SCUP
Learning Resources

Sustainability (Environmental)

Planning for Higher Education Journal

“A Moment of Grace”

 The author examines how four institutions—Northern Arizona University, Emory University, Berea College, and Ithaca College—are incorporating sustainability into their curricula.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

“Menus That Matter” at the Heart of Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Bronson Healthy Living Campus

 Culinary and food professionals can serve as positive change agents in society.
Example Plans

2018 Progress Report to the 2020 Campus Sustainability Plan

 This progress report, like the institution’s sustainability plan, addresses four interrelated focus areas with specific goals and progress.
Conference Presentations

2025 Southern Symposium
Conference Presentations

A Campus Decarbonization Plan to Advance Climate Justice in Our Communities
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Dozen Ways to Practice Ecology on Campus

 A review of Ecodemia: Campus Environmental Stewardship at the Truth of the 21st Century, by Julian Keniry. National Wildlife Federation, 1995.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Major Step for Solar Heating
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Model for Creating a Campus Sustainability Plan

 Institutions of higher education have a special obligation to lead sustainability efforts in order to provide the next generation of young adults with the information and tools needed to take on the challenges of the future.
Conference Recordings

A New Plan for Building Green

 This session will focus on the next step in the evolution of green building and provide a comprehensive sustainability framework for responsible development with a holistic view of the campus and community wellbeing.
Conference Presentations

A Shared Vision

 We will explore how The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) campus master plan will guide significant growth in research, enrollment, and partnership opportunities across multiple campuses and industry over the coming decades.
Example Plans

Access to Excellence

 This academic plan document enumerates the institution’s academic goals and strategies, with special focus on generating or enhancing interdisciplinary connections between the primary academic themes.
Conference Recordings

Achieving a Carbon Neutral Campus Infrastructure

 In order to achieve their ambitious goal of decarbonization by 2035, Swarthmore College carried out the design and planned implementation of new campus energy systems. Learn how to apply their valuable strategies to create a sustainable decarbonized environment for your campus community.
Conference Recordings

Achieving a Sustainable Campus Master Plan through Integrative Design

 This session will explore Princeton University’s campus master plan, which engages an ethos of sustainability through the lens of carbon emissions, landscape design, energy, and water efficiency, from design through construction.
Webinar Recordings

Achieving Big Carbon Reduction Goals With Small Targeted Building Actions

 This session will provide insight on useful data types for existing building stock and a process for existing conditions exploration to address carbon neutral goals and deferred maintenance within time and budget constraints.
Conference Presentations

Achieving Net-zero Emissions With No Capital and No Debt
Conference Recordings

Achieving Net-zero Emissions With No Capital and No Debt

 The reduction of campus carbon emissions requires large investments in infrastructure, which is challenged by the realities of budgetary pressures.
Example Plans

Action Plan for Addressing Systemic Racism and Racial Injustice
Conference Presentations

An Implementable Master Plan for Access, Student Success, and Sustainable Growth

 A state mandate to increase undergraduate enrollment, the aspiration to achieve an Association of American Universities institution profile, and a desire to become carbon neutral—we'll discuss how the University of California (UC) Riverside negotiated these competing challenges while developing its master plan.
Conference Presentations

An Integrated and Equitable Approach to Campus Decarbonization
Partner Content

Anticipating the Climate Crisis on Campus

 Future thinking about creative facilities and infrastructure solutions can be infused into our college and university planning as we confront the climate emergency today.
Conference Recordings

At the Edge: Connecting Campus and Community Through Transformative Reuse

 Every campus has underused edges it can leverage as important connections to community within and beyond its boundaries Transformative reuse provides an opportunity to deploy new programs, restore important historic structures, and foster community in different ways. In this session, we’ll discuss how Wesleyan University and Amherst College invested in an underused, historic campus-edge buildings to develop a nexus for creative community, a student run hub, and a think tank for the humanities.
Conference Recordings

Better Value and Outcomes through Integrative Design

 In this session, we'll share our results and challenges with the Integrative Design Process (IDP) at Princeton, and show how you can use an IDP to realize better value and outcomes for your campus project.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Degrees That Matter

 Greening the Ivory Tower and Degrees That Matter provide an enlightening case study of Tufts University’s sustainability initiatives over the past 17 years.
Partner Content

Building Reuse Is Climate Action

 Read about two renovations that substantially reduced emissions while preserving campus character.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Campus Historic Preservation and Adaptive Reuse

 By integrating historic buildings into your campus planning, their continued reuse can help solve some of the specific challenges facing university planners today.
Conference Presentations

Campus Planning for a Sustainable, All-electric, and Decarbonized Future
Conference Recordings

Campus Planning for a Sustainable, All-electric, and Decarbonized Future

 Buildings contribute over a third of global carbon emissions and are a key focus for decarbonization.
Example Plans

Campus Strategic Sustainability Plan
Webinar Recordings

Campus Sustainability

 At SCUP, we recognize that climate crisis, social justice, and sustainability are some of the biggest challenges facing higher education. And we believe that the practice of integrated planning will assist campuses develop the strong partnerships required to create durable solutions. Join us for a discussion that includes how you can start today.
Example Plans

Campus Sustainability Plan 2020

 The university’s interdisciplinary and interdepartmental sustainability plan.
Webinar Recordings

Climate Justice and Solutions

 Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability is leading coordinated climate education on a global scale. Learn more about how they are working with international colleagues in more than three dozen countries to organize a Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice set for March 30, 2022.
Blog Post

Conversations About Not Attempting the Impossible and Then Achieving It: The ASHEE Conference

 Session after session I heard from many institutions on how they were tying integrated planning to sustainability initiatives. It became more apparent that higher education is acting on and recognizing the importance of developing cross-campus relationships that span (and move beyond) traditional boundaries.
Conference Presentations

Culture-infused Master Plans: Transforming UTTC Through Regenerative Design

 This session will share lessons learned from United Tribes Technical College's (UTTC) master plan that serves as a living document and adapts to changing needs. We'll explore how this culture-infused master plan applied an integrated approach to campus development over five years, addressing five primary needs with a focus on culture, regenerative design, and phasing to support strategic alignment.
Webinar Recordings

Decarb Buy-in: Creating a Culture of Decarbonization

 Decarbonization requires thinking big and working together. Universities are uniquely positioned to model innovative planning approaches to decarbonization, revealing what’s possible at different scales, from individuals to broader organizations.
Conference Recordings

Decarbonizing Your Campus

 This session will discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels for campus heating and transportation and explore new technical, procurement, and phasing strategies to cost-effectively achieve carbon reduction and resiliency goals.
Conference Presentations

Decolonizing a University Museum through Inclusive, Community-based Engagement
Conference Presentations

Designing for Climate Action

 We will explore ways that a design thinking process can build a visible culture of sustainability at the hyper-local campus scale and drive climate action across academics, governance, and operations.
Conference Recordings

Drilling Through the Carbon Barrier

 As a model for other institutions, we'll contextualize and detail two of the largest and deepest ground-source heat pump-chiller systems used to unlock campus-wide carbon neutrality—at Boston University and Ball State University.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Education for Sustainability in Further and Higher Education

 So, what’s happening ‘down under’ in campus sustainability? Providing an international context, our authors use Australian examples to describe planning for campus greening, learning for sustainability (curriculum), institutional learning, and competency-based training initiatives.
Conference Presentations

Energy Master Planning to Reduce Carbon Emissions

 This session will provide you with tools to engage in meaningful campus discussion about implementing a transition away from fossil fuels for heating and cooling and achieving net zero carbon emissions.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Enhancing Campus Sustainability Through SITES and Socially Equitable Design

 The Socially Equitable category represents a unique and often missed opportunity for academic institutions to further their commitment to sustainable practices.
Conference Recordings

Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Collaborative Campus

 This session will deliver a methodology for rethinking campus culture and infrastructure to meet climate change challenges. We will share techniques for shifting traditional campuses to educational institutions that safeguard the planet and its people.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Financial Planning for Central Utility Plant Decarbonization

 Vital stakeholder feedback and consensus from various university departments reveal the proper approach to building issues. Institutions such as the University of North Dakota used technical planning to produce well-informed financial modeling and right-sized financial plans.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

From Lagging to Leading

 An integrated team of cross-discipline collaborators accomplished their objective of creatively reimagining athletic facilities at two institutions for the greater good of each campus and its community. Using sustainable and cost-efficient design opportunities and aligned technologies, they succeeded in countering the outdated stereotype of the athletic building as a lagging energy performer.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

From Living Buildings to Living Campuses

 By living and learning in an environmentally conscious community, students learn to consider the impact of their everyday decisions.
Conference Presentations

Go Fast, Go Slow

 This session outlines a process for leveraging energy modeling early to gauge and clarify zero net energy (ZNE) feasibility and articulating the value proposition of high-performance design leadership. Come learn how to set meaningful energy targets, identify crucial design decisions, and demonstrate to stakeholders that setting ZNE goals is vital during procurement.
Conference Presentations

Going All Electric: Creating A Catalyst for Campus Decarbonization
Webinar Recordings

Great Days in New Ways!

 This webinar will discuss finding ways to keep sustainable packaging for different styles of service, operational hurdles for trash pickup, and how to tell your campus' story to keep sustainability programs alive. Learn how speed, safety, and sustainability can coexist, as well as how food waste and food insecurity have been affected as a result of COVID-19, and what can be done to combat them.
Conference Presentations

Green Gauges

 Come learn how to use the green gauges methodology at your institution and discover the cost per metric ton of avoided carbon over the operation life of a particular strategy.
Conference Presentations

Hampshire College

 In this session, Hampshire College provides a model for how resource-limited campuses can leverage their sustainability assets to support curricular and community transformation.
Conference Presentations

Integrating Sustainability on Campus

 Learn about critical lessons and tools used to integrate sustainability at the University of Houston, allowing teams to manage both long- and short-term decision making.
Conference Presentations

Is Mass Timber Right for Your Campus?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

K-12 Sustainability Education: Its Status and Where Higher Education Should Intervene

 Linking higher education efforts with those at the K–12 level will make the success of sustainability education more likely.
Conference Recordings

Keynote: Healthy People, Healthy Planet

 Learn about the latest evidence behind WELL’s new Health-Safety Rating for Facilities Management and Operations, and how the WELL Building Standard can elevate the role of buildings in the fight against COVID-19.
Conference Recordings

Learning From A Living Building

 The Kendeda Building, a deep green LEED Platinum Living Building, offers many lessons learned and best practices regarding net-positive water, energy, and waste that you can use to fight climate change and COVID-19 on your campus.
Webinar Recordings

LEEDv5

 This session explores how the newest rating system reframes sustainability around climate action, ecological restoration, and quality of life while raising the bar on decarbonization, electrification, resilience, embodied carbon, and transparency.
Conference Recordings

Loyola University

 Although unique in their practice and infrastructure challenges, Loyola University Chicago and Loyola University Medical Center used strategic partnerships, innovative planning solutions, and green infrastructure to create resilient, livable campuses. We’ll demonstrate how you can make tangible improvements and promote resiliency on your campus through green infrastructure.
Webinar Recordings

Managing Your Historic Campus Facilities in Today’s Resource-Constrained Environment

 How are you addressing your campus’ historic facilities with so many competing needs for limited resources? This webinar will outline strategies for the management of historic properties on college and university campuses, with guidelines, standards, and best practices to address a wide range of concerns dealing with historic facilities.
Conference Presentations

Mass Timber: The Future of Carbon Neutral Campuses

 Higher education must lead by example to promote widespread adoption of carbon sequestering mass timber while also delivering an enriched student experience.
Conference Recordings

Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines

 The University of Minnesota follows the state’s sustainable building guidelines, specifically Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), and uses post-occupancy evaluations (POE) to measure user satisfaction with campus buildings. In this session, we’ll demonstrate how to implement sustainability initiatives, which have a significant impact on campus building performance and by extension, user performance and wellbeing.
Webinar Recordings

Passive House Design and Residence Halls

 The session will discuss the basics of Passive House (PH) design, how it can both save energy and improve the quality of the interior environment. The presenters will illustrate how Passive House design has been incorporated from both a design and administrative standpoint at the new residence hall at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Conference Presentations

Piloting Health and Wellbeing Metrics in University Capital Projects
Conference Recordings

Piloting, Scaling, and Committing to Healthier Building Materials

 This session will explore the topic of organizational change related to healthier materials and how institutions can serve as change agents.
Conference Presentations

Planning and Implementing the Sustainable Campus of the Future

 Integrated planning and design that optimizes development capacity and leverages campus growth can help institutions achieve ambitious resilience goals for net-zero energy and resource conservation for a healthier, more sustainable environment. This session will discuss Princeton University’s ongoing efforts to support an ambitious capital plan, address deferred maintenance, advance climate solutions, and maximize use of campus lands. The path to a sustainable campus future will require institutions to go beyond business-as-usual planning to rethink campus infrastructure—particularly energy, stormwater, and landscapes—and activate high-performance sites and buildings.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning for ‘Passivhaus’

 King’s College, Cambridge required new postgraduate housing to support its growth plans.
Conference Presentations

Planning Pathways to Carbon Reduction
Conference Recordings

Planning, Designing, and Delivering a Fully-electric Dormitory in Toronto

 Buildings are a major source of carbon emissions.
Conference Presentations

Promoting Decarbonization and Wellbeing through a Residence Hall Renovation
Webinar Recordings

Public Higher Education in Today’s Climate Crisis

 With the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events continuing to increase across the country, the need for resilience planning is more critical than ever before.
Report

Public Higher Education in Today’s Climate Crisis

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2022–2023 program. This report uses the activities of California State University climate action and adaptation planning to discuss the impacts of extreme weather on university campuses and establish a primer for peer institutions to use as the basis for exploring adoptable model practices.
Conference Presentations

Putting the Green in Infrastructure
Example Plans

RELLIS Campus Master Plan

 Detailed campus master plan documentation for the institution’s innovation campus.
Conference Presentations

Renovating a Library So It Exceeds Sustainability Policies

 The Neilson Library renovation went above and beyond Smith College’s campus sustainability policy by implementing a sustainability charter, prioritizing health and wellness, and advocating for positive change.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Renovation/Expansion of Administration Building Offers Successful Paradigm for Integrated Planning and Collaborative Design

 Sustainability fits well with any renovation project as “adaptive reuse” considerations are inherent in the process.
Conference Presentations

Revitalizing Mid-20th-century Campus Buildings for 21st-century Science
Conference Recordings

Right-size the Solution to Decarbonizing Your Campus

 Decarbonization is a looming challenge for every campus and a monumental effort that requires immediate, practical actions to preserve environmental health.
Conference Presentations

Right-size the Solution to Decarbonizing Your Campus
Conference Presentations

Risk Management and Campus Resilience

 With climate change bringing dramatic demographic, economic, and weather changes, universities and colleges must be prepared for risks to the campus's buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure that could disrupt operations. This session explores the intertwined concepts of risk management and resilience planning.
Conference Presentations

Rooted Resilience: CSUMB Expands Student Offerings Through Regional Connections
Conference Recordings

Setting Building Energy Standards

 Individual cities, states, and utility incentive programs are going beyond carbon neutral standards to embrace energy consumption limits—this session will present these new strategies as models and options for campus building energy standards.
Example Plans

Strategic Priorities 2014–2019

 A high-level document enumerating the institution’s five strategic goals and strategies for achieving each goal.
Example Plans

Sustainability Action Plan 2010–2020

 The college’s first broad sustainability strategy, with a special focus on food and dining services.
Conference Recordings

Sustainability and Resiliency

 This session will discuss Rider University's energy master plan, which aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 through integrating facility management and future campus development as well as incorporating energy conservation and generation options.
Example Plans

Sustainability Website
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Tell Us What You Think

 More than 1,600 students and alumnae provided input through online mapping tools and in-person workshops. Staff and faculty were interviewed in person and via phone. And Instagram was used to reach 6,400 members of the campus community.
Example Plans

Ten for One

 The research university’s 2023 strategic plan.
Conference Presentations

The Campus Master Plan as a Catalyst for Institutional Change

 We will share how the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign leveraged the planning process to spur institutional change in financial, procurement, and planning matters.
Conference Presentations

The Design and Planning Relevance Revolution

 Across field after field, research demonstrates the impact of the built environment on climate change and the essential role retooling the built environment must play in addressing it. This keynote will articulate the compelling 21st century challenges and opportunities for the design and planning fields in higher education.
Conference Presentations

The Living Community Challenge, Master Planning, and a Bayfront Research Campus

 We will demonstrate how we used an LCC-focused master planning process for a bayfront site to integrate facilities conditions, programming, site analyses, impacts of climate change and sea level rise, and net-positive energy and water.
Webinar Recordings

Transforming CSU Monterey Bay With the Living Community Challenge

 California State University-Monterey Bay (CSU-MB) is the first university campus to register for the Living Community Challenge, becoming a model for how university campus design and planning can have a profound impact beyond the campus. We will discuss how our 2018 Architecture at Zero award-winning wellness and recreation design solution is transforming CSU-MB into a healthy, sustainable, net-positive environment.
Conference Recordings

Universities on Fire

 This session explores the impact of climate change on higher education and how academia may respond.
Partner Content

Your Campus Historic Buildings

 This article will help your team create a checklist to determine decision-making priorities for maintaining your historic buildings.
Conference Recordings

Zero-energy Buildings on a Shoe-string Budget

 Come learn how you can reduce operating costs and bring a zero-energy building to your campus, resulting in a lower carbon footprint and greater health and wellbeing for students.