The Chancellor's Vision Statement for Sustainability Implementation
Written by:
Justin Schwartz, Chancellor
Andrew Mayock, Vice Chancellor for Sustainability
Introduction
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) is committed to addressing the urgent sustainability challenges of our time. As a current higher education sustainability leader, we are building on a strong foundation to meet this critical moment by defining new standards of excellence. In doing so, our work ripples out into the world, inspiring and empowering others to act. To fully achieve this vision, we share the following vision for expanding and integrating sustainability across education, research, operations, and community engagement in order to create tangible impact for our campus and state, as well far beyond our borders. To truly Be Boulder in sustainability.
Goal 1: Equip our students with the knowledge and skills to solve humanity’s most pressing sustainability challenges
We are responding to our students’ demand for the education and preparation to solve these urgent sustainability challenges. Today’s students will write the next chapter; our responsibility is to ensure they have the knowledge, skills, and courage to author it boldly, for all.
Our approach spans all higher education levels: undergraduate, graduate, professional, postdoctoral and continuing education. It includes strong educational offerings throughout traditional degrees that significantly contribute to sustainability, such as engineering and biology, and offering more tailored sustainability-focused degrees and non-degree credentials. Our approach also focuses on expanding interdisciplinary engagement to address the complexity and interdependence of societal systems. For example, new master’s degrees in sustainable business and in sustainable engineering share many core classes in science, business and engineering before branching off into degree-specific classes. Through the new SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, we are further integrating and expanding sustainability into the curriculum and enhancing experiential learning opportunities.
Sustainability at CU Boulder is not a separate discipline—it is a core principle woven into the common curriculum and manifested in the many pathways available to our undergraduate students. Regardless of degree, CU Boulder students are graduating with a foundational understanding of the role they play in creating a sustainable world.
Looking ahead, we will further expand sustainability educational pathways to equip students to address emergent sustainability issues. We will increase multi-disciplinary courses and degrees to address the multi-discplinary challenges and opportunities.
Goal 2: Transform our cutting-edge sustainability research into action
As one of the world’s top research universities, CU Boulder faculty, staff, students and alumni are engaging in investigations and discoveries with global impact. We amplify our wide-reaching research portfolio by turning knowledge into action, fostering integration, and seeding uncommon collaborations across disparate research efforts to expand our global impact.
For example, we assist communities in making their homes and businesses more resilient in the face of increased wildfires, floods and storms. We advance technologies that help landowners and policymakers improve water management in the face of severe, ongoing drought, from the American West to West Africa and beyond. From Antarctica to the Arctic, our researchers work to understand, track and share the dynamics of earth systems, including people’s relationship with the planet. Through all of this work, CU Boulder scientists are leaders in understanding the past, present, and future of our planet, which helps us act now strategically and effectively.
Our commitment is further galvanized through the Sustainability Research Initiative (SRI). SRI fosters research across a broad spectrum of disciplines, elevating the sustainability expertise and efforts of CU Boulder’s diverse academic departments, research centers, and institutes. In doing so, SRI increases CU Boulder’s impact by driving deeper interdisciplinary research and innovation in areas, including earth sciences, social sciences, engineering, energy, arts, humanities, environmental sciences, environmental justice, ethics, law, education, business and policy.
Going forward, we will leverage SRI, along with our exceptionally talented research community, to unlock new frontiers of sustainability innovation and forge novel collaborations across disciplines. We will expand corporate and philanthropic partnerships, and we will prioritize use-inspired research, accelerating the translation of laboratory discoveries into tangible commercial and community outcomes, ensuring our solutions are scalable and benefit society at large.
Goal 3: Lead by example in our stewardship of sustainable campus operations and the campus as a living laboratory
Embedding sustainability into the fabric of campus operations enables CU Boulder to lead, scale and accelerate impact. We anchor our climate mitigation and adaptation efforts through transparent, measurable targets, while focusing on long-term sustainable excellence. Across energy, transportation, water, waste and nature-based solutions, our campus functions as a testbed for sustainable practices and scalable model for accelerating global solutions by sharing our experiences and learnings.
Through our campus Climate Action Plan, we are reducing carbon emissions across our footprint, including buildings, transportation and energy use to cut emissions in half by 2030 and achieve a net zero campus by 2050. These actions to date include: 1) adding multiple megawatts of clean energy generation on and off-campus; 2) electrifying half the campus bus fleet; and 3) retrofitting 18 buildings for energy efficiency, installing LED lighting, improving building controls, and piloting innovative window retrofit technology. Through circular economy practices, we are eliminating single-use plastics, reducing water use, and mitigating environmental impacts.
We give unique meaning to “living lab” through our 9500 foot high Mountain Research Station, which offers cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and educational opportunities for scientists, students, and the general public, and our Spruce Gulch Wildlife and Research Reserve, a 476-acre natural area in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains which provides a unique site for ecological and hydrological research. Through all these efforts, we seek to model and expand operations-focused sustainability frontiers.
As we move ahead, we seek to accelerate our efforts by integrating the latest clean technology into campus operations. We will increase our campus resiliency to address today and tomorrow’s environmental impacts. We will strengthen our role as environmental stewards, including efforts such as reducing food waste while lowering food insecurity.
Goal 4: Partner with communities locally and globally, including making Colorado “the most sustainable state in the U.S.”
We are partnering on sustainability solutions at all levels of community – local, state, national, tribal and global. Through these partnerships, we provide students with tangible experience in real-world settings and ensure communities benefit directly from CU Boulder expertise. By connecting our expertise and leadership with the needs of community partners, we launch new technologies, shape policies, and create models that are utilized on a global scale.
Through programs like Boulder Climate Ventures and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem, we empower faculty and students to commercialize their ideas, seamlessly transitioning discoveries from laboratories to communities. At the Better Planet Lab, we are delivering environmental and social benefits through agricultural practices for farmers and consumers. This sustainability action improves public health and prosperity by providing cleaner air, enhancing energy security, supporting access to healthier foods, promoting cleaner transportation, and creating more sustainable communities. In short, we move research from concept to real-world community application—advancing clean energy, climate resilience strategies, environmental justice and other innovations for transformative impact.
As we advance in these efforts, we will expand and deepen our partnership with communities across Colorado and beyond, serving as a national model for how a higher education institution can translate resources and knowledge into action and systematic progress.
Conclusion
Our commitment is clear: CU Boulder is rising to meet the urgency of this moment by actively shaping a more sustainable future that supports generations to come.