Villanova launched an innovative
Year of Sustainability in 2008–09 that involved the entire campus
community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni alike. Through curricular
development, along with research and service initiatives, the year highlighted
our crucial and shared responsibility to care for the environment. The year was
led by an interdisciplinary executive committee of faculty members in
collaboration with the President’s Environmental Sustainability Committee, and culminated
in the
International SustainAbility Conference featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in
April 2009.
“Our intention was that the year would help to bring a new era of environmental
responsibility to our campus,” says Dr. Francis Galgano of the
Department of Geography and
the Environment, who served on the Year of
Sustainability Executive Committee. “Our hope was to strengthen the foundation
of the Villanova commitment to sustainability for generations to come.”
The principal objectives of this year-long academic
commitment were to:
- educate students, faculty, and staff through a series of
cross-campus programs;
- provide a focused educational experience, thus elevating
awareness of global environmental and sustainability issues;
- find ways to infuse an emphasis on sustainability into the
curriculum and thus provide students with a different prism through which to
view their role in the global community; and
- seek to educate the local community by informing constituents
both on and off campus of the importance of this issue for the world as a whole,
as well as for the region.
Sustainability is the minimum condition for a flourishing planet over the long term. Locally, sustainability is important to ensure that the
social, environmental, and economic systems of our
community are providing a healthy and meaningful life for everyone at Villanova.
In a global sense, sustainability ensures that development meets present needs without compromising the needs of future generations. There is little question that sustainability is one of the world’s critical issues. It has become clear that if sustainable practices do not become pervasive, the human community
will be in serious trouble. A key component of managing sustainability is having good information—and this
was a central component of the Year of Sustainability at Villanova.
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Four Overarching University Goals:
- Awareness and Education: Students and Faculty
- Academics: Curricular Development
- Physical Plant: A Sustainable Campus
- Community Education: Outreach
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Long-Term Outcomes:
- University-wide Academic Mission and Strategic Plan
- Research Funding for Faculty and Students
- Development of a Center or Centers
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“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907
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