The following article is a guest blog post from Viniece Jennings, who is currently a graduate student in environmental science at Florida A &M University. Viniece visited Switzerland to participate in a sustainability-focused immersive program with other students from around the world. Her reflections and thoughts from the program are below. More information related to the YES program is available on the course website and through an informational video here.

Eudora Welty once stated, “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.” I became personally acquainted with the meaning of this quote during my participation in the Youth Encounter to Sustainability (YES) program in Braunwald, Switzerland where graduate students from around the world gathered for three weeks to study sustainability. As the student representative from the United States I am excited to share my reflections of this experience in this entry.

During a module on Energy and Materials, I explored governance strategies using the simulation game EcoPolicy where participants balance decision making for environmental, public health, and socioeconomic concerns of their constituents. This is an interactive tool that can be used across different sustainability curricula. One aspect that this module highlighted is the consumer culture in the United States along with the numerous implications on our domestic expectations and global impact. Status driven societies find it difficult to discern between being wealthy and having a fulfilling life. These represent critical issues the higher education community can help with in the grooming of our citizenship.

Another project included a sustainability case study where several of my classmates discussed the journey of Interface Global toward sustainability. While the company admits their challenges in pursuing sustainability, it articulates how the company’s vision transformed the mission and culture within the company. The company is now considered an example of reusing materials while maintaining a competitive edge in the carpet industry.

Societies ultimately sustain what they choose to value. One of the challenges of campus sustainability initiatives is establishing and promoting the value of a project in the midst of other concerns. Achieving sustainability is often described as a journey since we have to constantly gauge and recalibrate what it means to be sustainable. During a group project I came across a document entitled Communicating Sustainability: How to produce effective public campaigns. While there are other documents that express similar ideas from a grassroots perspective, this document provides some useful suggestions that can be applied in a variety of campus settings. For example, this type of information could be useful for co-curricular activities to engage different audiences of students.

As we consider the human dimensions of sustainability in higher education, it is pivotal to keep in mind how we are developing the sense of community on our campuses. Questions we need to ask ourselves include: Are our initiatives connecting with personal experiences? Are they promoting a place of belonging for the campus community? Are they developing citizens with an ethic of sustainability? Even though these considerations are arguably subjective and philosophical, they are a vital part of community building.