USF’s One Earth Initiative is seeking community members to help implement its multi-dimensional action plan, a plan designed to realize the interdisciplinary environmental and justice goals of Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for our common home, Laudato Si’. (Read the action plan synopsis.) In our effort to integrate sustainability and justice across all aspects of the university, the action plan has identified four priority goals:
Priority 1: Ecological Spirituality and Culture
Goal: Create and enhance ecological spirituality, foster a culture that values nature and cares for those most vulnerable to environmental harm, and enhance our collective capacity to constructively cope with eco-anxiety.
Priority 2: Education and Student Experience
Goal: Ensure that students obtain an understanding of integral ecology: of the interconnected scientific, political, legal, economic, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions to our understanding of the environment and the profound threats we face.
Priority 3: Facilities and Infrastructure
Goal: Make USF an environmental showcase by eliminating direct carbon emissions, reducing USF’s on- and off-campus environmental impacts, and enhancing the educational and research opportunities offered by our physical campuses.
Priority 4: Institutional Mechanisms for Supporting Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Goal: Coordinate, support, and uplift USF’s environmental sustainability and justice initiatives.
We are establishing working groups to help achieve each goal. Led by cabinet-level executive sponsors and co-chairs drawn from faculty and administration, we are seeking members from all areas of the university community.
Faculty and staff: Complete this form to indicate your interest »
Students: Application information is available here »
Co-chairs will select working group members in the coming weeks.
If you would like further information, feel free to contact the initiative’s steering co-chairs, Erin Brigham (director, Lane Center) or Alice Kaswan (professor, School of Law).