University of Denver

Welcome AASHE Conference Attendees from the University of Denver

Dear Colleagues:

It is with great delight that the University of Denver welcomes the members of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education to the Mile High City. While you’re here, we encourage you to take the time to visit our campus. You’ll find our community deeply sympathetic to your mission, and we hope you’ll find our setting as inspirational as we do.

The University of Denver’s commitment to sustainability dates back generations. We are, after all, located in a special place—at the foothills of one of the world’s great mountain ranges and one of its most fascinating ecosystems. It’s no surprise that we understand fully the need to preserve, conserve and sustain for future generations.

Within the University of Denver community, sustainability is a key priority. But we have committed to sustainability in our distinctive way: by balancing it with our other priorities and by enlisting the support of students, faculty and staff.

It would be impossible to describe all of our efforts here, but as you explore our campus, you’ll see many ways in which we live our commitment. We have a number of LEED- certified buildings, a bike-sharing program, a community garden for students and neighbors, and a single-stream recycling program (the blue bins are everywhere on campus, diverting tons of trash from landfills). What’s more, our campus doubles as an arboretum, a living laboratory that educates visitors about the specimens suitable to our terrain and climate.

Those are the efforts that you can see. Others are less visible but just as important. In 2007, at the urging of our students and a number of professors, the University became a signatory to the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. This committed us to forming and adopting a quantifiable sustainability plan. To spearhead our efforts, we created a Sustainability Council made up of students, staff and faculty.

The resulting sustainability plan is ambitious. It calls on us to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. To date, we’re well on our way. We have purchased wind energy and, through conservation efforts and facility upgrades, made substantial reductions to our energy consumption. In our dining halls and coffee shops, we’ve aimed to source ingredients locally. And we’ve secured transit eco passes for faculty, staff and students.

To ensure that DU students have every opportunity to learn about and practice sustainability, we have made it part of our curriculum and part of campus life. In fall 2009, to cite just one example, we began offering an undergraduate minor in sustainability, and before long, we hope to extend this initiative into graduate education. Outside the classroom, our undergraduates can participate in an Environmental Awareness Living and Learning Community, and many of them collaborate on sustainability-related service projects.

Like campuses everywhere, we’re always looking for new ways to reduce our carbon footprint and use resources wisely. We hope this conference inspires all of us to work harder—and smarter—for the goals we share: environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Sincerely,

Robert D. Coombe
Chancellor