, yet operations are still key.
DePaul’s operational sustainability is most visible to me in the water bottle refill stations and the solar power charging station in the Lincoln Park Quad. Through collaborative discussions at the Town Hall, attendees suggested other ways DePaul can be operationally sustainable.
Take, for the example, the post-pandemic workspace. Traditionally, professors each have their own private offices on campus. Yet many called into the question the necessity of maintaining all these individual office spaces. A sustainability perspective might reconsider individual offices in light of the vast availability of videoconferencing technologies, possibly shrinking the number of individual offices and instead creating collaborative work environments on campus.
Administration and Planning
There was a consensus that DePaul’s sustainability efforts must be kept current and updated as DePaul continues to grow. Being a Vincentian Catholic institution, attendees were reminded of Pope Francis’ Laudato si’. Last year DePaul committed itself to being a Laudato si’ university, using the papal encyclical as guidance for the President’s Sustainability Committee as they have imagined how to integrate sustainability into DePaul’s long-term planning.
DePaul has pioneered the Vincentian mission in the 21st century. Drawing on the language in the Laudato si’, the university has sent a clear message that care for the planet is a Catholic value and that environmental justice and social justice are intertwined priorities.
Research
Professor Barbara Willard, who studies and teaches environmental communication, spoke to how investment in research projects increases our capacity to become a premier sustainability research institution where eager minds come to be challenged, innovate, and build the future.
Academically, DePaul has already taken measures to invest in research projects, like the Paleoenvironmental reconstruction (there’s a winning Scrabble word) created by the Department of Environmental Science and Studies. This groundwork excited many in attendance who set their sights on an aspirational vision that aligns with the President’s vision to knit together and elevate individual efforts in ways departments can’t do by themselves: an Institute of Sustainability. This topic lit up the room.
I find the prospect of creating a sustainability institute exciting, as an institute would not only centralize the research, pedagogy, and promotion of sustainability, but integrate sustainability into the core ethos of DePaul.
While the idea of an Institute of Sustainability may seem just wishful thinking, it’s the ambition to see it come into full fruition that energized me — and other undergraduates in attendance as well.
DePaul’s slogan “Here we do” is more than marketing material, it’s a call to action. It calls all of us to not only dream big, but to pursue those dreams with tangible efforts.
Engagement
While it is important to implement sustainability-oriented changes, equally important is how DePaul communicates our efforts outside of our Blue Demon community. Central to our Vincentian values is a call to action and engagement within the Chicago community. It’s a long-standing commitment, and one that has been formative to the types of leaders DePaul creates.
A sustainable DePaul cannot exist without a sustainable Chicago. The symbiotic relationship between university and city has thrived for 125 years and will continue to do so for future generations.
Our engagement with those around us includes other institutions within the Chicagoland area. While it may seem natural to become competitive with institutions like Loyola and the University of Chicago, the practice of sustainability calls for communication and interaction, rather than competition. Sustainability cannot be achieved by a single institution. Its work is collective and arduous, requiring all to solve the issues of today and innovate for tomorrow.
As attendees left the Town Hall and began networking with each other, I noticed they were a little quieter than when they arrived. I imagine this was not because they felt discouraged or deterred, but quite the opposite. Attendees seemed pensive and reflective. Perhaps they — like me — were questioning their role in the grand scheme of sustainability.
During the couple of hours that I spent with my fellow DePaul community members, I was truly inspired. Inspired by the ideas, by the possibilities of a sustainable DePaul, and most importantly, by the commitment of those in the room.
Sergio Godinez is the HumanitiesX Student Assistant and a 2021–22 HumanitiesX Student Fellow.
