In this excerpt from an upcoming League publication, The Sustainable Community College: Holistic Approaches to Sustainability, one community college district shares its goal to educate and inspire students to make the world more sustainable, and the collaborative effort of faculty in many disciplines who come together under this common goal.

Prior to the governing board’s adoption of the Sustainability Resolution, MCCCD began its journey to infuse sustainability principles and concepts in its curriculum, recognizing that the initial step was to engage faculty in sustainability conversations and to increase their awareness of the need to enhance the curriculum with these concepts. In 2006, to engage faculty and staff interested in this topic, the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI), a unit within the division of Academic and Student Affairs, spearheaded the work surrounding sustainability. The sustainability initiative was designed to be cross-disciplinary, recognizing that students studying in any discipline need to be better informed on the social, environmental, and economic issues facing our world. To lead the initiative, a faculty member was compensated to serve in a leadership role to assist in planning and facilitating the initial faculty development events and activities.