Applications are now available for AASHE's 2012 Sustainability Awards. AASHE will honor faculty, campuses and students in advancing sustainability research and leadership during the AASHE 2012 Conference in Los Angeles. The deadline to apply is July 2nd, 2012. Questions? Email awards@aashe.org

2012 award categories:

• Campus Sustainability Case Study Awards (4 awards)
• Faculty Sustainability Leadership Award (1 award)
• Student Sustainability Leadership Award (1 award)
• Student Research on Campus Sustainability Awards (2 awards)

In addition, AASHE and the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council have partnered to offer the Innovation in Green Building Award for the second year in a row. The deadline to apply for this award is July 27th.

Building on the Vision for STARS 2.0 that the STARS Steering Committee distributed last month, AASHE would now like to encourage those with ideas for improving STARS to send them to stars@aashe.org.

At AASHE 2011 last October, Julie Newman (Sustainability Director, Yale University) and Shana Weber (Sustainability Manager, Princeton University) hosted a workshop on “Framing a research agenda for campus sustainability”. For those not able to attend, an attendee did capture a partial transcription of the session here.

The importance of thinking further about the topics raised in that workshop came up recently as I was reading a study from Jasleen Kaur, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory who is also a doctoral student at Indiana University’s School of Informatics. Her research paper, “Evolution and structure of sustainability science” examines the rapidly growing body of research in sustainability science. Her research has shown that the number of authors writing about sustainability has doubled every 8.3 years between 1974 and 2010.

This installment of the AASHE Bulletin Sustainability Student Diary series features Meg Little, member of the award-winning permaculture team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For its pioneering efforts in campus permaculture, the Permaculture Committee was named Student Group of 2011 by the Real Food Challenge. Read on to learn about the committee's inception, inspirations and inner workings. We hope to see questions and feedback in the comments area! Submit diary entries of your own for consideration to bulletin@aashe.org.