UMACS Newsletter - April 16, 2009
Welcome to the inaugural e-newsletter of the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability. UMACS is a voluntary association of individuals working at colleges and universities throughout the Midwest to make curriculum, operations, and all aspects of higher education more sustainable. The mission of UMACS is to facilitate communication and sharing between individuals and schools through conferences, electronic resources, and peer to peer communication. Having hosted successful conferences in 2006 and 2008, UMACS is expanding its focus to do more in the space between biennial conferences. The UMACS Steering Committee is launching this e-newsletter to expand our outreach and bring more campuses into the network in order to enhance the work of campus sustainability. Please forward this e-newsletter to others who are interested in campus sustainability.
NEW WEBSITE
UMACS has launched a new website with the intention of facilitating greater sharing of information between Midwest colleges and universities. The new site allows users to create a campus sustainability profile for their school, upload information on sustainability projects on their campus, and add events to the UMACS calendar. Our goal is to make this an interactive site where users are creating the content, not just reading it. It's neither realistic, nor efficient, for a volunteer organization to compile information on all the great stuff happening on the campuses in our region. But we can create a space for others to share their stories, and collectively we can pull our information into one spot.
GET INVOLVED!
Is your campus taking steps to make your institution more sustainable? Do you feel isolated in this work, as if you are trying to reinvent the wheel? Do you read of initiatives on the east or west coasts, but wonder what's happening in your state or at nearby schools? Do you have stories to tell, questions to ask, lessons learned to share with others? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then UMACS is for you. UMACS charges no membership fees, has no staff, and is an all volunteer organization. Our success depends upon your involvement. Here is how you and your campus can get involved:
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Become a UMACS Campus Liaison for your school. We are building a network of individuals on campuses around the region who will serve as a conduit of information about campus sustainability efforts. We ask campus liaisons to post information on the UMACS website about your school so we can build a database of UMACS affiliated institutions and the sustainability work happening at each school. To become a liaison for your campus, please complete this simple form.
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Post information on the UMACS Website. This newly redesigned site is intended as a sharing portal where anyone can post information on campus sustainability projects or upcoming events, sign up for a list-serve, or browse happenings at other schools. The site contains user friendly instructions on how to post information on your campus. Get started by creating a user account.
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Join the UMACS Steering Committee. This organizational group meets by conference call for one hour per month to plan events and steer the direction of the organization. We seek representation geographically and by institution type. If you are interested in learning more about the UMACS steering committee, e-mail Jon Jensen.
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Apply to host the next UMACS Biennial Conference in Spring 2010. Previous conference organizers will provide extensive help with planning, but we are looking for a school willing to host the next gathering. This is a great opportunity to highlight your own campus and to energize students, faculty, and staff by bringing representatives of dozens of other campuses to you to share their stories. If you are interested in hosting the next UMACS conference please e-mail Troy Goodnough.
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
In addition to its biennial conference, UMACS supports and publicizes other sustainability events throughout the region, including the following:
Don't miss the Higher Education Conference and Center for Small Towns Symposium at the University of Minnesota, Morris this summer. The higher education conference is especially for Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (UMACS) members and starts May 31 evening-June 2 morning. Hear from engaging speakers, share sustainability strategies and ideas, and learn more about how Morris is collaborating to become carbon neutral by 2010. Then stay for the Symposium, from June 1-June 3 to engage with other leaders about how to rebuild our local economies, educate and motivate our communities and capitalize on political change. These two events focus on the actions we can take now to make change happen. More information and registration.
The Midwest Regional Collaborative for Sustainability Education Workshop will be held June 22 to 26, 2009 at Northland College--located in Ashland, Wisconsin along the beautiful shores of Lake Superior. The goal of this workshop is to create a space where people who have a shared interest in community-based sustainability initiatives can collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, build innovations, and take action. Attend this workshop to learn from others' experiences, share your own expertise, discover the power of systems thinking, explore transformative learning techniques, find a team of co-collaborators, and help us build a lasting learning community for sustainability education. For more information and registration see the MRCSE website.
Greening of the Campus Conference VIII will be held September 20-23, 2009 in Indianapolis. This long running campus sustainability conference is now a partnership between Ball State University and AASHE. This year's theme is "Embracing Change" and the deadline for submitting a session proposal is April 24. Learn more about the conference or submit a proposal:
If you have a campus sustainability event you would like to publicize, visit the calendar page on the UMACS website and add your event.
UMACS MAILING LISTS
In addition to the quarterly newsletter, UMACS hosts three mailing lists:
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FURTHER INFORMATION can be found on the UMACS Mailing List Page
To learn more about UMACS, offer suggestions, or get involved, visit our website.