{"id":8753,"date":"2014-02-11T16:51:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T00:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/?p=8753"},"modified":"2014-04-08T14:56:43","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T21:56:43","slug":"wa-higher-ed-sustainability-conference-catalyst-for-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/2014\/02\/11\/wa-higher-ed-sustainability-conference-catalyst-for-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"WA Higher Ed Sustainability Conference: Catalyst For Collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week a group of BC Students, sponsored through the SESF<\/a>, Faculty and Staff attended the first ever Washington Higher Education Sustainability Conference (<\/a>WAHESC<\/a>) at Western Washington University.<\/p>\n

The conference highlighted “ways to advance campus sustainability through the sharing of best practices and the development of regional collaborative networks” from a variety of PNW institutions and\u00a0included lively discussions, workshops, break out sessions as well as hosting key speakers such as Jennifer Allen from Portland State University and Gifford Pinchot from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These two days not only brought sustainability in higher education into view for participants but became a catalyst for helping acknowledge the work and collaboration already taking place\u00a0and more importantly,\u00a0future opportunities for more.\u00a0 Bellevue College helped bring 27 participants to WAHESC, only second in attendance\u00a0behind the University of Washington, and our larger attendance was not only felt\u00a0in number of attendees but also\u00a0in the amount of presenters.<\/p>\n

\"WAHESC<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Sustainability Director, Deric Gruen<\/a>,\u00a0co-organized a\u00a0community college solutions summit.\u00a0 <\/em>The Sustainability Program Manager, Patrick Green<\/a>, participated in Sustainability Coalitions: Coming Together to Advance NW Campuses<\/em>.\u00a0 The Sustainability Communications Coordinator, Beautiful Existence<\/a>, led a workshop in Social Media in Sustainability\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0ASG Environmental and Social Responsibility Representative, Alex Clark<\/a>, spoke\u00a0on The Ins and Outs of Green Fund Programs.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/a><\/p>\n

While there were many topics being discussed\u00a0at the conference from zero waste to teaching sustainability\u00a0or climate change; the topics on everybody’s minds were the same\u00a0topics that Bellevue College\u00a0has demonstrated\u00a0successful\u00a0best practices and\u00a0community partnerships in: Transportation, Energy and GHG (Green House Gas) Emissions.<\/p>\n

\"Bellevue<\/a><\/p>\n

Sustainability at Bellevue College has brought\u00a0established collaborations in\u00a0transportation advocating for Metro Funding<\/a>, and energy and renewables with the Presidents letter initiative for a Coal Free PSE<\/a>, and with GHG emissions\u00a0through President Dave Rule’s letter on the Climate Legislative Working Group<\/a>;\u00a0as well as\u00a0best practices such as creating a Community and Technical College (CTC)\u00a0email listserve for sustainability.<\/p>\n

Our Bellevue College faculty, staff, and students\u00a0added a significant presence to the WAHESC conference, and will be meeting to reflect on\u00a0ideas and possibilities for our campus\u00a0in the future.\u00a0 And while we learned that\u00a0we have\u00a0a strong start on sustainable efforts within our community, we also left WAHESC\u00a0with the\u00a0challenge and possibility\u00a0to create an even greater future; a\u00a0future\u00a0built with collaboration, a future built upon the same\u00a0foundation that we all\u00a0have grown from and one that each of us lives, breathes, works and studies in everyday…\u00a0the precious environment called Bellevue College.<\/p>\n

\"Bellevue<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week The Office of Sustainability and students sponsored through the SESF fund attended the WAHESC conference at Western Washington University which highlighted “ways to advance campus sustainability through the sharing of best practices and the development of regional collaborative networks” from a variety of PNW institutions… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":8761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,216,235,334,248,253],"class_list":["post-8753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-bellevue-college","tag-sustainability-at-bellevue-college","tag-wahesc","tag-wahesc-14","tag-western-washington-university","tag-wwu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9297,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8753\/revisions\/9297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/sustainability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}