Allie Bussjaeger, a senior at California State University, Long Beach, is featured in this installment of the AASHE Bulletin Sustainability Student Diary series. She was selected as a student keynote speaker at the 2011 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, held July 10-13, 2011. Her speech, published below, calls on institutions to look to their surrounding communities to spark change toward more environmentally friendly campuses. AASHE welcomes questions and invites feedback on each Sustainability Student Diary entry. Submit diary entries of your own for consideration to bulletin@aashe.org.

On July 11, I had the honor of being a student keynote speaker at the 2011 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference hosted at Cal State University Long Beach. Below is the speech I gave to the conference attendees at the opening plenary. I hope that by keeping the speech in the first person, readers will be able to hear my voice as a student who is passionate about making a difference. While this speech was written specifically for the conference, my call to action and opinions on how to achieve progress are applicable to anyone involved in sustainability:

Hello, and welcome to the 2011 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference! I am so excited to see you here today, I hope you enjoy the next few days ahead of us. As a senior at Cal State University, Long Beach, I would like to personally welcome you to the university; we are so proud to be the host campus for this prestigious conference. I am honored to be selected today to welcome you. There are so many incredibly talented people in this room, many of whom I have looked to in the past for guidance, so it is especially humbling to be speaking to you today.

This year’s conference theme, campus and community partnerships, is particularly special to me. As a student activist who has worked towards creating a more environmentally friendly college campus, I have recently learned that in order to create positive change, it is often best to start by looking towards the surrounding community to spark that change. College campuses are born out of the surrounding community; in a way the city creates the soul of the university. Therefore, it seems only natural that the two entities work together to create change that can affect more people than just those who are a part of the university by expanding to the entire city.

In my experience, it seems that college campuses are their own mini-cities. We have our own governance system, our own president, even our own newspaper. As a student, it is so easy to see the college as a completely separate world from the surrounding community. It was not until my third year at CSULB that I noticed how important the relationship between my university and the City of Long Beach is. For example, while planning ECO Week, a week-long environmental awareness event in the fall of 2009, the people who were most supportive were community members, including small business owners, nonprofit organizations such as the Colorado Lagoon, and many city affiliates such as Long Beach Transit.

By bringing more city-based organizations to the ECO Week organizational fair, students were able to network with these somewhat distant groups, thus expanding their view of Long Beach beyond the campus borders. City organizations told me that by being involved in this event, they felt more tied to the campus community, and they felt more welcome at the university. This example shows that when the campus and the surrounding community work together, positive change will happen that benefits both entities. When residents from different parts of the city are given the chance to share ideas and passions, groups such as Green Long Beach are born, which is a group of highly diverse individuals, from retired citizens to high school students to business owners and parents, all of whom have come together with the goal of improving their home.

Once I broadened my view of my community to extend past the university and into the city, I was able to appreciate Long Beach in a much different way. I saw people working towards achieving the same goals that student groups that I was working with at CSULB have also been interested in; essentially creating a more sustainable place to live. I no longer saw the university as being disconnected from the city, but as its own unique part of Long Beach. Through my involvement I have learned that sustainability and “going green” is about learning to appreciate the resources we have without overexhausting them, and giving back to the environment what we inconsiderately take. I do not interpret the idea of “living sustainably” as reducing our quality of life because we are using less; I see it as improving our quality of life by living more consciously, making us more aware of the life we are choosing to live both within the university and in the community.

I would now like to take a step back and tell you a bit about my journey towards being a student activist. During my time at CSULB, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in the sustainability movement both on campus and in the surrounding community. I first became involved when I joined Associated Students during my third year. My experience as the ASI Conservation Commissioner taught me the “ropes” on campus, and gave me the opportunity to work with a variety of student groups, community members, and staff and faculty members to host environmental education events such as book signings, movie screenings and tabling fairs. While planning these events, I was thrilled to witness how eager the community was to become involved in campus life. I saw the beginning stages of this relationship, and made it a personal focus of mine to see this partnership grow.

Currently, I am going on my second year as a Green Campus Program intern. Through this membership, I am able to network with students working towards sustainability on other campuses, share ideas with them, and even collaborate on projects together like the upcoming 2011 Energy Competition between CSU Fullerton and CSU Long Beach (go Beach!). The Green Campus Program internship has led me to many other amazing opportunities as well. For example, during the summer, I have had the pleasure of being an intern for this conference, as well as working as an intern at the City of Long Beach Office of Sustainability. I discovered both of these internships through the Green Campus Program. I have realized that the Green Campus Program has expanded the community I am a part of, as I am now involved in my campus, City of Long Beach and the state of California. By playing a juggling act with these three internships, I can see how they all complement each other, and how they each allow me to contribute to the growth of my university, my community and, on a larger scale, my state. And to think, all of this happened just by making an effort to expand my sense of community and network with people outside of my world.

I love the community that has developed around the theme of sustainability, yet in order to ensure that this relationship remains prolific, one basic element is vital: communication. Just as the local community and the university must communicate and collaborate together to create change that benefits as many people as possible, we must also remember to do that on an individual level as well. Often, it seems that we tend to focus on our own particular area of sustainability. Because we become so passionate about what we do, we tend to neglect other areas of importance. There are 60 different sessions featured at this conference. So even if you specialize in one area, find a session that is a bit different but complementary to your expertise, and just try it out.

When I first became interested in sustainability, I focused solely on education and outreach. Through networking with people, I am now proud to say that I have experience with energy efficiency, waste management and water conservation. Outreach and education is still my main passion; however now that I have more experience in other aspects of sustainability, I am more confident in my chosen area of expertise. Furthermore, I now see more options for my future career, and am looking forward to the interesting opportunities for employment that may arise. This is the most valuable experience I have learned in the past few years as a student, and while it is a simple concept, the implementation of it has gone a long way for me.

The best way to achieve progress is to welcome change and embrace new opportunities. And of course, the best way to start change is by beginning with yourself. By communicating with each other more, we will be united as a workforce and, thus, the sustainability movement will be more innovative and exciting than ever.

Finally, I encourage each of you to make an effort to reach out to people who may not be familiar to you, and introduce yourself. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to have conversations with others about the rapid advances being made to improve environmental awareness and practices on college campuses throughout California. By meeting someone new, you are further connecting yourself with the sustainability movement, and creating new relationships that will inspire new ideas and projects. Let’s make relationship building an important part of our conference experience as we continue to advance sustainability practices on campus and in our communities. This will benefit our surrounding community and will foster trusting and strong alliances. And that is how progress will continue to develop.