Sustaining a Legacy

“We are now calling into question the integrity of the behavioral systems under which we have been living." - Kelly Cain, Director of the UWRF St. Croix Institute for Sustainable Community Development

In our goal to model and champion sustainable community development, the university is one of four institutions in the UW system planning on achieving energy independence by 2012. We are determined to become a national leader in the field of sustainable communities, to demonstrate how it can be done and that it can be done.

In the meantime, the university has embarked on a number of bold initiatives not only to set an example for students, but to address the serious issues of limited resources and seemingly unlimited demand. We are providing more than $30,000 to faculty grant projects that are focused on sustainability issues, such as the project undertaken to convert used vegetable oil into biodiesel – a project prompted by a UW-River Falls student.

The concept of sustainability will be infused into our curriculum campus-wide, from general education to graduate degrees, with the design being to instill a sustainability consciousness in our students.

The university is destined to be a green resource for the campus and surrounding community through the establishment of the St. Croix Institute for Sustainable Community Development. This program will serve as a coordinating force for the University’s sustainability efforts as well as a consulting resource for outside communities as they deal with environmental concerns and economics.

Our goal is to become nothing less than a university that produces more energy than it uses, one that serves as a regional and national model for improving not only our community’s intellectual, social and cultural environment but our natural one as well.

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