UWRF senior Amber Rappl explains how she and other students who work in the campus Sustainability Office create plastic bricks as part of recycling efforts. UWRF photo.
 

UW-River Falls continues to build on sustainability efforts

Earth-friendly practices are being added to student learning plans

Aug. 4, 2023 - From partnering with others to start Earth Fest, an event that focuses on an environmentally friendly approach, to collecting and donating items that students get rid of at the end of the academic year to nonprofits, the Sustainability Office at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls is making it cool to do more with less impact on the earth. 

The Sustainability Office has started numerous other initiatives in recent years, such as a bee hotel to promote pollinators and the implementation of No Mow May. The organization has been recognized with numerous awards and validations, most recently its certification in June as a national Fair Trade School, a recognition of the university’s commitment to buying products from companies that empower farmers and workers while protecting the environment.  

As concerns about the earth’s climate garner headlines around the world, the Sustainability Office and UWRF faculty are working to make sustainability a larger part of campus life. In May they held one of an ongoing series of workshops designed to infuse sustainability concepts into university curriculum.

Mark Klapatch-Mathias, UWRF sustainability coordinator, supports faculty by helping find ways to include sustainability in courses across disciplines. Educating students on sustainability challenges from a variety of viewpoints will help ensure that actions can become more mainstream.

“Making sustainability a larger part of what is taught in the classroom is the next step toward our campus playing a greater role in practicing sustainable activities and becoming a greater voice in that arena,” Klapatch-Mathias said. “This is one way we can really get more people to think about sustainability in a bigger picture way.”

That approach was evident at a meeting earlier this summer of UWRF faculty and staff discussing how sustainability can be implemented in different ways into student learning. People representing different areas of study worked to find ways to include sustainable methods into lesson plans, a practice in place since 2012.

“In this meeting, you have people from social work, music education, agricultural economics, social work, sustainability and other areas of study,” said Shawyn Domyancich-Lee, assistant professor of social work and chair of UWRF’s Sustainable Justice Program who will become a UWRF Sustainability Fellow. “You might ask ‘How does sustainability fit into all of these things?’ It fits into all of them.”

Grace Coggio, communication studies program director, who has served as a Sustainability Fellow at UWRF, said integrating sustainability into coursework at UWRF will increase awareness of practices that need to become more commonplace. 

“Sustainability is no longer a luxury,” Coggio said. “It is having a growing impact on all of our lives, and we need to make addressing it as much a part of our everyday lives as we can.”

UWRF has a strong history related to sustainability. The topic received lots of attention in the early 2000s and in 2007, a sustainability work group was formed on campus in conjunction with the St. Croix Institute for Sustainable Development. 

In following years, for a variety of reasons, including budget cuts, the sustainability focus dropped off, Coggio and others said. Efforts to revive that movement gained steam in recent years as climate change has a growing impact and received a shot in the arm when Maria Gallo was hired as UWRF chancellor in 2021. 

Klapatch-Mathias remembers Gallo standing out from other applicants for the chancellor position because of her strong advocacy for sustainability. Coggio and Domyancich-Lee said sustainability gained more attention after Gallo made it part of the university’s strategic plan. The chancellor has continued to speak about the importance of sustainability. 

“UWRF is a center of knowledge and innovation and as such, educating our students on sustainability helps our students develop skills to meet the societal and environmental challenges we face,” Gallo said. “Additionally, as a key partner in our community, engaging in sustainable practices highlights us as a leader and resource to foster positive change that benefits both the university and the city of River Falls.”

Klapatch-Mathias, Coggio and others said sustainability has been a growing focus on campus in recent years, and they feel that mirrors a trend nationally and around the world, especially as climate change becomes increasingly apparent. The growing interest among students to adopt sustainable practices is a driving force on campus, said Tovah Flygare, administrative specialist in the Sustainability Office and adjunct faculty member teaching sustainability concepts in multiple disciplines. 

“It is really invigorating to see the energy behind this,” Flygare said. “A lot of us faculty are really inspired by the interest in this topic by our students.”

Klapatch-Mathias agrees that students are advocating for increasing sustainability actions. Making such practices are part of everyday life on campus is one way to attract students, he said. 

“If colleges and universities really want to have that competitive advantage and attract students, they need to focus on sustainability,” he said. “Students tell us time and time again that they want it.”

Senior Amber Rappl echoed that idea. Rappl, a biotechnology major from Mount Calvary who works in the Sustainability Office, strongly supports implementing sustainability into student learning and said having sustainability listed as one of the UWRF’s core values was “a huge win” that has furthered dialogue about the topic. 

“I have so much hope for the new generation related to sustainability,” Rappl said. “I think they are going to drive a lot of what happens with sustainability. It’s our university’s role to help people channel that energy in a productive way, and I am seeing more and more of that.”