Christen Bellucci, Student, Environmental Sciences, Human Health Concentration

From the moment we first stepped foot in COP22’s Green Zone, an urgent question presented itself to us: What can universities do to strengthen the fight against climate change? The first panel we attended as a group Monday evening was The Relevance of Green University Networks in Promoting a Sustainable Future, a discussion led by a group of higher education leaders from around the world. One of their primary messages was that universities have a responsibility to exist as leaders in the area of sustainability and climate change mitigation. By building and supporting green campuses, universities embed a sustainability mindset in their students.

Sustainable campuses allow for multiple angles of education, drawing a link between the classroom, initiative, and innovation. As stated in the panel, they “create platforms to turn knowledge into action.” This discussion was so relevant to UConn’s goals of providing its community members with a sustainable living and learning environment. I was encouraged to hear that UConn had already taken on one of the panel’s primary recommendations for optimizing sustainability: managing and monitoring both quantitative and qualitative sustainability metrics. UConn has discovered, developed, and implemented a great number of sustainability initiatives through participation in annual surveys such as the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools ranking.

While at Cadi Ayyad University for our co-hosted event, Colleges United for Climate Action, a student even congratulated us for our number 2 ranking in the international GreenMetric sustainability survey. I was not fully aware until this moment that UConn’s achievements are being recognized throughout the world, confirming the higher education panel’s message that we have a responsibility as a university to act as a leader for our own community, for fellow colleges and universities, and for the world.

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