AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER by Jordan Reck B.A.

University of Northern Colorado, 2006

A thesis submitted to the University of Colorado Denver in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Anthropology 2011

 2011 by Jordan Andrea Reck All Rights Reserved.

This thesis for the Master of Arts degree by Jordan Andrea Reck has been approved by

________________________________________________ Steve Koester

_________________________________________________ Marty Otanez

_________________________________________________ Jean Scandlyn

_______________________________ Date

Reck, Jordan Andrea (M.A., Anthropology) Locating Sustainability at the University of Colorado Denver, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Thesis directed by professor Stephen Koester

ABSTRACT With the world experiencing some of the worst environmental disasters in history the increased call to sustainable action has created an abundant scientific record regarding the ways individuals variably define and understand sustainability. The lack of consensus surrounding ideological approaches to concepts in sustainability has been characterized as inconsistent across disciplines, leading to incomplete understandings in interdisciplinary curricula and applied projects. The results emerging from the literature are: a fractured dissemination of information and increased competition and decreased trust between members of interdisciplinary groups. Using an interpretive and improvisational set of theoretical frameworks the study recovers five interdisciplinary faculty members narratives regarding disciplinary, ideological and experiential understandings of sustainability. An analysis of semi-structured interviews yields a series of ideologies and themes identified as important to enacting and understanding sustainability. Participants narratives are divided under the five Es of sustainability: 1) Economics, 2) Equity, 3) Environment, 4) Education, and 5) Evaluation. The study also suggests the inclusion of a sixth E, Ethos, in an effort to locate the subjective nature of defining and enacting sustainable initiatives and to normalize the recognition of bias as a tool to improve relationships and perceptions of sustainability. This thesis uses participant narratives to make suggestions for the progress of

interdisciplinary education programs aimed as sustainability. It discusses the need to develop reflexive tools to create an environment for faculty to relate to one anothers stories despite disciplinary rifts, to increase collaboration and trust, while making science relatable and trustworthy to communities outside of academia. This thesis is informed by an extensive body of research; however, its focus of thesis is on the untapped resource of personal experience and narrative to contribute to future projects aimed at improving the approach to a sustainable future.

This abstract accurately represents the content of the candidates thesis. I recommend its publication. Signed ______________________________ Stephen Koester

DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to my parents for their unmatched support, the tremendous example they have set, and for their insistence that I be an informed, conscious and compassionate global citizen. I dedicate this to my wife Robyn, for her support through midnight tantrums, rambling logic, and weeks lost to the computer. I also dedicate this to my extended family (Reck, Clark, McCoy, Hall, Phelps and Smith clans) and friends who have encouraged me to never stop talking about the issues that matter, and who have listened to my rants and raves even when they didnt want to. Lastly, I dedicate this to all those whom care enough about the world they live in, those who fight to make it a better place, and to those who have not yet arrived at that conclusion, may we change your hearts and minds.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The great players always give homage to their predecessors by recalling certain things they did. They give it in appreciation and in understanding of the validity of their predecessors. Being able to quote from songs and solos is always a part of a mature artist because he is aware of the contribution of others and its impact, how valid it is. Something this valid is timeless -Arthur Rhames

I would like to thank my advisor Stephen Koester for his contribution and support to my thesis. I extend my thanks to Jean Scandlyn for her participation and insight. I would like to thank Marty Otaez for his help and patience on this and many other projects. My thanks to all faculty members at UCDs Anthropology Department for the opportunities they individually provided. My thanks to the participants of this study, who are co-authors to this project. A special thanks to Connie Turner for her support through, knowledge of and ability to hold the hands of her graduate students during trying processes. Id like to thank my cohort for endless support, editing, and Jung moments. My thanks to Alison Toney my insignificant other for her borrowed expertise and time. Lastly, Tara Smith, Jenifer Martin-Becker, Robyn Phelps, Gayle Reck, the UCD Writing Center staff and the countless others who have edited this document.

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION1 2. THEORY..............5 Improvisation.....5 Political Ecology................................8 Chaos Theory.11 Sensemaking..13 3.METHODS.14 Reflexivity.................15 Data Collection......16 Analysis.....20 Methodological Barriers................21 4. LITERATURE REVIEW.................................23 Approaches to Sustainability.24 Disciplines and Sustainability...28 Debates About Sustainability35

Environmental Mega Conferences, Implications for Sustainable Actions38 Green Washing, Examples of Sustainabilitys Manipulation.....41 The Role of Environmental Education...43 Barriers...47 Overcoming Barriers..49 5. FINDINGS....52 Participant Introductions....56 What Does Sustainability Mean to You?...........................................59 Economics..67 Equity.74 Environment...85 Education and Evaluation..94 Interdisciplinary Education....97 Support of the University.......101 Evaluation..............104 Ethos..............115 6. CONCLUSION131 APPENDIX A........145

B.146 C.147 D.............148 E.152 F.154 G156 H158 I..160 J..162 BIBLIOGRAPHY..164

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Modern education pays attention to the development of the brain and the intellect, but this is not enough. We need also to be able to develop warm-heartedness in our educational systems. This we need from kindergarten all the way through university. -14th Dalai Lama

In 2008 I entered the anthropology Master's program planning to study the impacts of water use along the Colorado River. I had hoped to examine the environmental effects of damming and diversion, and the political ecology of allocation disputes between populations accessing its flow from the source in Colorado to the mouth in Baja, Mexico. As I began my generalized studies, I continuously encountered three issues. 1) The complex methodological debates about how to act sustainably 2) the near absence of equality/equity beyond basic discussions in sustainability research, and 3) the lack of unified and congruent understanding of sustainability and sustainable development beyond the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future which states: Sustainable development should meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (United Nations 1987). I felt it was unrealistic to construct an applied project dealing with the use of water when the foundation of the issue, sustainable development, was unclear. Despite the shortcomings in sustainability, literature shows that the term has become increasingly popular in social discourse and practice. The heightened awareness has come through media coverage of environmental mega conferences and the emphasis on a capitalist green economy. Attention is also given to the necessity of sustainable action as the world faces more environmental disasters and social crises. To attempt to mitigate these recurrent problems sustainability has been included in the goals and policies of businesses, governments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and universities.

However, no common understanding exists; sustainability and sustainable development remain buzzwords that are easily manipulated by individuals and corporations engaged in green-washing and unsustainable practices. The consideration of the project was turned towards understanding the diversity of ideologies used to approach sustainability and sustainable development, and whether that diversity is impeding or assisting interdisciplinary education. The intention in doing so was to contribute to the reinforcement of sustainability against its misuse by increasing the opportunities for and the quality of conversations about its application. Universities seemed to be appropriate institutions to enact a study of this nature due to the presence of various disciplines already involved in debates about sustainability. From the outset of defining sustainability, academics have created a disciplinary tower of Babel when it came to enacting sustainability (Brown et al. 1987; Shields, Solar, & Martin 2002). Specific frameworks, definitions, approaches and sets of indicators have emerged as standing orthodoxies, most notably the required balance of the three Es: economy, environment, and equity. Yet, the representation of sustainability and sustainable development in research and applied projects differs significantly from the structure of these orthodoxies, resulting in varied emphases on the three indicators. As one professor of engineering well versed in applied projects, stated, "there is no sweet spot, in which all three elements come together perfectly (Ramaswami, A. Personal Interview January 20, 2011) Despite the subjective nature of enacting sustainability there seems to be minimal recognition as to how individuals have come to define sustainability in a particular way. The emphasized use of specific frameworks is arrived at by some set of choices based on experience. The purpose of this study is to find out how knowledge producers at the University of Colorado at Denver within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) approach the topic of sustainability personally and professionally. The research is meant to

do more than find variable definitions of sustainability; it is meant to invoke real world effects, stir discussion, focus curriculum, grab attention for further support and bridge actors in order to share knowledge so that sustainability can move forward at UCD's local level (Esterberg 2002). Through the analysis of interviews, I argue that participant ideologies (how they teach and approach sustainability theoretically) are determined by personal experiences. I assert that the concept of ethos should be included with evaluation, education, and the three Es as a standard domain for sustainability and should be used as a means to transmit personal information that can be used to build relationships and overcome barriers. The paper addresses reflection and recognition of disciplinary and personal understandings as a path to provide a basic ideological profile about sustainability. My hope is that a profile will create more focused conversations as participants work to enact educational programs. The study reveals the narratives of five faculty members actively involved in sustainability on campus through an interdisciplinary group called the sustainability signature area. The participants represent anthropology, biology, engineering, geography and public policy. Participant narratives are discussed in relation to the common thematic debates found in the literature including the ecological roots and politicized approaches of sustainability. The narratives highlight the identification of themes in academic definitions as well as personal narratives to explain attachments to particular ideologies. With this the question moves from What does sustainability mean? to What does sustainability mean to you? This switch in approach embraces the complexity of the topic while illuminating paths of negotiation for actors to develop interdisciplinary frameworks when teaching environmental education. The location of the meaning of sustainability then becomes the local level where it is personified by the professional, cultural, and even spiritual interests of those enacting it. An important feature of this research is that it includes personal reflection

of its author and its participants. This is the key to ensuring that that the localized ideologies and schools of thought are understood and translated across disciplines as means to strengthen relationships and tool sets to complete our goals.

CHAPTER 2 THEORY Improvisation The theoretical path that has led to the research question in this thesis is complex and without a doubt contradictory. However, the study of sustainability is in and of itself complex, and no one approach or definition exists as the definitive way to understand it. Because of this complexity, research dealing with sustainability should not be limited to one theoretical path of understanding. The complexity of sustainability ensures that theory cannot be cerebral and categorized, separate and individualized. It requires that theory be fluid and act as parts to the whole. Otherwise, we become living representations of the Indian anecdote of the six blind men and the elephant (Riordan 1986). Blind researchers, each feeling only one piece of the object we study, ignoring variety and defining the whole by the only part we grasp. As for my approach to sustainability I identify with the ecocentric approach. I believe that technology, while assistive, is not the answer to our problems. Additionally I believe that the reliance on technology furthers theoretical constructs and unsustainable practices like natural capitalism and greenwashing. The tools available under natural capitalism are often used to influence policy inconsistently (Smith 2011). Natural capitalism has been used in policy since the 90s yet carbon emissions are up times four (Schweickart 2010). If policy were truly affected by this framework, we would see the increase in resource use and the reduction in waste that Lovins and Lovins (2001) predict. The reality is that despite policy changes that include environmental interests, private interests are private (Perkins 2011). This ensures disparity and a hegemonic construction of human relationships to the natural

world. Since natural capitalism dictates that capitalist actors would define the worlds response to environmental change, other means of mitigation would be ignored (Newell 2011). This includes behavioral changes necessary to reduce consumption. We know that capitalism has a tendency to ignore local level issues in favor of investor interests, and it is known that this continues the hegemonic leverage of private interests. Ultimately, the private sector will have to be included to help governments cover the cost of mitigation efforts (Newell 2011). However, markets should not be left to their own devices. The question becomes how is this inclusion governed so that inequality and degradation arent reproduced. This sits in the hands of society and the knowledge producing communities involved in sustainability (Schweickart 2011). It is necessary that they step forward as agents of change to create a unified understanding of sustainability that is inclusive but does not rely on orthodoxies. That is not a job for private interests, or natural capitalism. To avoid the oversight of diversity the theoretical framework for this project uses a process that Liisa Malki (2007) calls improvisation. This means that theory is selected and used through an individual's assumptions, and there is a capacity for surprise when those assumptions are confronted. This confrontation allows research to co-create theory and auto-understanding. Simply, using one theory is too one-dimensional of an approach to what Malki believes is the anthropological tradition: improvisation in our flexibility and, intellectual openness in our principled efforts to imagine and create the ethnographer as the artist. (175). The use of improvisation in this thesis is exploratory. Improvisation is built on shared realities and ideologies. Improvisation is really praxis of objective knowledge and subjective experience (Conquergood 2002). In this thesis, bridging knowledge and experience relates the humanity of participants to the structure of the university systems that

constrains or assists that praxis (Ortner 1984), the result of which is the projection of how participants teach students about sustainability, and what is taken away by students entering multiple work forces to influence sustainable action in our society. In jazz theory, there is a lifetime of learned ideas behind any improvisation (Berliner 1994). The back and forth of discovery is a central element in the cyclical nature of any continual performance whether in music, in art, dance or the application of sustainability. Improvisation makes our work live; our projects take on metaphorical heartbeats to become heuristic reflections of living and breathing things because they are a part of our lives. We do not limit ourselves to one identity (Wilchins 2008), and while a particular theory is best suited to frame our work, it is not the only theory that delivers us to any one end. We should be as connected to that progression in our work as it is suggested we be to nature. The experience of arriving at a theory cannot be removed from the final selection Improvisation as Malkki describes it is not theory; it is a method for framing the process, organization, and exaction of research. Improvisation is a valuable tool that occurs frequently within many areas of culture, and it is considered an organizational requirement (Fortier 2010). It has been used in applied anthropology to act as a script for the active development of knowledge, which allows for the adaptation of action steps within different contexts (Kottak & Kozaitis 1998). Improvisation is always present in analysis and is needed for research that deals with sustainability. With any idea, there are critiques. Malkii cites critics who believe that, while the concept of improvisation is convenient it blurs disciplines that are too separate to be a part of shared knowledge-production. Yet, the process of knowledge-production is messy, and often defies strict disciplinary boundaries, particularly for sustainability. For ideas to develop and advance, there must be change, adaptation, an ability to blend with unlikely allies. The multiplicity and subjectivity of theory is a hard concept. In many ways, academia and even my home discipline of anthropology identify with positivist trends

improvisation in contrast is naturalistic (Fortier 2010). There has to be some trust in the use of improvisation particularly to meet the demand for interdisciplinary work on complicated topics like sustainability. Because cultural concepts including sustainability are determined by assumptions about the world, our work should reflect the subjectivity of our selected frameworks (Fortier 2010). Theories are created out of heurism and the relationship of thought shared between people. They are chosen, intentional, and infused with passion through a personal connection and agreement with posited concepts. This study asks participants to reflect on their personal connections to, and understandings of, sustainability. There is a life history behind the selection on this projects theory and methodology, sometimes it is led by insight and other times, preference. Improvisation, may serve as a model for others to give the processes that inform their work some acknowledgement. For this project, I have highlighted three theories as important to the development of this thesis. The first is political ecology. Not only is it a strong theoretical theme through environmental work in anthropology, it is one that has been built on improvisation of ecological, biological and economic theories. Second, chaos theory, which directly reflects multiplicity and the concept of adaptation through diversity, mutation and improvisation of patterns, built on existing models. The last is sense-making theory, a theory that considers and honors objective and subjective experience as an informing factor of our work and identity. Each theory is introduced below in the order that I uncovered them during my academic career in the anthropology M.A. program. Political Ecology The question for this project is What does sustainability look like to knowledgeproducing members of academia in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UCD? Arriving at this question was a three-year long process that was informed by many theories. The first was Political Ecology (PE). I used PE to methodologically inform the organization

of data into the three Es, economics, equity and environment. It was also important to use to inform faculty narratives since academics act as a political body whose production of knowledge informs generalizable understandings about how our society should approach and interact with the environment. Political ecology was first used in neo-Marxist theories by Eric Wolf to look at how power relations mediate the human-environment relationship (Wolf 1972). It grew out of dependency and world systems theories, which were products of 20th century capitalism and industrialization (Skocpol, 1977). They attempt to understand relationships between the core (consuming middle and upper classes of the north or west) and the periphery (those in the south or east who are serving the needs of the core) and how those relationships impact economies and environments (Goldfrank, 2000). The relationship is one of inequality and dependence; the core on the periphery and vice versa, through world systems. Within these theories exists a debate regarding the flexibility of the core/periphery relationship (Frank 1989; Cardoso & Faletto 1979; Wallerstein 1976). The more recent trends within economically critical theories like political economy is to look at noncapitalist modes of production in places where globalization and neoliberalism are being introduced to understand the inability for autonomous development (Cardoso & Faletto 1976). According to Wolf (1982), political ecology is able to look at the hierarchies of interconnections between larger systems in which local populations become embedded. It bridges these aforementioned theories focus on class with ecology and other socially institutionalized categories including race, gender, and sexuality (Biersack 2006). Political ecology has a broad definition and framework that allows the theoretical means to create common ground where disciplines or communities intersect within their environment (Greenberg & Park 1994). Much like sustainability, Greenberg and Park argue that this theoretical paradigm has no clear framework, and has been variably interpreted by different parties. Examples of

divergence include the ideologies of Bruno Latour (2004) who believes PE means looking at nature as a construct of political order, not reality, and political ecology offers a way to look at human and non-human experiences building on science as it is actually used. Arturo Escobar (1996) discusses the need for a post structuralist political ecology to understand the history of discourse used to turn the natural world into a passive background for economic manipulation. For Raymond Bryant (1992) political ecology looks at the contextual sources of environmental change; conflict over access; and the political ramifications of environmental change in order to integrate an understanding of how environmental and political forces interact to mediate social and environmental change. In geography, where PE had its start, the philosophy requires the use of geo scales and hierarchies of socio economic status by which geography was socially constructed and dependent on local history (Blackie & Brookfield 1986). The understanding I have taken away from this diversity of ideas is that political ecology must exist in a fluid and improvised space since it is built on theories of culture, economics, history and biology (Peet & Watts 1993). While some political ecologists reject localism, Ferguson (1992) challenges with the notion that culture belongs to spatially localized people. This thesis uses a geographically localized population that is creating a base of knowledge not limited to the campus at UCD. The professors that I interviewed are linked to UCD, however their work is shared with other professionals and academics through peer reviewed publications, presentations at conferences and the application of knowledge gained by students who enter a diverse workforce. This dissemination of information creates a multilevel, multisite epistemology and ontology where complimentary and contradictory approaches can exist. This ultimately led to my desire to understand

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what sustainability looks like to academics at UCD in order to create a clearer understanding of its use. Chaos Theory The diverse approaches and definitions of sustainability, or sustainable development, seemed extremely daunting. How can a definition or at least a parameter of understanding be built when there is so much complex data surrounding these issues? An interesting concept came out of Stephen Lansing's (1987) study of Balinese water temples. Lansing (2003, 1987), a political ecologist, employed chaos theory, or complex adaptive theory, to inform his work, ultimately showing that complex patterns that are situated at the event horizon of chaos are better suited to adapt and sustain their existance. Chaos theory was used in this thesis to better understand the structure of the sustainability group and the minor. Lansing (2003) uses the concept of Christmas lights to explain the theory. If a string of lights is given a fixed pattern with no change the lights will eventually twinkle themselves out. If a string of lights is given too many patterns at random it will become chaotic and overloaded unable to maintain a pattern at all and burn itself out. However, if a string of lights is given a series of patterns that are set with a frame of regulation, but they are able to adapt to new patterns within that framing, they appear to be chaotic but are actually controlled by a certain set of characteristics and continue blinking. The use of existing patterns creates room for improvisation, which allows for diversity. From this position, the diversity of definitions found in existing literature and provided by participants is actually necessary to create innovation. Lansing was able to show in an applied setting how cultural barriers can be overcome using a solid institutional framework to oversee a complex network of actors.

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Complex adaptive theory has also been used in studies around environmental education to understand the complexities of its application temporally (Stephens et al. 2008). By looking at the ways in which education was produced, the transition to more sustainable lifestyles was understood more clearly in regards to time and space (Kemp & Loorbach 2003). Patterns and relationships of complexity in sustainability created viable and lasting programs. It is important to note that within this theoretical paradigm, dynamic systems like an organization, in this case the sustainability signature area, arrange themselves around specific factors that are critical to their structure (Mann 1992). In this study, the critical factors are sustainability and interdisciplinary work. These factors are affected by external influences, which can create alterations in systems that continue a pattern of convergence and divergence within a group that keeps them from stagnation and chaos (Thietart & Forgues 1995). Another analogy used to describe this is a pile of sand (Mann 1992). Every time a grain is added to the pile, it changes the pattern or structure. Eventually if many grains are added it can build up the pattern, sometimes too much and it will create a landslide effect. The aftermath of this collapse creates the foundation for what is built next. Manns (1992) work discusses a major point for chaos theory, in order to create change the existing conditions and perceptions of the system and its stability must be examined. This concept led to the idea of using a networks approach to identify the existing structure of how members of the academic community at UCD think about sustainability and how they relate and associate across disciplines in regards to sustainability (Schensul et al. 1999). If the sustainability signature areas structure proved to be in or near a divergent mode then inclusion of new ideas like reflexivity and personal ethos could assist in a new adaptive cycle.

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Sensemaking Using sensemaking I propose that ethos can be used to create mutual understanding and improved relationships between actors involved in sustainability at UCD. Sensemaking states that people relay circumstances and experiences for others to comprehend and fill in gaps of understanding (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005). Gaps of understanding exist due to a multitude of reasons but what matters is that when we are able to relate to ideas, when they are made understandable, we are able to turn them into truths (Kellar-Guenther &Betts 2011). The easiest way to make sense of something is to relate to shared experiences which construct meaning that is accessible to organizations or groups as a whole (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005). In order to do this people must share their ideas openly, both professionally and personally. In this case, it is necessary to make sense of the interpretations of knowledge producers roles in sustainable initiatives. Much like political ecology, sensemaking promotes the use of interdisciplinary work and collaboration (Biersack 2006; KellarGuenther &Betts 2011). Personal and professional ideas concerning sustainability could be used to develop a working framework. Through a shared sense of investment and understanding, barriers created by constraints of separateness are overcome. From this position, people must be reflexive and use their experiences to improvise new methods to break down what Ortner (1984) considers an atmosphere of otherness between disciplines. This framework of theory is exploratory and is not a common practice. The multiplicity of theories discussed in this section as well as those that emerge in the findings can be confusing, though necessary. To assist the reader I have included a chain of theory (Appendix A) that can be referred while reading the rest of this document.

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CHAPTER 3 METHODS The data collection for this thesis took place in the spring of 2011 at the University of Colorado Denver. It samples a group of five professors that teach in different disciplines housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences but who have also been involved in the Sustainability Signature Area, and the construction of the Sustainability Minor. The University of Colorado, Denver campus was a particularly pertinent site to explore this topic due to the recent introduction of interdisciplinary, "green" education programs on campus, including: 1) the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, 2) the political ecology/ sustainable development track in anthropology and 3) the sustainability minor. Fifty faculty members teach in these programs, which include courses that span across fourteen disciplines (Brett et al. 2008). The university also collaborates with institutional and community partners to teach courses to the approxamately100 students involved in these programs yearly, and the nearly 13,400 others who are directly impacted by sustainability issues in the 80 other programs faculty are involved in through their individual departments. The project seeks to understand how knowledge-producing members of UCDs CLAS define sustainability but also how their experiences have influenced their understanding of the concept. In the article We Can't Handle the Truth, Chris Mooney (2011) discusses the idea that despite the peer reviewed process' assurance that the better ideas predominate, we are all impelled by our emotions and bias. As a result, this project acts as the exploratory first step towards a discussion in academia about our subjective presence, and how it affects research and knowledge production regarding sustainability.

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Reflexivity Reflexivity is a classic canon of anthropological work. It was a response to the classic period, shifting ethnographic research away from interpretive and towards perspective methodologies (Stocking 1983; De Neve & Unnithan-Kumar 2006). In the 1960s and 1970s Rabinow, Madden and Giddens defined literary reflexivity by which the author reflects on the subjective process of writing texts to combat the critiques of ethnographys lack of objectivity (Clifford & Marcus 1986; Scholte 1969). In the 1990s Bell Hooks () began to discuss reflexivity as the means to insert the context of identity in research. This resulted in an anti-postmodernist backlash of critiques against unscientific auto-ethnography and led to reflexivity giving way to globalization in the 2000s (De Neve & Unnithan-Kumar 2006). Being reflexive according to De Neve and Unnithan-Kumar, is now a matter of location, not just in a field site but also in the location of schools of thought that shape knowledge production. This new type of reflexivity is perfectly suited to address how sustainability is produced by academics at UCD. As a student of anthropology I believe this should be carried out as often as possible. Reflexivity is often limited in scholarly and scientific sections, and left as afterthoughts in personal accounts of introductions (Ruby 1980). The move to being recognized as a participant in our own work requires the introspective act of reflexivity in ones research (Hamada 1995). Reflexive expectations mean that researchers take on a disciplined selfawareness in observations on other lives and in other cultures (Mead 1976). The dissemination of science has been held up for too long by positivism (Ruby 1980). Giddens (1976:157) puts it best when he states The human scientist has had to learn how to relate self-knowledge of him- or herself as a multisensory being with a unique personal history as a member of a specific culture at a specific period to ongoing experience and how to include as far.

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To honor individual experience and avoid what Harraway (1988) calls the God's eye view in scientific pursuits, I purposefully included reflection in the research process as an essential component of the project. I used reflexivity as an argument to inform my findings but I also felt that it was essential to include my voice in this research. I included my voice within the presentation of this project both as a presence in the written script, and through the inclusion of a short, three-minute example narrative video I created by examining my own experiences and how they influenced my studies in sustainable development. To make this video I created a short script that captured the three most commonly discussed approaches of sustainable development: environment, equity, and economy (See Appendix B). I then selected relevant media (video and photos) to visually convey my experiences to my audience in order to create a common understanding. I have included myself, not as the Geertzian silent native, but as a coparticipant in this process (Geertz 1974). My goal is to provide explanations of my beliefs, how they have led me to this project, and how my experiences of process influenced the finished product. I take the stance that I cannot ask of my participants what I am not willing to do myself. Data Collection This project entailed moving away from the traditional formula of studying exotic populations abroad. Instead, the project focused on fieldwork at home while using polymorphous engagement, working across disciplines and domains within an organized institution (Gusterson 1997). It is meant the collection of materials from a wide array of sources including meeting minutes, online forums, and curriculum and university websites to create a deeper understanding of sustainability at UCD (Forsythe 2000). This helped to create a more informed view within the context of

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this topic and in the respective specialties of the participating informants. Before the study began and interviewees were contacted via telephone, the study was submitted to the Human Subjects Research Committee. The proposed methods for sampling, interviewing, analyzing, and dissemination were submitted to the HSRC for ethics review. The project was accepted by the committee as ethically sound and I was able to move forward with the project. The study utilized three key informants, separate from the sample group; two are professors who were involved in the construction of the sustainability minor and the other is a member of CLAS administration in charge of overseeing the signature areas. The key informants helped to identify key players in the Sustainability Signature Area housed in CLAS, as being the most involved in issues of sustainability. Participants varied by demographic characteristics but shared related positions in academia. Sampling for the project was heterogeneous and purposive. It was an intentional process; all members are professors in academia. They were specifically recruited based on varying disciplines, backgrounds, and demographics including gender and ethnicity (Patton 2002; Ulin, Robinson, Tolley & McNeill 2002). Sampling was limited to discussions with the three key informants at the start if the sampling process; however, through initial meetings with participants for study recruitment three professors identified one person outside of CLAS as an essential person involved in sustainability at UCDs engineering department. Due to short time span for interviews (three months) emphasis was placed on depth over breadth; the meaningfulness of the interviews took precedence over extensive data (Patton 2002). For manageability, the interviews were limited to five participants: one facult member from each anthropology, biology, geography, engineering, and political science. Three of the five participants have taught in the sustainability minor, two have held the position of director in an interdisciplinary program in CLAS and one is the director of an interdisciplinary program housed in engineering.

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Semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to better understand the central domains of sustainability and individuals experiences. Domains are the general ideas that share similar meaning in a culture; they produce a structure of relationships that inform a normalized structure of meaning (Borgotti 1999). The interviews took place in a convenient setting chosen by participants. Participants signed consent and media release forms before interviews were conducted. Interviews lasted between 30 to 60 minutes. They were conducted using a one on one format in order to obtain discipline specific understandings of what sustainability means, without being interrupted or swayed by the beliefs of others in a group dynamic. Questions were asked to elicit experience, knowledge, and opinions that were operationalized into variables of beliefs (Ulin, Robinson, Tolley & McNeill 2002; Schensul, Shcensul & LeCompte 1999). An example of one of those questions is What does sustainability mean to you? (See Appendix C). In order to encourage thoughtful discussion and monitor for contrasting statements, follow up questions were used as probes (Agar 1996). Probes were developed from current events, existing literature, and statements made in interviews with other participants. I also used the example narrative video (please see http://vimeo.com/30873772) detailing the experiences that led me to care about sustainability as a probe for personal discussion and as an indicator for whether faculty thought digital narratives were a realistic way to engage others in discussion. By showing the video to participants, an element of trust was created through extended conversations that allowed them to speak candidly regarding their own experiences (See findings for discussion). The study was also meant to meet the needs of the selected academic population, to enact change and action among the participants by producing suggestions for members to use for the benefit of the group. One key informant expressed frustration with the lack of congruent definition by faculty working in the

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sustainability minor and noted divergence of understanding regarding sustainability as one of the barriers to the programs success, confirming the need for this study. In order to create the action oriented outcomes mentioned above, all of the interviews were videotaped to create a short video that identifies the definitions of sustainability and the personal beliefs and experiences that have influenced participants. A total of five and a half hours was recorded including supplementary footage and photographs. Due to time constraints, the final video will be finished after publication of this thesis. In the meantime, a working draft is available to view online (see http://vimeo.com/album/1726159). The video will only be disseminated after informants approve its internal validity, otherwise known as the agreement of community members of the truthfulness of the representation (Green & Glasgow 2006). The video will be disseminated to each individual participant for their determined use in the classroom, in faculty meetings or on the signature area website. Grimshaw (2001) states that the research world still has iconophobia and therefore video is still not widely used to relay research findings. Visual methods are important elements that can provide real-time, narrative experiences that allow the audience to put consistent blueprints about multi-disciplinary concepts of sustainability together in their own intellect (Hockings 2003). There are many opportunities that exist for researchers to disseminate scholarly knowledge through video. By using a visual format that is tangible and recognizable, the concepts discussed will reach a larger, more public audience and create greater understanding and broad knowledge (Shields 2002). Putting accessible tools that are capable of communicating complex information in a clear way for the consideration of those outside academia might allow for the wider-spread acceptance of evidence-based practices. In this case evidence means the way sustainability is defined and therefore used in appropriate practices for implementation (Green & Glasgow 2006). The use

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of visual narratives as an exploratory and iterative step in this thesis is meant to act as an example of how the evidence obtained through participants expertise and experience can be portrayed to reconcile external and internal focuses of validity. Analysis After videotaped interviews were obtained, they were transcribed into text and placed into qualitative textual and video analysis software. Because the project involved a relatively small sample group, Microsoft Word, a less complex text based software, was used to create hard copies of the time-coded transcripts for general notes. The video data was uploaded to software called Transana. Transana is inexpensive software made to handle large amounts of video and audio files (Hotchkiss 2009). Programs like Nudist and N*vivo can handle a limited amount of multimedia files and cannot import video transcriptions (Parmeggiani 2008). Transana is multiplatform software, which means it can work on both Apple and Windows-based operating programs (Parmegianni 2008). After the text-based transcriptions were created, they were coded. The unit of analysis when coding was dependent on the context. Mostly the sentence was used as the unit of analysis for manageability, although some codes were assigned to larger narratives and smaller units such as ideological stances or words to measure terminology use (Berg 2001). A framework or coding sort was developed using primary codes to stand for common themes and secondary codes to capture subtleties or discipline specific domains (Ulin, Robinson, Tolley & McNeill. 2002). Typically there should be at least three shared interpretations in order to validate a theme, however attention to negative cases; cases that go against general or common findings, were necessary to show the unique and independent themes present in specific disciplines (Miles & Huberman 2004; Berg 2001).

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There were three types of domains within the coding structure: 1) A priori codes that were pulled from questions about economics, equity and environment, 2) Those that were inductive and developed from the interpretation of data, 3) Codes that were identified in vivo, defined by interviewees language (Berg 2001). Transana was helpful when organizing the video clips according to major codes and themes developed from the codes. The time-coded transcriptions also served as a tool to create a narrative storyboard from which the visual companion to this project was formed. From this storyboard, the narrative video could then start to be developed to create a constructive and tangible tool that can be used in classrooms or meetings when addressing sustainability. The analysis closed with a set of themes and patterns from which an understanding of sustainability as it is seen by different actors in the Sustainability Signature Area could be constructed. Methodological Barriers It is important to discuss potential barriers to this study. It is important to look at those barriers as opportunities to create research that is testable and iterative. The people interviewed for this project were extremely busy and time constraints had to be expected. Patience was required to constructively problem solve for constraints that may arise. This included inability to contact relevant participants because they were no longer with the university or out of the office, an unwillingness to participate and as Zilahy and Huisngh (2009) encountered a lack of commitment to the project by participants who are busy with their own work. There is also an issue of turf and boundary distinctions among disciplines for funding, publication, and evaluation (Moore 2005). I felt it was important to be careful and respect participants investments in their disciplines despite any beliefs I have about sustainabilitys meaning. Lastly, due to a developing video-based infrastructure in the anthropology department, I had to account for a lack of available

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equipment. While some of the equipment necessary for making the video had already been obtained, there was still the need to work around the lack of access to equipment being checked out by other videographers. Another consideration to take into account was my lack of experience with video production. I have an intermediate understanding of video editing and equipment operation but was new to many of the variables that are required for production. This includes the use of lighting, the operation of audio equipment and the organization of space to create interesting visual backgrounds and reduce disturbances by others occupying shared areas.

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CHAPTER 4 LITERATURE REVIEW Sustainability has always been a concern for human populations. The archaeological record as well as ethnographic and historical studies are rich with cases of paradoxical relationships between resource depletion and conservation (Diamond 2005; Weisman 2007). Indigenous groups in the Americas developed a variety of cultural practices that acted to ensure a sustainable use of resources (Brady & Ashmore 1999; Morris 1996; Carrasco 1998). Yet, it is important to acknowledge that even though preindustrial populations revered the natural world, the capacity for sustainability was difficult as they transitioned from egalitarian communities to chiefdoms and eventually nation states (Evans, 2004). The Mayans are a great example of an animistic society who despite their connection to the natural world participated in unsustainable practices (Shaw 2003). Their history shows how despite reverence for the natural world and the use of technology the balance of sustainability is delicate. Industrial notions of sustainability can be traced to the 18th century when rapidly expanding shipping and forestry industries used it to determine demand and production (Laws et al. 2004). During this same period, Thomas Malthus posited that population growth would exceed the availability of essential resources (Rogers, Jalal & Boy 2008). Malthus dire prediction was prevented by the rapid advance of technology during the industrial revolution a solution that appears to have been temporary as evidenced by the fact that these same issues concern us today (Jepson 2001). The dictionary defines sustainability as capable of being upheld, to sustain to keep a person, community from failing; to support life (Sustainability Merriam-

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Websters Online Dictionary). Through its popularity, sustainability as a term has become far more intricate than what the standard definition found in a dictionary reflects. Nearly every discipline contains concepts of sustainability in its ideology. While the terms flexible application contributes to innovative and creative outcomes, the concept of sustainability lacks a solid framework, which contributes to the misuse of the term (Brown et al. 1987). Rogers, Jalal and Boyd (2008) discusses the existence of 57 definitions, 19 principals, 12 criterions, 4 frameworks and 28 sets of indicators used by varying disciplines to measure sustainable development (See Appendix E for examples of definitions). The diversity of the terms utilization reflects its importance but that is also, what has led to its overuse and abuse. Early definitions like the one in the Brundtland Report cited previously have moved the environmental focus towards understanding and implementing sustainable development in an attempt to funnel sustainability down to an oversimplified term. While these definitions continue to inform the global perspective in regard to sustainability, they under represent human issues, ignore regional details of local needs and resources, and do not account for a global economy based on growth (Stone 2003; Brown et al.1987). The exclusion of such important social indicators has contributed to a deficient approach to sustainability. Most knowledge-producers recognize the important interconnections between the environment and economy, and the need for equitable access to resources. Nevertheless, people still approach sustainability and sustainable development from the perspective of their discipline and what it requires of them when creating methods for sustainable initiatives or research. Approaches to Sustainability The application of sustainability depends on who is defining it. Sustainability as a conceptual framework has been applied in a number of fields all of which access

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different approaches. A more general set of approaches across disciplines includes sustainability and sustainable development, sustainable community and society, sustainable business and production, and sustainable agriculture (Sustainable Measures 2010). Each field applies their approaches in distinct ways and with institutional bias. For example, The World Business Council on Sustainable Development emphasizes the role of business stating, Sustainable development involves the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity. Companies aiming for sustainability need to perform not against a single, financial bottom line but against the triple bottom line. (World Business Council on Sustainable Development [WBCSD] 2011). However, The Presidents Council on Sustainable Development takes a socioecological approach, stating, To create a life-sustaining Earth, a future in which prosperity and opportunity increase while life flourishes and pressures on the oceans, Earth and atmosphere diminish." (Presidents Council on Sustainable Development [PCSD]1999). The first example emphasizes the use of environmental quality and social equality for the continuation of current humancentered systems in economics that require growth. In comparison, the second example discusses the opportunity for prosperity as belonging to all beings and ecological systems for the continuation of life on Earth, not just affluent human cultures. Some believe these fundamental differences in disciplinary approaches lead to disjuncture in the ability to become sustainable; others believe the diversity is necessary to reinforce sustainability against narrow and impractical frameworks (Palmer 1998). While diversity is a necessary element of sustainability, the lack of normative understandings about what it means between disciplines creates new questions about sustainability when trying to create understandable outcomes of research. This includes asking: What elements of sustainability should be measured?

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What counts as quality (environmental or social)? Moreover, how is quality determined between competing interests? In addition, which interests are more important to address? To address these questions context dependent evaluation instruments have been developed. These instruments are used to measure sustainability and are dependent on the discipline specific frameworks and definitions (Rogers, Jalal & Boyd 2008). The Bellagio Principles discuss the use of evaluation devices in sustainability/sustainable development stating that there needs to be a clear definition of what sustainability is meant to be, that the approach must be holistic and a limited number of indicators should be used in measurements (IISD 2011). Some common measuring tools include the Ecological Footprint, Genuine Progress Indicator, Living Planet Index, Dashboard of Sustainability, Backcasting, Factor Ten, and the Life Cycle Assessment (Robert 2002). Each measure uses different indicators to inform the intended evaluation and can become as complex as the holistic understanding of sustainability (See Appendix D). Many of these tools were developed out of the concept Natural Capitalism, as a business model to attach environmental performance to the bottom line (Hueting, Reijinders 1998). Toolsets developed though Natural Capitalism are able to help other disciplines understand complex issues surrounding sustainability. The Ecological Footprint Calculator, for example, is helpful in examining patterns of consumption, most notably food consumption and production levels aimed at determining basic needs. Critics believe that these toolsets do nothing more than measure workflows and that resource management tools are better suited to measure the capacity of our environment in relation to our development (Figge et al. 2002; Woodhouse, Howlett & Rigby 2000). Society has placed priority on natural capital tools despite their shortcomings

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because they are easier to understand when describing complex issues. These types of indicators are increasingly relied on as the economic sector expands to include new types of capital including soft and intellectual resources. These types of resources defy conventional accounting but still determine the value of a company that has moved from production to service (Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998). This includes tech industries and businesses that consider themselves part of the green economy. The problem with tools created by natural capitalism is that they allow for sustainability as a whole to be easily reduced to score carding to measure new types of capital and ignore the implications of other relevant features of sustainability including social justice (Figge et al. 2002). This highlights the limitations of business perspectives in sustainability because these tools do not tell us about what Rogers, Jalal and Boyd (2008) describe as "the problematic relationship among economic growth, human aspirations and the satisfaction of basic needs." Additionally the tools of natural capitalism do not tell us about the ethical implications of business methods leading our societys move towards sustainable practices. Natural capitalism is championed by Lovins & Lovins, Hawkins, and Lester Brown. They believe that this framework unites ecology and business by mimicking natural processes in production industries (Lovins & Lovins 2001). Proponents like Paul Hawkins believe that to achieve this, market practices should be honored without governmental interventions stating, We cannot tell companies what to make and how to make itand the government cannot properly allocate required natural resources. (Smith 2011:140). The basis of this belief is that through reward systems for environmental practices or taxation for pollution and waste, companies will self regulate their output and reduce their environmental impact (Lovins & Lovins 2001). This assumes that corporations will practice environmental ethics, when in truth they

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respond to investors not stakeholders. Moreover, this does not address other economic implications including a government reliance on money from pollution taxes as a source of income (Smith 2011). Relying on structures that have contributed to ecological degradation as solutions to environmental degradation is unsound. Disciplinary Overviews Regardless of the discipline, no single discipline is an acceptable representation for the whole of sustainability. Diversity is necessary for sustainability but some measure of consistent understanding among disciplines is needed or the concept of sustainability will continue to be misused and oversimplified in the debates taking place as our society attempts to find solutions to our problems. A review of the literature confirms that while disciplines share similar broad foundational views about sustainability they vary regarding more ideologically charged issues like how to achieve it. This includes debates that are occurring over the necessary depth and breadth of action to be taken, the credibility of humancentered versus eco-centered approaches, as well as the efficiency of technology and its effect on capitalist systems of production. Economics is situated in the center of the debate over profitability versus environment (Schley & Laur 1996). The natural economic stance, for example, is meant to balance the consumption of the present with that of the future; it assumes that society uses discounting and does not value the future as much as the present (Elliot 2005). Within this field, there is a divide between neo-classical economists who believe that technology can once again make up for resource limits and that growth is necessary, and eco-economists who believe that a zero growth economy is required for sustainability and specifically the maintenance of essential resources (Elliot 2005; Brown et al. 1987). Elliot (2005) summarizes this debate as whether to

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find new technology to produce more or to simply consume less. Economics is limited in its understandings of sustainability and growth because ground level issues that affect people are easily and sometimes knowingly left out. Dasgupta (2007) explains that the broad source of data used to measure phenomena is selected through averages, using very few factors to create models and forecasts of social and economic phenomena. The data is just too complex. However, Dasgupta further explains that the decisions to use particular models, historical narratives, and other tools of the trade to create reports are influenced by schools of thought. As a result, alternative sources of data and models are left out. An example of how economics accesses particular schools of thought and knowingly leaves out indicators is the over reliance on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to define our economic growth. The GDP measures the monetary value of all finished goods and services within a single countrys borders during a specified time, usually a year (Investopedia.com 2011). It is worth noting that the GDPs development was set in motion by Simon Kuznet per the request of the United States Congress to find out how to deal with the great depression (Bureau of Economic Analysis [BEA] 2000). That said Simon Kuznet is also the economist who created the Kuznet curve, which has been proven to be ineffective and create harmful fallacies about the poor (Rogers, Jalal & Boyd 2008). While the GDP is meant to measure services, they are only those that are worth monetary value; it does not account for services like community development, volunteering, and stay at home moms (BEA 2000). Equally, the GDP does not account for wealth disparities. This is left to other schools of thought that access measurements like the GINI index to understand the relationship of income disparity to factors of capitalism (World Bank [WB] 2011). Economics is not the only discipline guilty of relying on singular schools of

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thought, nor is economics alone in ignoring other indicators. The book Freakanomics by Steven Levitt, an innovative economist, and Stephen Dubner a prominent journalist, provides examples of how social phenomenon can be misunderstood by the removal of certain indicators. One such example includes the rise in crime during the 1990s in the United States. In attempt to understand the sudden rise analysts picked variables to predict future patterns of crime rates (Levitt & Dubner 2006: 1). Ultimately they predicted that rates would increase; they in fact did not. Policy analysts attributed this to a policy created by the Clinton administration to reduce crime rates and poverty. This contributed to a fraction of the reduced crime rates, a different variable altogether explained the drop. After looking at legal cases as a variable, an interesting explanation occurred in the ruling of Roe V. Wade. The legalization of abortion in the United States decreased the amount of children entering a broken foster care system that had produced adults prone to crime. By only focusing on one set of variables, a major explanation was missed until someone else from a different school of thought reexamined the data. It is important to note that purposefully skipping variables isnt all bad. The examination and reexamination of data is important for theories and schools of thought to mature and cultivate new ideas. This shows the importance of a multitude of views to understand complex phenomena like sustainability; a good example of this is in anthropology. In the social sciences, sustainability has primarily been defined as protecting cultural continuity, not ecological permanence (Stone 2003; McCabe 2003). Early anthropological theories often measured the environment empirically as a passive background to culture. Until Evolutionary Ecology, it was not generally accepted that cultural changes could effect the environment (Orlove 1980). When the interactions of social behavior were recognized as being dependent on the environment, anthropology began to accept the relationship between populations and their

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environments (Biersack 1999). However, early approaches were limited to evolutionary ideas linked to biological processes, not social systems. Cultural ecology was created by Julian Steward to address the absence of culture in evolutionary ecology. While Steward is seen as the theorys creator, he shared in debates with Leslie White regarding cultural ecologys philosophy (Ortner 1984). Stewards ideology was multilinear. This meant that not all societies experienced similar stages of cultural evolution, and if they did it occurred in unrelated ways (Steward 1955). Essentially for Steward (2006), cultural ecology is an effort to explain the construct of behavior uniformities in different culture areas. (102). This reflects the environment as an external factor, responsible for core characteristics of a given culture. Alternatively, White believed that cultural ecology was unilateral. He believed that culture is the total of human traditions and that this global culture was evolving (White 1959). White felt this general evolution was specifically related to the use of technology to capture energy and continue population growth (Ortner 1984). While Steward felt that culture did not come from culture, White felt culture was a thing in and of itself (White 1987). White believed that this self-producing culture existed on three levels: technological, social and ideological, and the level of advancement was related to a communities ability to control energy (White 1959). While both opened the door for discussions about society and environment, their work also had limitations. Building on their work other theorists developed additions to cultural ecology. In the 1960s, Melvin Harris and Roy Rappaport introduced a systems theory into cultural ecology, claiming that action is based on the function of customs in relation to adaptation (Ortner 1984). This is known as cultural materialism, where cultural patterns reflect infrastructure, structure, and superstructure (Moore 2004). An

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example of cultural materialism is the Kaiko ritual. The ritual is a massive pig slaughter that is used for several social regulations. The Kaiko was used to compensate allies in wartimes, and honor ancestors. However, it was also a means to decrease the pig population to reduce stress on the environment and the women who cared for the pigs, and to provide nutrition and protein to the regional population (Rappaport 1968; Biersack 2006). These early examples of cultural ecology didnt capture power relations within these regulatory practices. With the use of macro theories like political economy, cultural ecology evolved into what is now called political ecology which bridges local societies and environments to larger systems including politics and economy. While Eric Wolf (1972) was the first person to use the term political ecology, it was officially developed by a geographer named Nietschman who dismissed Malthusian ideas of dealing with population crisis (Beirsack 2006). Following Nietschman, Piers Blaikie developed a philosophy within political ecology that requires the use of geo scales and hierarchies of socio economic status by which geography is socially constructed and dependent on history (Blaikie & Brookfield 1986). The primary questions within the discipline include whether social constructions and history can be removed from agency, and if ontology should be flat or vertical. Purcell and Brown (2005) argue that the politics of geo scales always leads to the misguided focus of local level preference, when in fact geography is extensive (Purcell & Brown 2005). However, the local level is equally important because political ecology looks at relationships between extensive global systems and local ecological communities In anthropology, political ecology looks slightly different. While cultural ecology favored adaption, understanding power is central to political ecology (Friedman 1974). Additionally, in comparison to political economy, political ecology

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focuses on agency over structure (Biersack 2006). Using theories like political ecology, anthropology has been useful in linking culture to the environment through its understanding of structural power and human agency, and has improved the visibility of social justice as necessary component of sustainability. The discipline however, has still not claimed its place at the table to influence the legitimate implementation of sustainability in policy and practice (Stone 2003). In order to do so its important for anthropology to continue to look outside of its own ideas and work with other disciplines to understand systems that affect ecological communities. Agriculture and energy production are two important systems of provision in the world that are discussed in a variety of disciplines including those represented in this study. They each became important issues in sustainability when in the 60s and 70s researchers began to examine technology (i.e pesticides and nuclear power) that was harmful to the environment (Brown et al. 1987; Horne 2008). Today agriculture is described as alternative agriculture, sustainable agriculture, and organic agriculture (Horne 2008). While energy has moved to debates about the use of hydrogen cells, biofuel, and the use of renewable energy technology to provide wind and solar power. In agriculture, sustainability is also seen as the management of systems to maintain productivity and renewable stocks in the face of external disturbances (Brown et al. 1987). This includes creating genetic diversity through balances of conservation and organic application. Sustainable agriculture and organic farming include many components. Soil management is one of the most important, requiring a balance of nutrients including nitrogen for crops to grow (Watson et al. 2002). Experts in disciplines that deal with sustainable agriculture suggest a variety of methods that can be used to attain this balance including no till efforts, composting, crop rotation, polyculture planting, weed management, a reduction in the use of genetically modified seed, and other conservation efforts (Gold 2011; Watson et al.

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2002; Weisman 2007). In energy production, sustainability is the movement from non-renewable sources (fossil fuels) to renewable sources in a way that is not taxing on an economy (Brown et al. 1987). With growing ecological degradation, there has been an emphasis on energy use in policy and action. Our over reliance on finite resources like fossil fuels and coal for powering industry, production, transportation and residential use is an important issue (International Energy Agency [IEA] 2007; Kiss, Dimian & Rothenberg 2006; Goldemberg 2007). Developing renewable energy is important to many disciplines yet dealing with pollution and waste created by current methods of energy production other ideas promoted by interdisciplinary research needs to be included. In urban planning, sustainability started with the concept of appropriate technology through urban ecology in urban renewal initiatives (Roseland 1997). More recently, planning suggests urban ecologists do two things 1) apply technology that fits within the local levels capabilities and 2) recognize that humans must be integrated back into nature with an appreciation of nature for natures sake in order to avoid entropy and degradation (Jepson 2001). As Jepson points out, there must be a local level understanding of needs and equitable action not just across generations (Intergenerational Equity) but also the needs of people living across borders (Intragenerational Equity). Planning and engineering have begun to incorporate philosophies that address local level integration of meeting human needs. Though planning does not fully tackle issues of definitional understandings or ethics of environmentalism, which can leave sustainability open for manipulation to meet needs that are counter intuitive to sustainability. The use of sustainability in ecology works towards the protection and the conservation of genetic bio-diversity, to ensure continued productivity of natural

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biological processes and eco-systems (Brown et al. 1987). In ecology, sustainability is discussed through a six root approach that includes foci on carrying capacity, technological critiques, biospheres, resource environments, ecological development, and no growth/slow growth resource management (Brown et al. 1987). Ecology alone does not capture the social and economic elements that create a holistic understanding of sustainability. All disciplines involved in sustainability attempt to approach sustainability with the best of intentions. Each believing their own set of assumptions and methods works when trying to create sustainable outcomes. This belief has created a number of politicized debates that affect all sustainable initiatives regardless of the discipline. Debates About Sustainability There are many terms that are used to describe different debates, weak and soft, deep and shallow, the debate in economics between neoclassical and ecoeconomics (see page 28 for discussion), and ecocentrism versus technocentrism. Ecocentrism and technocentrism being the words developed by Timothy ORiordan in the late 80s to offset the implications of politically charged words like weak and deep when describing factions of sustainability (Palmer 1998). Regardless, all of these terms come down to the same issue: the social, economic, and environmental costs of achieving sustainability. Each of the previous terms belongs to one side of the same coin when talking about sustainability. The debate over costs of sustainability encapsulates another issue and that is whether sustainability should be human-centered or planet-centered. This is exemplified in the theoretical and philosophical differences between shallow and deep ecology. Shallow ecology includes actions towards sustainability that do not question the ideological principles of a given culture. Shallow ecology encompasses efforts to recycle because landfills are overfilled, or to buy hybrid cars to move away from

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fossil fuels but does not change the status quo, actions that are human-centered and done to maintain nature for human use (Naess & Sessions 1995). By contrast, deep ecology goes to the heart of our worlds environmental and social issues and directly questions our behavior and the ways our actions impact or create social and environmental problems (Naess & Sessions 1995; Snyder 1995). Deep ecology demands that culture and behavior are included and identifies a seven-step program of personal and spiritual responsibility to the environment including: Life, Nature, Human in/and nature, No false distance, Outside change, Inside change and Spread of ideas (Rothenburg 1995; Naess & Sessions 1995). Those who practice deep ecology believe that by changing peoples minds to value the natural world, it will rectify their actions that have led to the capitalist dominion of nature and value nature for natures sake (Naess & Sessions 1995; Snyder 1995). Ultimately deep ecology states that our separation from nature is a result of the JudeoChristian and empirical traditions that validate human dominion over nature, and traditions in science that measure the environment as mechanistic and easily manipulated (Jepson 2001). Critics discuss the use of deep vs. shallow ecology in the debate on sustainability as a false divergence (Palmer 2008). They ask what the terms deep and shallow even mean in a debate of valuation of nature and humanity. These critics believe that a more anthropocentric verbiage is necessary and use the terms strong and weak sustainability to inform the debate. Strong sustainability similar to ecoeconomics assumes that for humanity to survive there can be no tradeoff between economic gain and environmental quality (Neumayer 2003: 24). Weak sustainability presupposes that environmental quality has monetary value, and can be traded for profit (Neumayer 2003: 22). Ultimately the two debates stand for the same issues the difference is that the dynamic between deep and shallow ecology is ecocentric and

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requires major changes in belief and action where as the dichotomy between strong and weak sustainability is technocratic and in the end maintains the status quo. The terms used to describe these debates fall under two categories, technocentrism and ecocentrism (Turner 2005). Ecocentrism insists that ecological morality be imposed to control human behavior (ORiordan 1989). This means that there must be a redistribution of access and resources along with a sense of justice for the environment. Literature suggests that ecocentrism is divided into two categories: communalists and those that follow gaianism (Palmer 1998; ORiordan 1989). According to a cross-sectional public survey, .1-3% of the environmental movements participants are part of the ecocentrism sub category, Gaianism, and believe in the intrinsic right of nature (Milbrath 1984; ORiordan 1989; Palmer 1998). 5-10% of respondents in Milbraths survey self-identified as belonging to the communalist sub category who ascribe to the faith that society can assemble a self reliant structure using cooperation and appropriate technology. Additionally, technocentrism is divided into two groupings of ideologies: intervention, and accommodation. Accommodation is based on the work of J.K. Galbraith (1988) and T. Roszak (1969). Accommodation accounts for 50-70% of the population who believe in adaptability of institutions to accommodate the environment. Milbraths survey shows that interventionism accounts for 10-35% of the population and is comprised of those in business and finance. Interventionism is based on the work of Simon and Kahn (1984) who support the limitless capacity of people, when free to seek potential, to exploit the Earth to improve the public welfare. This sub category is made up of individuals who believe that the application of science and the market will solve environmental issues. Both of these categories do not upset the status quo but demand some accountability and responsiveness to environmental issues (ORourdan 1988).

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Technocentrism and other ideologies, including weak sustainability, shallow ecology, and neoclassic economics, dominate in discourse about sustainability (Palmer 1998). They are easier to understand and require less sacrifice than other ideologies, however the continuation of the status quo is not advantageous in the end. These accepted philosophies also do not force people to think about or act on the ethical issues that are skimmed over by technocratic tenets. This includes the definition of quality, environmental responsibility, and human needs, which creates large roadblocks when attempting to create real sustainable outcomes. The following section discusses the increased public awareness about sustainability as well as the pursuit of global scientific communities to resolve some of the previously discussed debates and the ethics surrounding them. Concurrently, the problem with a one-sided emphasis on technocratic ideologies is highlighted through the manipulation of wellintentioned efforts to solve the worlds problem at environmental mega conferences. Environmental Mega Conferences, Implications for Sustainable Action In the face of global environmental and man made disasters environmental mega conferences were planned to address issues of sustainability. Public awareness about sustainability has increased in part due to the frequency of environmental mega conferences sponsored by the UN since 1972. For many they are capable of producing some means to action, and mutual understanding but for others they are a symptom if not a handmaiden of unsustainable development (Seyfang & Jordan 2002). The history of these global meetings has been one of revelation and obstruction. In the face of global environmental and man made disasters The first was the 1972, United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) held in Stockholm, Sweden (Seyfang & Jordan 2002; IISD 2010). This was followed by several other conferences including: The Rio Earth Summit (1992), The World

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Summit For Social Development in (1995), The UN Millennium Development Goals (2000), The World Summit for Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa, better known as Jokeburg (2002); The Kyoto Protocol (2005), and the Copenhagen Climate Negotiations (2009) (Pring 2002). Each conference was meant to address unique issues and tie up loose ends from the previous meeting (Grubb et al 1993). Instead, they dealt with a host of internal problems including corporate sponsorship and the exclusion of voices from less developed countries (LDCs) and the global environmental society (Fisher 2010). In the book Earth Summit.biz, the Corporate Takeover of Sustainable Development, authors Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner discuss the move to a doctrine of environmental politics dominated by corporations at the meetings in Rio. They discuss the manipulation of transnational corporations to avoid regulations and codes created by international governing bodies like the UN. Maurice Strong, a wealthy organizer of the Stockholm Summit, hired corporate advisors, put the World Bank in charge of the UNCED convention funds, and found over 50 transnational companies including DOW Chemical and Mitsubishi to sponsor the summit (Bruno & Karliner 2002). When Strong was chastised by the global environmental society for allowing sustainable development to be redefined by corporate expectations that were the root of environmental problems, his response was The environment is not going to be saved by environmentalistsenvironmentalists do not hold the levers of economic power. (Bruno & Karliner 2002:22). The leadership of the summits based on corporate inclusion spurred the UN Center of Transnational Corporations to develop guidelines on corporate involvement when drafting initiatives. The guidelines were rejected by Strong and after pressure on the UN to be business friendly, UN official Boutros Boutros Ghali announced that

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his budget would no longer include UNTC. Bruno and Karliner (2002) explain that the main points of sustainability under the influence of corporate undertakings furthered by the disintegration of the UNTC are 1) Market forces must be unleashed to promote economic growth, making free trade a prerequisite for sustainability. 2) Pricing mechanisms will correct economic distortions in order to reflect environmental costs. 3) Self-regulation is best for corporations to be sustainable. 4) More changes in technology and managerial practices are required. These points were first developed at the first Earth Summit in Rio when Stephen Schmidheiny published the book Changing Course, a global business perspective on development and the environment, a business gospel of World Business Council for Sustainable Development rhetoric. Changing Course quickly became a tool of capitalist green washing, which paints corporations as part of the solution while skirting the central issue of their unsustainable impact on the environment (Bruno & Karliner 2002). This redirection of sustainability has led to stronger emphasis on the human centered ideologies discussed in previous sections of this literature search. The emphasis on technocentrism by global corporations is, in part, the reason sustainable development has become an oxymoron, and sustainability is becoming an empty term easily manipulated but unsustainable interests Ultimately, this string of conferences has led to the manipulation of sustainability by the political chess match between the alliance of corporate and national interests and the appeals of grassroots movements supported by the UN (Bruno & Kerliner 2002). The fact is, the process of having these conferences has lasted for forty years and at best, mega conferences reprocess old ideas from previous conferences that have failed (Death 2008). Conferences make environmental issues visible as the worlds leaders

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converge on cities to find solutions to our problems. Yet, the perception of these meetings is tainted with political strongholds and corporate power plays that directly conflict with sustainable outcomes. Because of this, an emphasis on economics has overshadowed what is necessary to create environmental governance. Sustainability and sustainable development have been reconfigured to advance profits over the environment, and with the merging of national and corporate interests, the environmental movement has been green-washed. Green Washing, Examples of Sustainabilitys Manipulation Green-washing techniques in capitalism have been used to keep consumption relevant by turning environmentalism into an advertising ploy to generate consumer loyalty for corporate brands that appear to be green despite unsustainable practices. Sustainability has become something to market to consumers instead of an action plan for achieving balance between economic and social well being, as well as sound environmental management. IBM is an example of a company that has capitalized on sustainability. Profits have risen by 20% in the last year despite the economy and the corporation has launched a series of commercials that showcase involvement in various industries (business management, healthcare, utility provision and so on) that are dependent on IBMs sustainable smart grid technology (IBM Advertising a, b, c 2009; IBM Fourth-Quarter and Full Year Results 2010). While IBM has been involved in sustainable efforts like in-house recycling as far back as 1992 (Postel 1992), they have just begun to market that aspect of operations because now sustainability has consumer value. Additionally, corporations attempt to gain consumer support using corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is a green washing tool that is used by businesses to provide or develop infrastructure and capital for sustainable initiatives, despite the continuation of

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unsustainable practices that contribute to environmental degradation, in order to provide a product (Hamman & Acutt 2003). For example, General Electric envisions a clean coal future yet extends bids to cheaply construct mines by blowing off mountaintops and dumping the waste in valleys, disrupting clean sources of water (Beinecke 2009). Wal-Mart creates a division for sustainable affairs but contributes to the destruction of local businesses anywhere near one of their superstores (PBS 2009). Automobile companies produce hybrids and fund hydrogen fuel cells but cut efficient electric car production (Pain, 2006). Water providers put out campaigns to slow municipal water use but continue to dam and divert water (Pitt 2001). Water bottling companies design more efficient and environmental responsible bottles with less plastic, but harm local populations eco-systems around the world through water extraction. The conglomerate Nestle is an example of a corporation that has caused environmental and social damage through its extraction efforts on the White River in Michigan, the Wacissa River in Florida, the Arkansas River in Colorado and the municipal water supply in Sacramento (Blevins 2009; Ruffin 2009; Salina 2008). It is important to recognize that there are companies that actively commit to improving the environment and equity. This includes 1% For the Planet, a community of businesses dedicated to environmental stewardship. These are companies whose owners have built their corporations with sustainable values. This includes an understanding of the limits of natural resources and their responsibility to other people to practice fair business practices (1% For the Planet). Some major businesses including New Belgium Brewing Company (the nations 3rd largest beer distributer) are working to limit their negative impact on the environment and to contribute to greater equity of local and global populations (Williams 2008). However, many issues in business including a consumption and distribution of resources in a green economy affect societys ability to become sustainable. As a professor in anthropology, stated there is still something fundamentally contradictory with the push to make sustainability a growth industry (Koester, S. Personal Interview

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April 19, 2011). In the 2010 State of the World Report, the World Watch Institute stated that consumerism as a tsunami that has engulfed human cultures and ecosystemsif unaddressed will create global disaster, but if channeled properly can assist sustainable initiatives. (1). The implications of consumption and commercialism are extremely large. It affects our current and future ability to become sustainable in the face of economic order. We need to have a critical population, that approaches sustainability with cooperation, curiosity, reasoning, empathy, and other competencies required of democratic populace (Linn 2010). To combat the societal emphasis on consumption and economic centered sustainability the focus needs to be on environmental education at all levels. The Role of Environmental Education Education has always played a role in social changes and the move towards sustainability is no different (Stephens et al. 2008). Education needs to occur at all levels to address global issues and to promote values and practices that inform sustainability. Some of the worlds most well known environmental reports including the Brundtland Report and Agenda 21 agree stating that education is the greatest resource to achieving just society and that education is critical for social change (Fien & Tilbury 2002). Despite the emphasis on education as an agent of change, it is not void of debate or conflict. Education has been manipulated and used to create inequality through archaic educational ideologies that remove critical thinking. However, through a renegotiation of educations role, innovation can occur through what Stephens et al. (2008) call a delta knowledge built on social contribution. The original intention of education was to disseminate knowledge, particularly theology and philosophy (alpha science) but with the Enlightenment, knowledge became something to be discovered (Stephens et al. 2008). The natural sciences (beta science) became dominant and the use of scientific method upheld the rigor of

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knowledge production and distribution and with the rise of disparity and social discord, the social sciences (gamma science) followed (Stevens 2002; Stephens et al. 2008). The creation of positivism, reductionism, and empiricism through the scientific method has led to a long standing hegemonic set of westernized educational standards that created a model of school systems that served an economic and political function (Clover 2002; Stevenson 2002). There has always been a debate about whether people are empty vessels that can be filled with knowledge, or if people have natural qualities that can be molded by disciplines (Orr 2010). The first of these philosophies is the one that has been dominant in our modern society and has led to the use of schools as political vehicles. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration created policy that rewarded schools for following guidelines to increase focus on methods that did not contribute to democratic education. This was emphasized in order to create a common culture of skilled workers capable of competing with other rising countries to have the most economically viable and productive country (Stevenson 2002). These philosophies are in direct contrast to sustainability through the emphasis on short-term profits at the expense of the environment and the exploitation of the skilled working class (Shea 1989). This does not contribute to a democratic society capable of solving the worlds crises but instead continues the cycles of social and economic inequality that contribute to global issues. This model of education as filling an empty vessel is outdated and new models of education are emerging (Orr 2010). The question is what this new wave of knowledge will be. Regardless of what delta science ends up being the epistemological shift will be used to cope with solutions that lead to the betterment of our society in the face of complex problems, it will be a move towards education as social contribution (Stephens et al. 2008). This new form of knowledge must

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promote systems that emphasize connections, cross-disciplinary work, indigenous and local level knowledge, the development of relationships across the different levels of management within higher education and most importantly the unification of knowledge and action (Shiva 1989; Fien & Tilbury 2002, Stevenson 2002; Stephens et al. 2008). All of these things are necessary for the success of interdisciplinary environmental education. Those involved in teaching sustainability at universities grappled with definitions of environmental constructs like sustainability and sustainable development. Some still approached it from the natural sciences but others felt it was necessary to focus on social issues like health, quality of life, consumption, and fair trade (Clover 2002). Focusing on social issues challenged the assumptions of the dominant empty vessel discourse surrounding education (Fien & Tilbury 2002). Educators who embraced the inclusion of social science pushed back against the reductionist and technocratic modes of western science, and led to a split of ideologies when approaching environmental education. Palmer discusses these ideologies in her book, Environmental Education in the 21st Century, The first mode of environmental education is Sustainable Livelihood Development. This mode is reflective of ecocentrism and seeks to meet peoples basic needs through sustainable resource use and appropriate technology. It challenges the status quo with new ideas about economics and society. The second mode is sustainable growth. This is a technocentric ideology that seeks reform but maintenance of the status quo. In this mode the emphasis is on expert management of systems and technologies to make things more efficient rather than sustainable. Within these modes there are several approaches to sustainable development that are taught in environmental education. This includes the reform approaches that emphasize fast technological fixes, similar to neoclassical economics, as the means to

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solve problems (ORourdan 1981). The political approach discusses the use of policy to reduce human impacts on the environment. Policy changes are what are believed to create sound preservation practices within the scope of development (Palmer 2002). There are also more radical approaches including the socially critical approach that states that environmental problems are a symptom of larger societal problems including unequal distribution of and access to natural resources (Huckle 1983). There is also the alternative approach, which advocates for a pre-industrial society, a closer relationship to nature and emphasis on self-sufficiency (Palmer 2002). The approaches taught in environmental education are representative of the larger philosophical debates occurring in the general literature about sustainability. Education then becomes dependent on the ideologies that are subjectively valued by those teaching them. Ideologies are equally informed by the events occurring in the scientific communities that exist outside of academia including the outcomes of environmental mega conferences (Wright 2002). The definitions of sustainability by universities are therefore value laden by the selected sources used to inform them (Hopkins & Mckeown 2002). This creates discord for students who take away disciplinary concepts of sustainability to inform their professional work, continuing the academic tower of Babel. The ambiguity and conflict present in attempts to define issues of sustainability creates a sense of nihilism that there is no charted course towards a future of consensus (Orr 2010:82). Though the same debates occur and the same frustrations develop within academic institutions, the role of the university in sustainability is extremely important. According to Stephens et al. (2008), universities are important for knowledge production that can synthesize different types of information to advance environmental education. Zilahy and Huisingh (2009) discuss the role of universities

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in their study as prime social capital and movers that can stimulate action across disciplines. Universities can act as change agents because they can model sustainable practices in ways that are meaningful for policy makers and the public (Moffat 2000; Shields, Solar & Martin 2002; Stephens et al. 2008). They can teach students skills to approach complex problems and they can use participatory, community-based research to integrate and engage communities outside of academia (Stephens et al. 2008). By accessing universities to define sustainability, the liberalization of education can be used to increase opportunities for communities dealing with sustainable initiatives. The implementation of environmental education aimed at sustainability has increased exponentially. Nearly every major university has a program that is dedicated to sustainability (Stephens et al. 2008). Efforts to include sustainability have been ongoing since the 1960s; Williams College, Middlebury, Brown, and Tufts being some of the first, and in the 90s the Talloires declaration had been signed by 22 university presidents (Orr 2010). The Talloires declaration was pledge by university signatories to commit to the infusion of sustainability in higher education (Wright 2002). As of 2008, 360 international university heads have signed that document and UNESCO has assigned sustainability chairs to 45 of those universities (Orr 2010). It is important to remember that despite the increased demand for sustainability programs universities face some major challenges. Barriers Sustainability requires that education be interdisciplinary. The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future states education should provide comprehensive knowledge that cuts across social and natural sciences and humanities (UN 1987:96). Yet, interdisciplinary efforts called for in the report conflict with traditional styles of teaching (Palmer 2002). Everything in higher education is

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disciplinary. Tenure requirements, the expectation of professors to teach abstract discipline based theory, rewards for journal publication and faculty promotions for specialization all marginalize and undermine change (Orr 2010; Stephens et al. 2008). Additionally, the disciplinary structure of universities does not reward public engagement or interdisciplinary work and this interferes with the necessary flexibility required to teach sustainability (Palmer 2002). Equally, there is an issue of finances. With the recent economic problems in our world the capacity to receive public money to fund sustainability programs has diminished. Universities are forced into competition and are pressured to take private funding (Deresiewicz 2011). By accepting private funding, a stratified system of unequal distribution of funds exists between research that is perceived as valuable and that which is not (Stephens et al. 2008). There is also concern that the reliance on this funding will alter project outcomes to fit the interest of private companies. For example in 2007 British Petroleum, an oil company, created the Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley where stakeholders became suspicious of the ability to conduct independent research free of BPs bias (Stephens et al. 2008). In the book Sustainability on Campus, Stories, and Strategies for Change authors Barlett and Chase (2004) discuss several of afore mentioned barriers but they also mention other institutional barriers. This includes disciplinary boundaries, as well as encouraging students to view learning as more than acquired knowledge. They also identify finances available through university colleges and the need for colleges to have a committed staff as necessary resources that have been lacking. These barriers are not the only representation of sustainability on college campuses there are successes too.

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Overcoming Barriers Barriers serve as points of information to improve actions being taken to include sustainability in universities. Universities are successfully implementing sustainability in physical operations, interdisciplinary work, research, and public outreach to create an ecological literate and morally obligated student and faculty body (Wright 2002). There are many examples of successful executions of environmental education on campuses around the country. Despite different paths towards accomplishments, universities have used personal relationships and interdisciplinary collaboration to overcome institutional barriers and strengthen education programs (Jahiel & Harper 2004). Unique methods including shared leadership, defining diverse goals, the use of persistence and spontaneity are used to create trust in education initiatives aimed at sustainability (Barlett & Chase 2004). When that trust is built education flourishes with committed faculty, imaginative leadership and student involvement with respect to social change (Orr 2010). Examples of some successful outcomes include 1) the newly formed School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, 2) the implementation of requirements for environmental literacy for all graduates regardless of discipline or degree program at Oakland Community College, and 3) the interdisciplinary work led by physicists at the University of California, Berkeley to develop campus wide sustainable infrastructure (Rowe 2004; Noorgard 2004; Stephenson et al. 2008). Not all initiatives are as broad as the ones implemented at these schools. Some of the sustainable education endeavors taken up at other schools are small in scale. This includes finding new ways of securing funding for specific programs or developing curriculum for a single class (Bowden and Pallant 2004; Edelstein 2004; Delind & Link 2004).

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Sustainability has what Edelstein (2004) calls a threshold, after a certain amount of success at a university the institutionalization of a mission that includes sustainability is inevitable. Before this occurs there is a learning capacity that must be reached, unlikely allies must be sought out, and interdisciplinary work must become the standard. All of the schools mentioned above and the many others that have achieved success were able to do so through a multitude of context specific pathways that led to more environmentally enlightened individuals and an integrated campus (Jenks-Jay 2004:297). These new models show that the schools are poised to shift their educational approaches to prepare students for life instead of skilled work (Stephens et al. 2008). Universities are ready to embrace change and comprise, they are ready to emerge from entrenched disciplinary positions to tackle global issues (Hopkins & McKeown 2002). The transition from technocratic and privatized domination in education is being chiseled away to make room for students and faculty who want to create new sets of values that encourage respect for nature and other people. If the debates surrounding the issue of how to enact sustainability are so cyclically complex then why bother? It is possible that sustainability is simply a band-aid if not a catalyst for destructive green washing methods that exacerbate the problems our world faces (Jabareen 2005). It is also possible that it is an oxymoron, a symbolic rhetoric that redefines change to fit political needs and fails to resolve the debates in environmental ethics (Rios-Osorio et al. 2005). While there are many inherent flaws with the definitions and understandings of sustainability, it is still the option available and therefore, it is important to keep it from becoming just another unrealized and manipulated term like appropriate technology or environmental quality (Jepson 2001). Sustainable development and sustainability are evolving concepts that require a constant effort to reconceptualize

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and reflect on the terms (Stephens et al. 2008; Palmer 2002). As new science and social implications are uncovered, it becomes important then to encourage on-going dialogue about sustainability. The various fields at work in sustainability share the same goals for continued support of human existence and the persistent quality of the environment (Brown et al. 1987). The suggestions of how to meet these goals overlap but are never indistinguishable, no single field can act alone (Eliot 2005; Shields, Solar & Martin 2002). Laws et al. (2004) explains that knowledge and action exist together as a desire to change the world, to interact and exchange information with ones environment, to create mutual learning through transaction and to transform values through knowledge implementation. Demanding that the lines of communication in interdisciplinary work stay open and developing concrete understandings of how people overlap and oppose one another in their views about sustainability will help to keep the concept from being used to mask the degradation of our planet and its people. The goal of this project is to assist in developing a process to unify the concept of sustainability at UCD. It is not meant to find another vague overarching definition. By listening to the narratives and disciplinary definitions of participants, the project uncovers what is valued, through the experiential and personal construction of disciplinary, and hopefully interdisciplinary, ideologies in the context of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In the presentation of the findings below, I hope to start a new dialogue that can help the participants and the programs they have invested in adapt and survive. Reflection on learning and experience creates new understandings of educational practices. Stories are embedded with individual worldviews and assumptions about what concepts like development, progress, and sustainability actually are.

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CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS As the literature search has shown, sustainability and sustainable development are terms that have been defined in a variety of ways. Sometimes this variation can be detrimental to sustainable outcomes. At other times, that variation is necessary to avoid using rigid approaches, which are unable to adapt to the complexity of the world. This incorporates the manipulation of sustainable concepts through economic practices, including capitalism and consumption that are counterintuitive to sustainability. In order to combat this misuse the literature shows that universities are important institutions of social capital that can help overcome barriers that sustainability faces. In order to overcome barriers it is necessary to understand initiatives, projects, or collaborations with indicators. This thesis uses the most commonly known indicators: environment, economy and equity, also called the three es, as domains of understanding as well as a priori coding devices to organize the findings by the (Rogers, Jalal & Boyd 2008). However, other domains were created inductively through the process of analysis. The Global Development Research Center has included two new e's: education, and evaluation. Education is defined as the life long commitment of people and organizations to create authentic choices for action intended to affect sustainability by expanding their knowledge through learning. Evaluation is the measurement of program outcomes to find indicators that allow for improvement in existing programs that show signs of success. Sustainability also requires the understanding of culture and personal relationships to environmentalism. Equity includes issues of culture through its emphasis on social justice at the local, regional and global level, but it does not seem cover the individualized level of

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experience that shapes approaches to and the exaction of sustainability. As studying up and the ethnography of public policy displays, those affected by social injustices are visible, it is the people who draft initiatives and policy regarding sustainability who are invisible and need to be focused on (Gusterson 1997; Wedel et al 2005). This includes the academic sphere. Osario et al. (2005) show that the manifestation of culture is extremely important to the ways in which development and sustainability are interpreted. Equally, cultural approaches to sustainability depend on a preselected scientific domain or cosmovision from which they are analyzed. Based on this proposition it is necessary to add one more E, Ethos. Ethos is the inclusion and reflection of personal experiences and motivating factors that have led individuals to become involved in teaching or enacting sustainability and sustainable development. As a student enrolled in an environmental education program at UCD, I felt the best place to start with this kind of reflection was with the people teaching courses on sustainability. A students ability to understand complex issues about the relationship between environment and culture is in the hands of those teaching courses, and the backgrounds from which they subjectively developed their curriculum. This became evident in conversations with other students who were engaged in courses in different disciplines or programs that emphasized different ideas about sustainability than what I experienced. The multiplicity of approaches was also directly reflected in the comments made by a key informant who expressed concern about the future of sustainability at UCD when considering unmatched ideologies between various faculty members interested in developing curriculum on topics of sustainability. There are a handful of sustainability-oriented programs at UCD, however, the College of Liberal Arts stood out. CLAS houses the sustainability minor, an

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interdisciplinary program that is open to any undergraduate in any discipline on campus. The sustainability minor was built through the hard work of various faculty involved in some aspect of sustainability in their research, teaching, and/or service. As one handout for the CLAS Sustainability Minor states, the diverse membership of the signature area has created an interdisciplinary combination of trends in science, history, philosophy and culture with which to frame sustainability (Brett et al. 2008). The university and the college have provided support for this interdisciplinary collaborative by taking the curriculum developed by faculty for the sustainability minor and elevating it into a signature area. In definition, participants define the three Es, environment, equity, and economy, similarly through the signature areas adoption of the Brundtland Report. Ideologically, individuals in the group approach each E differently and with different weights of importance. According to one key informant there is no agreed upon framework from which to develop curriculum that unifies the various ideologies present among faculty. Additionally, there has been no systematic evaluation of the program beyond the limited efforts of one administrator. Interviews conducted for this thesis with sustainability faculty and one CLAS administrator help to address this gap. This section presents a deep narrative of participants ideologies about sustainability or sustainable development. They address issues of capitalism, technology, and behavior as they pertain to the environment, economics, and equity. The interviews yield suggestions for improving green education on campus, the improvement of sustainable practices in physical operations, and highlight the proposed 6th E, Ethos to understand at least in part, the personal experiences that lead an individual to include sustainability in their work. As seen in the literature, participants hold varied emphases on each E, and at

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times emphasis on particular approaches comes from surprising sources and conflicting perspectives. All participants share a sense of urgency and recognize the importance of multiple perspectives. However, their narratives are theoretically informed by their disciplines and their experiences hold a valuable link to where their understandings of sustainability are located. The signature group, from which participants were recruited, contains membership from chemistry, biology, geography, and political science to name a few. Despite the inclusion of most departments that are relevant to the topic of sustainability, the minor was actually built out of the anthropology department. In a conversation with a former UCD professor from anthropology, I learned that this has been nearly ten years in the making and that the foundation rests on anthropology's sustainable development track in its Master's program. The end goal was to create the sustainability minor, then a degree program, and eventually a PhD. However, a lack of financial and human capital (labor) prevented that from becoming a reality. Ultimately, development plans for the minor were presented to the larger group that made up the Sustainability Signature Area to design the program. This former employee expressed that this was something that the transition from minor to PhD may never happen and that already the minor and the signature area were facing some large barriers. These barriers included the lack of financial support from upper administration, barriers of trust between professors outside of the program cross-listing courses without approval and other members leaving the group to start other projects that seemed counterproductive to the original goals for the group. In addition to what the informant called, perennial problems' there was frustration with the construction of the group's structure which led to decreased participation. He explained that in the development of the group's parameters, the turnover in upper administration contributed to a lack of trust.

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Additionally, the ideas or projects with the most funding were emphasized by the university, as models for what sustainability should look like on campus. Finally, this professor cited the tension created by the fundamental bickering over the definition of sustainability which left out points that other members felt were important to consider including fetishism, consumption and human connection. With the urging of one prominent faculty member the group agreed on using the Brundtland Report as its base for framing sustainability (Brett et al. 2008). The agreement on using this definition however, does not capture the depth of ideas carried by participants in the signature area. The fundamental lack of agreement despite compromise lays the foundation for why it is important to look at how principal actors approach sustainability. Participants Introductions I approached five key players who were involved in sustainability at UCD. Four have taught in CLAS and been involved with the Sustainability Signature Area. One worked outside of CLAS, however this person was occasionally identified on attendance reports from Sustainability Signature Area meetings. Additionally this particular participant was identified by the others as a very visible and prominent person in sustainable initiatives at UCD. All of the participants are actively involved to some degree in sustainability through physical or social science. The level of involvement differs between outright activism, applied research, and academic knowledge production. The blend of ideas that exist between participants illustrates the different understandings as well as overlapping ways in which sustainability is talked about. It is important to note that in these interviews the disciplinary perceptions of participants seem to connect to individual life experiences that influenced them to enter their respective fields of which they are identified by in this thesis. To help understand the context of their

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statements in the sections that follow an abbreviation of their discipline is used. Greg Cronin (BIO) was chosen as a representative of biology. Greg is an associate professor and has served as the chair of his department. His interests include applied aquatic ecology and aquaponics. He is actively involved with sustainability on campus including the implementation of sustainable infrastructures on campus, and is an advocate for community building. Greg is involved with the sustainability student group in planning the UCD sustainability fair and serves on the Auraria Campus Sustainability Advisory, as well as the UCD Chancellors Task Force for Sustainability. Steve Koester (ANTH) is the participant selected from anthropology. He is also a tenured professor who at the time of the study was serving as the anthropology departments chair and as the director of the sustainability minor. He has a history of studying social inequality and health. His work has centered on the spread of intravenous/blood born disease and the economic and environmental impacts faced by populations in the Caribbean. The selected representative from public policy is Kathryn Cheever (POLI). She is a tenured professor who has interests in public policy making, interagency collaboration, urban administration, administrative law, and the role of communitybased organizations in addressing urban social problems. She has taught courses including politics, public policy, and leadership, U.S. health policy, politics of the budgetary process, research methodology, conflict resolution, and public consent building. Kathryn has also taught courses for the sustainability minor and is the current director of the Center for New Directions. Rafael Moreno (GEOG), the final representative from CLAS, is from geography. He is an associate professor with fourteen years experience teaching, including courses in the sustainability minor. His research interests are in natural

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resources management, land use planning, sustainable development, and geographic information science and technology. This includes the use of Open Source Software and Web-based Geographic Information Systems. Rafael has had administrative and applied experience as researcher for the National Institute for Forest, Livestock, and Agriculture Research and as the director of the National Center for Disciplinary Research in Conservation and Improvement of Forest Ecosystems in Mexico. The final participant is Anu Ramaswami. She was identified by others as a necessary person to speak with outside of CLAS in the engineering department. She is a tenured professor whose interests are in environmental engineering, bioremediation and sustainability. She has been nominated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be a part of the International Expert Group for the Global Science Forum GSF-OECD Mapping Activity and she is the director of both the NSF funded IGERT program and the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems. In the sections to follow participants ideologies about economics, equity, environment, and the universitys ability to implement sustainable initiatives and environmental education are relayed though the summarization of narratives. This means that the narratives, while edited, are unpacked for the reader, and include more detail from conversations to more deeply understand the narrative (Hammersley & Atkinson 1983). There are condensed participant profiles (Appendices F-J) that highlight key statements or points from the findings section. The miniature profiles do not include summaries of the ethos section because I felt that condensing them beyond the initial analysis would take away from the distinctiveness and personality of each participants statement about ethos. Narratives of participants are presented in sections starting with definition of sustainability, followed by the primary Es, economics, equity and environment, as well as the additional Es, education and evaluation. The chapter concludes with the

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proposed sixth E, ethos. Each section outlines participants ideologies with discussions of how they are similar or dissimilar and which theories emerge from their discussions. The names of the participants are used to identify statements or summaries of their narratives. Narratives are followed by summaries that relate ideologies back to common themes in literature as well as critical thoughts about their positions. What Does Sustainability Mean to You? When asked what sustainability meant to them, participants seemed to share thoughts and concerns regarding the Brundtland Report, the act of defining sustainability, and the outcome of using sustainable development in public discourse. Participants shared the same basic ideology about sustainability, and agreed that the term sustainability was too vague and allowed for misuse. Anu Ramaswami (ENG) called trying to define sustainability, the valley of death. Participants agreed that sustainable development was the better term but acknowledged the lack of understanding between actors due to the implications of contextually defining development, and needs. Many of the participants identified the Brundtland definition indirectly as the basis of sustainability and simultaneously recognized sustainability as being an inappropriate and meaningless term to use. What becomes meaningful is not the term itself but its application. The representative from public policy stated My sense is that it is very much that what we pass onto future generations is of a quality that's at least as good if not better than what we have now. And that our policies improve the quality of life, our implementation of programs improve rather than degrade. She also recognized the diversity of the topic stating that most disciplines have a common goal for sustainability, but how that goal is achieved is not always the same. This was mirrored by Kathryn Cheevers (POLI) ideas about how to include

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the community when dealing with different approaches. She believed that communities required certain things, needs if you will, and that disciplines needed to understand each other and work collaboratively to provide more sustainable opportunities to communities. All of the participants felt that other disciplines understood their ideologies but in the same breath acknowledged the limitations of their disciplinary understanding in the application of sustainability. The representative from engineering expressed that sustainability as a term carried too many meanings and that there were too many definitions to go through. She explained that in her program, they broadly understand the Brundtland definition and they broadly recognize the three Es, economy, equity, and environment. However, Anu (ENG) clarified that her program focused more on Social Ecological Infrastructure, concentrating on the ecological and social applications of infrastructure in rural and urban environments. She explained that this was more time intensive than the philosophical aspects of other frameworks used in sustainable development. She believed that within this framework the concept of sustainable development was easier to understand as a species oriented concept stating: If we say we care about biodiversity and the environment it is always posed in the context of, we need better stock of medicines or plants, or we are vulnerable and we need all this biodiversity and equal systems services. It is always services for humans, lets be up front about it, its about human development and everything else is to support it. Ideas like this one are technocentric, they do not discuss behavior but utility for the persistence of the human species (Palmer 1998). Anu (ENG) believes this idea needs to be understood in order to define development before understanding sustainability, or people will not agree on what one word means because you didnt agree on the other. She identified Amartya Sens Capabilities Approach (CA) as the theoretical

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framework that is used in her courses to understand the dichotomy of technocratic tenets built on economics and the construction of systems that improved human lives. The emergence of the capabilities approach as a central theory was not accounted for in the initial design of the research and deserves some explanation. The capabilities approach is the aimed at t (Clark 2005). Its basic assumption is that to determine freedoms of development we must judge quality of life by paying attention to cultural factors and social convention in order to determine what people are able to achieve (Sen 1990). Sen believes capabilities are opportunities (i.e. networks), and the means (i.e. income) to achieve desired goals, and the freedom of choice to pick the necessary means available to act on opportunities. Sen (1990) states that the approach can assist in identifying the possibility that two persons can have very different substantial opportunities even when they have exactly the same set of means. He provides an example of a disabled persons lack of capability in comparison to an able-bodied person despite having the same income and other means. He shows that the disabled person cannot be judged as having an equal advantage with the same opportunities as an able-bodied individual. Essentially capabilities are influenced by many forms including physical, legal, class or social position, and environment to name a few, and are subject to public reasoning and scrutiny in contextual settings (Sen 1985). Because of these contextual circumstances, Sen also states that CA is open and broad, that there should not be a list of fixed capabilities. Although others invested in CA, believe that there are universal capabilities across cultures that can inform a list (Nussbaum 1999). For others creating a list is too theoretical and dismisses the introduction of new capabilities by community members (Sen 1990). to traditional

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At some level it would seem that the concept of allowing people to seek whatever freedom they want, regardless of its relevance to what they need or have, is counter intuitive. This is particularly true for sustainability. You wouldnt argue for poor populations right to have proper nutrition and equally argue for a CEOs right to reduce safety standards or pollution practices. CA does have a disclaimer, capabilities are individualistic and do not talk about larger forces of equity and fairness at a global structural scale (Sen 1985). That being said Sen and his peers, including Anu, recognize the limitations of technocratic approaches in disciplines that use CA, like economics. In a presentation to the World Bank, Amartya Sen stated that the resolution to inequality and public goods will almost certainly call for institutions that go beyond the capitalist market economy. (Schweickart 2010). This includes behavioral shifts that encourage individuals to reflect on their sense of responsibility in order to sacrifice, ration, and labor for what is needed (Newell 2011; Smith 2011). This would amount to the necessary change in societies approach to issues of freedom, humanity, equality, and sustainability. The representative from anthropology resonated with the ecocentric ideology of behavioral change. For him sustainability was not just for human utility, it was changing behavior by living within our means, by reducing consumption, recognizing the limitations of the planet, and recognizing the disparity between developed and less developed countries. He believed that what came first was the identification of cultural needs and then pragmatic solutions, an interesting contrast to approaches taken in engineering. Where Anu (ENG) acknowledged that communities have needs and invite others in to meet those needs, infrastructure should be created first and communities can assign values to the infrastructure latter. In contrast to other participants Steve Koester (ANTH) also felt that people at the university were not on the same page and that the definition of

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sustainability came down to ones discipline. The term as he put it was as ambiguous as the word green. Everyone is green these terms could mean almost anything. Because of this, he was interested in creating a semester long seminar for faculty asking: What is sustainability? The intention of the seminar, much like this thesis, was not to set one standard definition at UCD; it was meant to create a working outline that solidifies a mutual understanding between disciplines that prevents any misuse of the term in practices or research at UCD. The participant from geography believed that the term sustainability has been overused and abused in order to continue unsustainable practices. He believed that people have lost the understanding of what sustainable development is. Rafeal Moreno (GEOG) agreed with Anu from engineering that development needed to be better understood in order to grapple with the ethical issues of what constitutes a need. Because of the orientation towards human development, he felt that sustainability and sustainable development should then be separated and we should be talking about sustainable development to deal with the larger issues of our sustainable future, including: consumption, capitalism and contextual needs. All of the participants discussed the necessity of defining development and needs as they pertain to sustainability or sustainable development. They felt that by defining these concepts it would ensure intergenerational benefit by sustaining the world for the needs of future generations. Nearly all participants identified the topic of sustainability as important to future generations and cited their personal desire to pass on a better future to their kids. They also acknowledged in some way that a continuation of an over consumptive middle class American life was not a better future. This general supposition led to a discussion of the Brundtland Reports use to define sustainable development as our ability to meet present and future needs without undue harm.

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One key informant expressed that the report is a broad and vague definition that contributes to the discussion of hegemony that allows the most involved interests to benefit by keeping concepts vague. In essence, nothing changes. Attempts at sustainability remain weak or shallow and continue the social status quo. Rafael (GEOG) echoed this point expressing that The Brundtland definition has value in the literature, but it is a political definition. Something so vague that it is something and nothing at the same time. It is something everyone can ascribe to. He expressed the terms limitations by stating that every international conference since the Brundtland Reports inception has been held to create action steps and they have failed. This is detailed further in the literature review (see page 38 for discussion), though there are a series of factors that seem to contribute to the inefficient development of an action plan. A few examples include: a history of absent voices from the local level, lack of transparency in policy and decision making processes that have led to the exclusion of less developed countries, and limited economic interests of super powers and their refusal to participate in global environmental initiatives (Fisher 2010). Rafael from geography believes that most other faculty members understand what he is saying and they agree on the issues most prominent in sustainability or sustainable development. As was the case with other participants, Greg (BIO) identified with the Brundtland report through his desire to pass on a better world to his own children. He did state that for many, the concept of sustainable development was an oxymoron. However, he understood its purpose as a way to improve human life. He expressed that initially he saw sustainability in ecological terms as an issue of carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is the maximum, equilibrium number of organisms of a particular species that can be supported indefinitely in a given environment (Carrying Capacity

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Dictionary.com 2000). However, through organizational sense making, he acknowledged that as he became more involved with other faculty members in different disciplines, including anthropology and public policy, and saw how social implications affect sustainability. Once I got into sustainability I was originally interested in it as an ecologist and I always viewed sustainability as a carrying capacity issue. So its sort of an ecologist definition. But once I got involved in it with some of your colleagues in Anthropology and such I started realizing the importance of the social, the health, the food. And all the other aspects of a sustainable society. Ultimately this transmission of ideologies led him to new research interests aimed at improving human and non-human systems. Despite some buy-in for the Brundtland definition, most participants identified its vague and political quality. This was reflected in the emergence of dependency theory in discussions with three participants. Rafael (GEOG), Steve (ANTH) and Anu (ENG), highlighted the historical position of the core and periphery when addressing sustainable development, consumption and the limitation of resources between westernized countries and those that are less developed. Narratives reveal another emergent set of critical economic theories including world systems theory and dependency theory. The political implications put forward by Frank (1989) and Wallerstein (1976) regarding globalization and the relationships between Western/Northern/Developed and Eastern/Southern/Developing countries emerged through the beliefs and experiences of participants who had grown up outside of the United States or had been involved in applied projects in developing countries. This global experience provided them with direct knowledge of economic, social, and environmental disparities. It also enabled them to pose critical questions about sustainability as a context dependent concept, recognizing that how we

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experience sustainability is dependent on our position in this relationship. As one participant asked: How can we (the North) impose sustainable livelihoods on the South? Or, how can we combat exploitation of the environment in the face of globalized human aspirations? Ultimately the group of respondents recognized the Brundtland report as the primary definition used by most to understand sustainable development. The general acceptance of this definition was consistent with one key informants description of the sustainability signature areas adoption of the report in their mission. For many in the sample the prospect of using the Brundtland report as the framing definition at UCD emphasizes sustainable development over sustainability. While sustainability is a term most commonly known to the public, their belief was that the two are in fact separate. This being said the critique of the definition was present in their ideologies when using critical language to describe it. Words like oxymoron, vague, political, abuse and overuse show how participants are leery of mainstream green concepts that are in danger of being hijacked by the economic and political elites who benefit from green washing. While the participants agreed on the general understanding of sustainability, when discussing the root action towards sustainability, participant responses varied, though not always by their discipline. This contrast of agreement and variation is important because it distinguishes the difference between ideology and action. Participants were clearly influenced by interdisciplinary relationships already; however sustainable action remains limited to discipline specific methods. A prime example of this comes from the ideological agreement that the concept of needs and the ethics of development need to be better understood. The suggestions for how to do so varied from reducing the influence of capitalism and its contextual relation to location, policy implementation to encourage community involvement, the use of

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technology and infrastructure for time intensive solutions, and addressing behavioral changes as they relate to economic utility. These solutions are further split between a broad ideological debate regarding technocentrism and ecocentrism when working towards sustainability. This split was most prominent between participants from CLAS and the participant who worked in another college. The acceptance of the Brundtland Report is convenient; participants feel like they share the same understanding and seem more interested in unifying their applied approach to sustainability. While they believe others in the group understand their disciplinary position, they are not completely trusting of other disciplines ideas which leads to fundamental differences in ideology that prohibit an agreement on how to approach sustainability and on what scale. Ultimately, participants believe, or at least hope, they agree about what sustainability means, when in actuality they are not. While the group exhibited a difference of opinion, they were all interested in the positive promotion of sustainability. The frustration they exhibit is due to communication, jargon, the focus of program and its future. The tension between the ideologies may actually provide some room for reflection when addressing barriers. Their differences have the potential to contribute to the construction a working framework that enhances the freedom of increased human capabilities while diminishing of the harmful and unsustainable practices of a capitalist economy. The conversation about these contrasting ideologies carried into the discussion of economics, which seemed to be (with the exception of one participant) the most discussed concept by the group. Economics Economics carried a varied weight among participants. Surprisingly the participant from geography and the representative from anthropology had the most to say about economics. Engineering and public policy left it nearly untouched, while

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Gregs (BIO) narrative did not turn to economic discussions. The common thread between those who spoke about economics seemed to center on consumption and capitalism as negative variables impacting sustainability. This led to an interesting improvisation of theory that once again uses critical economic theories to inform the concept of sustainability within CLAS. For those who placed less emphasis on economics in the interview, their positions were similar in that they felt there was a contextual aspect to how people place higher emphasis on economics in order to survive. When asked how she would explain sustainability to someone, Anu (ENG) expressed that to understand sustainability you need to understand development and to do so she uses the Capabilities Approach in her teachings. According to Amartya Sen (1983), development is framed as the freedom to enhance human capabilities. With in this definition she stated that it is not for anyone else to define sustainability for another person and Why cant a kid in Bangladesh think only about economic development, why should he be forced to think about the environment? This is not to say that Anu does not see the conflict of sustainable interests in this open framework. Historically, CA approaches development through the bridged philosophies of Adam Smith and Karl Marx (Clark 2006) who both limit the inclusion of the environment in their philosophy regarding development, leaving a focus on cultural and economic enhancement. This means that development includes human centered abilities like being able to eat, provide energy, enjoy cultural tradition, and potentially the inclusion of environmental appreciation (Sen 1990). This point was also made by Anu that while Sen leaves out non-human entities as a part of sustainable development the openness of the theory allows for the inclusion of non-human systems if they are in someones personal definition of development.

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Kathryn Cheever (POLI) pointed out that science no matter how good doesnt always lead to good policy, particularly economic policy. Policy makers can be swayed by other interests to make decisions that lead to unsustainable outcomes. One example she provided was the emphasis on extractive industries like mining for energy economies that claim to provide jobs to populations desperate for income. I guess from a policy perspective, the piece I find most concerning is that good science doesn't lead to good policy. Policy makers have a lot of other demands, so we may know that extractive industry isn't particularly good for communities, but communities are desperate for jobs and this is something that they know, they've done before. They ignore the environmental degradation and the health problems it may cause for them, in the short term my children need to eat, I need a job. And trying to help people understand we can't ignore those issues, we have to find alternatives for these families or there won't be sustainability. If there only alternative is mining that's what they'll turn to. They have to another way to make a living and how do we find those for communities. and as leaders in communities This is for her a short-term means to an end. Ignoring the environment is irresponsible and public policy needs to find ways to educate people that environmental issues cannot be ignored. For her alternative approaches are priorities. In this explanation economics and production is tied into behavior and ecology. From a public policy perspective, she provided an example of this linkage through the resistance to organics in agriculture, explaining that some farmers see organics as scientific mumbo jumbo. The resistant response from farmers to sustainable alternatives in her experience was weve always done it this way. She detailed that Some of it is going to be an ongoing educational process for rural parts of the state who still see organics and all of that sort of thing as scientific mumbo jumbo that we don't need to bother with. Farmers believe that they can can rip those fields apart and dump seed and run sprinkler systems and it will go on forever until the state pulls the plug. This had

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already happened in her experience, without any thought, on the part of government officials or farmers, towards alternatives. Kathryn believed that people are unwilling to make these changes because they are afraid they wont be able to meet their needs. These needs, in her opinion were varied and based on access; make a living, being able to eat, or sending their kids to school. What is interesting is that from this example the inclusion of psychological properties, in this case fear, inform the politics of ecology. She believed that the basis of reconciling economics and behavior towards ecology is to embed a sense of responsibility in graduates of public policy programs to keep conversations going and find ways to work and produce in harmony with the environment when they go out into the workforce. Economics emerged as an important concept for Steve (ANTH) and Rafael (GEOG), sharing most of their ideas about capitalism and consumption. Both recognized basic concepts of human needs illustrated in CA but many of their thoughts fit within political economy (PE), dependency theory (DT), and world systems theory (WST). Their perspectives on needs and consumption are based on the locality of a person or society not just geographically but in ranks of class. Their ideas about capitalism deal with its dispersion and influence on developed and developing countries individually and as parts to a global economic whole. Steve (ANTH) was well versed in political economy at one time in his research and had a lot to say about consumption. He expressed that the West (defined by WST as North America, Europe or any other developed region) has consumed its share through capitalist economies and the only way to turn things around is to change peoples behaviors. He was not optimistic about the prospect of this because developed societies like the U.S. are unwilling to make even small changes to reduce consumption, therefore it will take catastrophes to wake people up

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to the limitations of the world. Yet, it is seen in global warming models that underdeveloped nations that will suffer the consequences of these catastrophes, including rising sea levels, due to their lack of wealth and ability to provide relief in disasters (Rogers et al. 2008;). This idea was mirrored by Rafael (GEOG) who believed people needed to experience the difficulty of systems provision (water, food, etc.) but that it would take a larger slap to the face to change behaviors. If I hit you in your pocket in your wallet, then you begin to think it makes more sense to change. But even worse is when all of a sudden you cannot eat, or now you cannot have a house or now you cannot have a job. Then you are going to start wondering, wow what is life about Steve (ANTH) expressed feeling defeated by what Appadurai (1991) calls imagined lives in globalization. He explained that the global economy creates new needs everyday, when people see an ad for a Lexus all over the world, they imagine these things, and they want them. He continued saying that the world could never support these new demands a point reflected by Rogers, Jalal & Boyd (2008) who estimated it would take five Earths to provide the American middle class lifestyle to the world. He also pointed out that this was confounded by the efforts of corporate and government interests to try to make sustainability into a growth industry in and of its self. Steve recognized the position of large interests to increase growth to provide jobs to a country with a 9% unemployment rate, but also points to the contradiction of the same interests calling for society to be sustainable, and as Rafael (GEOG) said sustainability requires little to no growth. Steve continued by discussing the refusal to acknowledge issues of class in the United States and abroad. He challenged the economic model of Kuznets Curve (Dasgupta et al. 2002), expressing that it is not the poorest people who are responsible for pollution. Rather the upper class, the Americans who count in terms of economics, are the ones to

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blamea class that lives better than any society in the history of mankind. He expressed that these interests are the ones protected by the ideological refusal of climate change and that they will do anything to prevent class based changes from changing their way of life. The underlying message is the disjuncture of human needs between those who have and those who have not, the North/West and the South/East. The rectification of this global class split is essential for sustainability (Brown et al. 1987). Steve continued the discussion about equality and needs in the next section. Rafael (GEOG) was passionate about the concept of economics, immediately stating that the bottom of the issue for sustainability is capitalism. The problem as he pointed out, is that capitalism is based on growth and profit, which is unrealistic for sustainability because we live in a closed system where nothing can grow forever. Nothing can grow forever in a closed system and we live in a closed system. So capitalism by definition as we know it in the 20th century is not sustainable. Period. And unfortunately we dont have any other socioeconomic arrangement to substitute capitalism. So we are talking about sustainability as sustaining capitalism, its not going to happen. Whatever it may look like in the future it will have to be very different from the monopolies of the 19th and 20th century. He talked about a class assignment he gives his students where they have to watch fifteen minutes of financial channels every day for a month. The programs his students watch provide a glimpse at the constant discourse to create more jobs to fight a zero growth economy, for him it is a direct reflection of capitalisms requirement of growth. He stated that at some point, we cannot grow the economy, companies, universities which will shock people and force them to think about what life really means. Rafael echoed what others said by talking about the need to change behaviors we can talk about the economics of savingsbut people need to change the way

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they think. He used Subaru as an example of how sustainability is manipulated by corporate interests. Subaru can recycle whole cars but that doesnt address the real issue, and that is we shouldnt even be producing cars. We need to get people and goods into mass transit, trains. He expressed that this contradiction is true of any industry whether cars, food, or clothing expressing that a company can claim green practices like organic production but the real issue is that production should be local to reduce environmental effects of transport. In his opinion, not addressing the real problems leaves us arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Several participants in CLAS were critical of capitalist systems that encourage consumptive practices that are counter-intuitive to sustainability. This collective ideology seems to be nurtured by critical theories that inform political ecology. In the discussion of economics, the emphasis on location and class as contextually assisting or impeding the ability to address vulnerabilities and meet needs is in line with situated relationships discussed in political economy, world systems, and dependency theories. These theories along with participant narratives highlight the importance of ecocentric ideas of behavioral change and the reduction of greed. Three participants focused on consumption and capitalisms growth requirements as problematic to sustainability. Narratives touch on the expansion of markets through what Appadurai (1991) calls imagined lives. Participants who discuss needs versus desires do not limit their critique of access to developing countries; it stands for developed countries trade of rights to health and wellbeing for consumption and false security. Therefore, a globally equitable lifestyle does not include consumer luxuries. However, others do not share the same views. Other participants discussion of carrying capacity and capabilities approach show a distinct divergence of understandings between disciplines but primarily

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between colleges. Carrying capacity is informed by Malthusian economics, if you change the technology and you change the carrying capacity. This is technocentric in theory and does not alter the landscape of global consumption. CA acknowledges peoples desire to include nature in their construct of a need but mostly as a resource for human utility. The spiritual or personal relationship to natural surroundings and the support of nature for natures sake is not just absent from technocentric approaches it is outright rejected. Anu (ENG) believes that if it is important to someone to include nature for natures sake as a freedom then it should be. However, during interviews her apprehension to do so was apparent in her responses and body language. Nature was utility. The purpose of this constructed concept of nature, as utility, was not to support the degradation of the environment but instead to support the abolition of poverty. The issue of social justice is at the root of this philosophy yet sustainable outcomes are not realistic if the environment remains a passive background. I believe that it becomes hard to trust a theory without a framework that accounts for greed and manipulation. To avoid exploitation of freedoms it is important to bridge the expressed economic philosophies across disciplines and colleges and discuss them in relationship to other approaches like environment and equity. Equity When talking about equity most of the participants discussed needs, however in engineering there was an extra emphasis on equity of knowledge. In political science, the participant touched on the concept of needs but focused more on the effects of having a sense of community to produce shared opportunity. All participants through the course of the interviews acknowledged intergenerational equity (equity between generations) as a part of their philosophy, mostly because they themselves have children

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Kathryn (POLI): I want to pass on something that's better, I know that the environment I grew up in rural Kansas, was a pretty clean kind of place. Chemical farming wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is today partly because if there was any it was too expensive. The need for it wasn't there people didn't perceive that it was important and you grew vegetable gardens and things tasted better and why wouldn't I want that for my own children and now my grandchildren. Greg (BIO): After that I became a parent, and so I certainly want my children and their children and their children to enjoy a healthy planet. And so there's that personal stake in it. I myself also want to enjoy a healthy planet. However, the discussions seemed to inadvertently focus on intragenerational equity (equity across the same generation), which admittedly disproved my personal expectation that intragenerational equity was not a primary concern to knowledge producers. I realize now that it is a personal concern and it is embedded in their work, however as one participant stated it is an ugly ethical issue that no one wants to touch. Once we get there (defining sustainable development), we get into many ugly philosophical, moral and ethical issues that we dont want to grapple with. Such as the way we conceptualize what is a good life, what is a need and those kinds of things are too deep and we dont want to change that right? And thats the problem of sustainable development. Despite the acknowledgement of intragenerational equity, it is not as present in scientific discourse and articles aimed at applied work because it is not as easy to understand and sign on with as the concept of saving the future of our children. In engineering that ethics of what qualifies a need was avoided by keeping philosophies centered on time-focused infrastructure; however, the emphasis on building an equitable future was on bridging types of knowledge. Anu (ENG) stated

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that any community that invites a group in to help them has a set of needs, whether it is provision of water, energy, or economic development. Experts who access local knowledge to inform the meaning and value of the infrastructure they build, increase the chances of local needs being met. She provided the example of building a fence, If you go to a community and build a fence they will tell you what it does to them, they will say if it prevents social interaction, if it keeps animals out of communities or protects them from hunters. However, she also explained the importance of systems knowledge stating that we often overlook it in favor of local level knowledge, but both are in fact valuable. She acknowledged that there are limitations to expert knowledge and that the issue of meeting needs is an issue of appreciating other types of knowledge. Anu explained that We often paint the local level as happy sustainable communities and we are the evil people trying to make them unsustainable. I dont think that is necessarily true, they already have aspirations, so no one is in a vacuum. She explained that tribal communities are trying to bring kids back to traditional livelihoods by providing amenities in villages. This is a point shared by Kathryn (POLI) who discussed the same issue of cultural sustainability in small Colorado mountain towns losing their children to developed cities. A lot of the smaller communities across Colorado really worry about whether their going to have anybody living there in a hundred years. And not because the environment fell apart but because their children are moving away. And if there are no jobs the kids don't come back from college. The justification of this development is an interesting contrast to what Steve (ANTH) and Rafael (GEOG) discussed in the last section regarding the production of new needs. These new needs and existing aspirations are created by capitalist interests to fuel consumption growth and profit. Anu (ENG) went on to identify needs or barriers as context dependent.

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She believed that sustainability should not be defined in the field because every community knows what it is and what it is not. In this belief, framing peoples needs is only context dependent; improving human capabilities means different things in different locations. In the U.S. obesity is a problem and so we focus on infrastructure that promotes walking, and biking. Yet, people in Bangladesh who are bicycling and walking face overexertion. So somewhere one thing is life threatening and in another place it meets a need. The root of equitably meeting needs for ENG is in prioritization, identifying what is important and what is immediate, something that she explains is different for every community. Greg from biology expressed his ideas about equity as also being able to help find ways for people to meet their immediate needs. Greg was incredibly interested in sharing how his work was influenced by art, something that will be discussed further in a separate section; he provided an experiential example that tied into his ideology working towards equity. He described his need to do something altruistic for a community that wanted help. He signed up to volunteer for the organization JPHRO in Haiti after the earthquake in January of 2011. Through his work, he helped rebuild homes, provide healthcare and find a way to amplify the voices of local people. He began work on a PSA project, recording rappers in the camps singing about the spread of Cholera and how to prevent it. Greg expressed how the use of art was so powerful to help combat issues of health and meet the needs identified by those who wanted to get their voice into the world. His narrative shows the paradox of not being able to have his own needs met to complete the project due to the restrictive policy barriers at JPHRO. And so I wrote the proposal, submitted it and it was turned down for reasons I'm still not clear about. And so once that solution was nixed and I wasn't able to follow that path, I did end up leaving anyway and

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lived on my own in Porto Prince for four days and recorded rappers. This ended up being a great experience cause it was the first time I really had the freedom to walk the streets of Porto Prince get to know the Hatians a little better and see what life in Porto Prince was really like and I got to live in the IDP camp for a couple of days. Ultimately this forced him to leave the organization to find the freedom to work with local people to contribute to the welfare of the displaced. Rafael (GEOG) was more critical of the concept of needs when discussing equity. He stated that the term needs and improvement was a part of the major frameworks and indicators of sustainability including the Brundtland report, But what do those words even mean? Similarly, to Anu (ENG), he expressed that defining them is a sticky, ugly, philosophical and moral endeavor. How do we conceptualize a good life? Or what a need really is. For him it was contextual and passively expressed through class and economics. For some, he stated, it is a threecar garage and for others it is having something to eat. Nevertheless, these concepts in his opinion were too deep so people avoid going there. In order to address an equitable approach to meeting human needs Rafael (GEOG) acknowledged that the social sciences are necessary to determine cultural values and behaviors. Yah we are going to need engineers because we are going to have to create systems or infrastructures. You know we are going need philosophers to see why we think the way we think? Why do we develop the values that we have? But sometimes the social sciences tend to be ignored. People say you know there are so many more important things than trying to understand the value of a culture or whatever, ha thats for latter. Unfortunately, those people have to understand that at the end of the day you can create the most incredible systems, solar panels and windmill wind turbines or whatever. But if people dont change their values, their behavior those arent going to have no impact. Accessing anthropology, philosophy, and sociology to understand these things is the

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only way to approach people who live in 3,000 square foot homes and to find ways to take them out of their comfort zones and put them back in connection with the natural world. He believed that a reconnection would get people to think about the world and develop new values. Steve (ANTH) shared the same feeling regarding finding ways for people to understand the world they live in and recognize how they define quality of life because the growth orientation we embrace in the U.S. isnt sustainable. He discusses the contrast of desires even between counties in Colorado, citing his own experience of choosing to live in a less condensed neighborhood in Boulder, which meets his needs to be around natural environments. He described the opportunity to see a great horned owl and its mate on his property, something he wouldnt see if they had chosen to live somewhere else. He compared this with his experiences driving through Douglas County where in contrast to Boulder there was no investment in open space. His acknowledgement of his own prioritized needs. I have this conversation with my kid all the time and we compare living in Boulder to living in other counties that are rapidly growing, sorry if I offend people, but where's the open space? Boulder, all jokes aside, started investing in open space a long time ago. Would I rather have that or would I rather be conveniently located to a ridiculous mall or be densely packed in with lots of other people and nothing but more houses? The point is I think values are really important, I think changing, where we look for our satisfaction is necessary. Steve also provided a great narrative from his experiences in St. Lucia while writing his dissertation to describe the contrast of needs. He describes working in St. Lucia and watching a group of hippies from all over the world sail in and set up an appropriate technology fair. Appropriate technology meaning the use of small scale, labor intensive, energy efficient, environmentally sound and locally controlled modes of technology or operation (Roseland 1997). He asked some of his friends to join him when he went to the fair and he emphasized their low economic status

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These men were poor, rural proletariats living in wooden shacks who worked as laborers on the banana plantation and if they were lucky went to Florida to cut sugar cane. They used the money made in Florida to slowly, over years of work, turn shacks into concrete homes. There were two water pipes and no electricity. So we went to the fair and these hippies had laid out all these cool technologies, a hurricane resistant house made from bamboo, a windmill that generated electricity for a TV, composting pit toilets, etc. Im with my friends and I say What do you think? and my friend says Fuck this, I want what you got. I was stunned because I realized he was absolutely right and at the same time its absolutely impossible. For him this candid response to appropriate technology was a slap in the face, he was forced to acknowledge the inequity of access between the countries he worked in and the country he was from in a new way. It was clear that people from St. Lucia deserved more the problem as he shared, is that the world literally cannot provide that same lifestyle to everyone. He cites Lester Browns (1987) statistics of how long we would live if the world did fully share in that lifestyle and stated, If we have global warming now, how much worse would it get. The narrative is a direct example of what Ortner (1984) describes as the researcher coming off the observant ship and standing on the experiential shore of improvised praxis. Steve was confronted with the reality of expectation, desire, need, and context. He believed that there were two sides to his experience that were difficult to reconcile 1) that of course the people of St. Lucia deserve to have better lives and 2) for that to happen it means westernized societies need to give things up. For Steve the answer is with the worlds youth, he believed that to achieve this change it has to be a behavioral shift that is taken on by young people, this for him was critical. The narrative acknowledges the naivety of westernized sustainable action particularly in less developed countries (Rios Osario et al. 2005). Understanding complex and contextual needs in the face of a global economy has emerged as important to creating sustainable outcomes now that equity includes an individuals

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ability to meet more than basic needs. This idea was shared among many participants, what stood out from this was Kathryn Cheevers inclusion of how communities are impacted by predetermined or perceived needs. Her work as the director of a research center put her in a position to understand the relationships in local governments that address the needs of their communities. However, when asked which voices were present and which were missing when decisions were made she stated that often the softer voices of the people it will impact are left out. She provided an example of the increased focus on mining in Colorado, where the current population is at a crossroads of needing employment but whose environment and living conditions may be severely impacted by the push for provision of minerals to the rest of the country particularly the east coast. She explained that mining interests are present, policy makers and certainly the large environmental groups are at the table, but those it will impact in the long term, in ways policy cant predict thirty years from now, are not. It is a situation where Coloradoans may be steamrolled by corporate interests in the same ways that Steve Koesters research describes St. Lucians lack of empowerment as their resources are manipulated for production to meet the demands of western consumption. To minimize the damages Kathryns program places undergraduates in low income areas to work with community members to help get them access to knowledge and tools to assist them in meeting their needs, to assist them in making sure they are heard, and to encourage them to know they arent alone. She didnt believe that things would go back to simpler times but that there was an opportunity for people to be more thoughtful. She believed using communities as a mouthpiece was a useful vehicle for making changes. For her the rugged individualist ideology was unsustainable and seemed lonely. She cited Daniel Kemmis (2009) and his

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reflection of rural Montana People that didn't get along all that well, knew that they had to have barns for their animals when winter started to set in and everyone would help. And you have the teetotalers and the people that imbibed heavily and the staunch Sunday church goers who really were offended by fowl language and the mule skinners who were anything but polite in their conversational style but they still worked together and they knew that they could count on each other. People who typically never mixed due to different sensibilities made sure to help people because they knew things had to be done to survive as a community. Kathryn shared her own experience building a community in her neighborhood. I feel very blessed to live on a block where thats the case. We have our 35th annual block party this last labor day, its been going on for ever and the women on the block have a thing called the Wednesday Whiners. We get together once a month for conversation and its women my age and older and young moms with babies and everything in between and with a sort of diversity of backgrounds. This group had a history of helping its members through a variety of life events. She described a young couple with twins who travel to violent areas of Mexico because they were in the Foreign Service, and how the group had come together to assist the family by creating a procession of women to act as mothers and grandmothers to provide them with support. She also recalled how the group had come together to help one of their own through cancer and eventually death. She explained how they had Seven days of potlucks at her home when she demanded to leave the hospital, its painful to think about but it was wonderful for her. Her garden was blooming so she got to see that and all of her friends were around. She made it clear that this type of engagement made the world a better place to live in and posed how do you build that type of community block by block, neighborhood

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by neighborhood? Her biggest concern in building these communities was that men needed to be involved. She felt that men share the same needs that women have, but the macho stereotype helps to ensure that they dont always have the opportunities to have those needs met. Through her experiences, it was clear that gender equity and community building were key pieces to ensuring an equitable access to meeting needs, an idea shared and promoted in the UN Millennium Goals (2010) for sustainable development. For Kathryn (POLI), increasing communication, empowerment, and a sense of belonging sustainability is a much easier goal to meet. As a whole, the narratives once again turned to the understanding of needs. All participants seem to agree that inequality is critical to sustainability, highlighting structural (often economic) barriers that limit access and freedom discussed by CA. Inequalities were identified as the inability to improve life due to heavy borrowing of various types of capital between generations and cultures. All of the participants emphasis on providing a better future to their children and the acceptance of the Brundtland Report represent generational borrowing however; two of the narratives highlight the disparity between and pressures placed on different cultures. Despite the use of needs as an umbrella concept for equity, the group exhibits the same divergence that contributes to the frustration of signature areas membership. Ultimately their differences lay primarily with the scale of approach, which was informed by individual experience. Three common themes emerge in this section the first is knowledge, the second is community, and the third is reconnection to natural systems. With the exception of natural reconnection, these themes are mostly consistent across disciplines and colleges. Knowledge as it is talked about by participants is the sharing of local level and expert knowledge. Equity of knowledge becomes the ability to access or gain knowledge to understand needs and then the opportunity to

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participate in addressing them. Despite agreement in the importance access and of bridging knowledge types there were interesting differences in how to achieve this, some participants emphasize the role of the expert and others emphasize local knowledge. Greg Cronins narrative is worth mentioning again. His use of art moves away from traditional forms of what I call AUTHORity where policymakers and academics solely control the collection and dissemination of information. However, as the operator of the technical equipment necessary to produce images and sound he maintains the role of expert. After interviews with participants were finished, Greg shared in a final personal conversation that he was interested in expanding his video narrative created during this process. He wanted to use video work to get funding to acquire recording equipment that could be used to create a recording studio for rappers he is working with in Haiti. In doing so, he is relinquishing even more authority to help community members truly take control of their messages about health and social issues. This is also linked to community. In Kathryn Cheevers narrative, she describes her own personal experience with her neighborhood community. Her stories show how people work locally to meet their needs devoid of expertise. They also show how this transfers into the work she does in public policy to help communities. Her personal experience as a member of a local level community is automatically bridged to her position as expert in the university. The two identities mutually inform each other to assist her in her work towards sustainability and equity. The formation of bridged knowledge is shared by Steve (ANTH) who practices sensemaking in his narrative as he is informed by another persons experience and belief. Finally, the reconciliation of local level and expert knowledge was

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discussed through the reconceptualization of needs being linked to a reconnection to nature. This connection seems necessary for further scientific exploration as well as humanitys general wellness. It is however important to caution that the idea of reconnection with nature is in many ways constructed. Nature as we know it, remember it, or wish it to be does not always reflect it. The natural world was here before us and it will be here, albeit altered, after our species is gone (Weisman 2007). We must pay attention to the romanticized approach to nature as a barrier and a benefit to understand that our place in it is complex and often misunderstood. Environment The primary discussion surrounding the environment focused on the use of technology to decrease degradation. The implications of discussing the use of technology and how the environment should be approached centered on the economic division in the literature review. This includes the ideological split that discusses technology as the means to avoid global meltdown (neo-classical) vs. behavior changes that lead to limited growth (eco-economics). Most of the participants sided with eco-economics in their discussions of technologys limitations despite the impressive systems being developed to advance sustainability. Because of the emphasis on behavior change participants were asked about deep ecologys value in communicating the necessity of change, which will be discussed in a separate section. Only two participants accepted it as a useful theory, and only one of those participants really discussed their beliefs in depth about human connection to environment and spirituality. For Anu (ENG) the environment was included in her work through the study of urban metabolism a concept integrated in industrial ecology. She explained that this meant looking holistically at the ways the environment is influenced by urban flows and materials, including the impact of pollution on ecosystems and human

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health. Most of the discussion about sustainability up to this point dealt with human capabilities, development and meeting needs. Her approach to the environment was no different. When discussing deep ecology she remarked that she looked to Amartya Sen who is a Nobel Prize laureate and an economist who really knows about poverty and who removes non-humans from his ideas about human development. The connection to nature that deep ecology requires is severed in this belief, however she fully acknowledged the fact that others do not agree with this concept and so if the natural world is important to them then the CA framework is open for them to include non-human species in their concept of development. For her, addressing, the environment was done through technology, using systems knowledge to create techniques that reduce harmful effects on people and their natural environment as they attempt to meet their needs. She provided an example of working in a village to produce energy through wind generators. She explained that while meeting their needs it was essential to bridge their knowledge types in order to ensure that they understood how to properly dispose of the generator batteries due to its lead components. The goal of which was to avoid polluting water sources, and negatively affecting the populations health. Ultimately the purpose of developing sustainable infrastructure and technology was not to protect the environment but to find a way to meet peoples needs with lesser impacts on local ecologies. Greg (BIO) got his start in ecology looking at aquatic ecosystems. As his work progressed, he became interested in finding ways to fight food shortages and unsustainable practices, including contamination from polluted runoff, created by our current farming methods. The approach that he found most favorable was with aquaponics. Aquaponics he explained, is an engineered aquatic ecosystem that can support the growth of fish and

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vegetables at the same time, with little use of pesticides and zero discharge of pollutants. He believed that by using this design in urban and degraded habitats people could feed themselves sustainably with less land used for farming and better access through local production. Greg explained that 40% of the Earths landmass was used for food production and that the same amount of people can be fed using half that area with aquaponics. With aquaponics, a community could produce 50,000 pounds of fish and a few hundred thousand pounds of vegetables per acre, per year. In addition, the scrap organic material from plants could be used to feed fish increasing the percentage of land freed up from farming. He made a very strong point regarding the use of technology to meet the worlds food needs. My goal is not to grow food so we can have more people on the planet. I think that creating efficient technology goes hand in hand with population control. He acknowledged that reducing a population of seven billion back to the Earths carrying capacity was not something he could provide suggestions for, the ethical implications of population control were too large. He emphasized that his desire was not to make room for 15 billion people on Earth, a projection he had seen from other scientists (Rogers, Jalal & Boyd 2008). His intention was to address anthropogenic causes of climate change while meeting needs for the current population. What is difficult about this goal is that historically we have seen that populations grow when there is access to abundance, most notably the introduction of genetically modified seed by the World Bank (Weisman 2007). The World Banks influence was based on capitalism and free markets; perhaps his use of technology in a solutions economy would create different outcomes. Rafael (GEOG) emphasized the influence of capitalist economies and the pressure they put on the environment. He re-emphasized what others had said in

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previous sections regarding what Rogers, Jalal & Boyd (2008) call the tyranny of the middle class, whereby the increase of environmental and social inequality is produced by a growing middle class. The fundamental issue in this is that there is no way to ethically challenge structures that require a division of wealth and poverty. This is where CA is a helpful theory in its discussion of freedoms to enhance human ability or as Rafael termed it, human improvement. The concept of human improvement was included in his discussion with the belief that improvements can consist things other than technology including better access, or economic development, but it can also be the improvement of the environment through new ways of relating to the natural world. So what has to happen, at the end of the day we can talk forever about technology, we can talk forever about solar panels, electric cars, and new buildings and whatever. We can talk about the economics of saving. But at the end we need to change our core values and that is extremely hard. He once again disagrees with the neo-classical belief that technology will save humanity again from external vulnerabilities stating, Technology for technologys sake is not going to save us. His narrative is one of the few that directly addresses reconnecting to behaviors that allow us to respect our environment. However, when asked about theories that are considered metaphysical or soft but still deal with environmental issues (i.e. deep ecology) he felt that there was too much of a negative connotation to be able to use the theories. He acknowledged that audience matters but also expressed that you can use other modes of scientific explanation to explain why someone or how someone can adopt values more in tune with the environment. The example he provided was to use physics to explain the benefits of becoming a vegetarian. Not for spiritual or ethical implications but to explain how vegetables are grown at a lower trophic level, allowing more mouths to be fed. Otherwise he felt people would view others using deep ecology as extremists.

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However, with this perspective we see the emergence of technocentric values in the rejection of spiritual for Malthusian economics of using technology to overcome population barriers. For Kathryn (POLI) the concept of collaboration when meeting local needs included the relationship to the environment. She felt that the environment was often secondary in decision-making. She made a point to teach her student that to understand how to solve a problem you have to know there is one; this extends to the sometimes-ignored degradation of the environment for human development. She continued by discussing the need for interdisciplinary action in communities and the connection created. When asked about deep ecology she was one of the two that expressed that she saw it as a useful vehicle for positive change. She expressed that those kinds of theories were helpful for creating an acknowledgement of the connections that make the human condition more sustainable; this includes belief, responsibility, and even spirit. Her work with local government agents has led her to appreciate the value of interdisciplinary work; collective groups are necessary for addressing important issues. She again cited Daniel Kemmis when she explained that We can't have adversarial hearings to create solutions for these problems, where I come and scream my side of the story someone else comes and screams their side of the story and then we point at some decision making body and say now its yours, and by the way half of us will hate you when you're done if you come up with a decision we don't like. She felt that the solution to this problem was to lock all the interests at the table with equal weight to find solutions, so that no one ends up getting the short end of the stick. Particularly when discussing issues that affect the future wellbeing of the environment and our species. She also spoke about the use of technology, stating that things like

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alternative energy are easier concepts for people to understand than issues of behavior change. She believed Coloradoans harvesting energy from their own rooftops was an effort that did much more than the continuation of transmission lines that some communities in southern Colorado have planned to continue using. However, technology is not infallible. Steve (ANTH) and early proponent of linking anthropology and the environment had the most to say about the environment. His work has shown him the limitations of our planet, and that awareness reminds him that regardless of identity or position as humans we are all in this together. Steve was not optimistic about the outcomes humans may face because of our consumptive habits. He saw the benefits of new technologies and the practical ways people approach them to solve environmental problems, but he did not believe that technology was the solution to our problems. The solution for him was to cut down on consumption. He visualized the ability to put solar panels on his house but also imagined being able cut down to one car for the family and becoming consistent in his use of public transportation. For Steve these types of behavioral changes are what will make the greatest impact. His experience talking to others left him with the feeling that they too shared his ideas about the need to shift existing patterns of consumptions. However, he also recognized that as these issues became more focused and specialized. The position of other academics beliefs spread out on a continuum of offered up theories and methodologies. On this continuum, Steve was one of the few disciplines to directly accept deep ecology as a means to discuss behavior. Despite his own rejection of religious or spiritual philosophy because of his upbringing, he was more than willing to recognize the need to include domains of spirituality and culture. For him his faith was in the peer-reviewed process and the process of critical thought. Because of his position as an anthropologist, he

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acknowledged that most human cultures do incorporate spirituality into their existence in the world. He cited the Northwest Coast Indians who held ceremonies to honor the Earth as well as the fish they caught for giving them sustenance. He expressed that viewing cultures from these angles shows that science and spirituality do not have to be seen as separate, but instead as opposite sides of the same coin. Viewing sustainability in this way allowed him to follow the development of human cultures as pragmatic actors who took complete stock of their surroundings They took a very pragmatic view of their surroundings scientifically I think human beings, if they weren't scientists from the very beginning we wouldn't have made it as a species This reminded him of how cool it is to be an anthropologist. Yet, the experimentation by humans is equally aligned to the cosmovisions and spiritual beliefs found in different cultures. This is informed by early ecological work in anthropology that addressed cultural relativism. A cultures understanding of complexity in the world helps them to hold reverence for the Earth, allowing them to generate a much deeper connection to the world they live in while find solutions to multifarious problems. He felt that our drive to see how much we can consume has taken us away from being able to experience that cultural experimentation. Steve believed that a reinvigorated push to understand how technology and a connection to nature could benefit humanity would be played out in the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. He explained, The Japanese are the most technically sophisticated society on the planet, most cultures would give them that. It will be an interesting social experiment as the world watches how such a technically progressive society will respond to this. He explained that Japan can only generate 8% of its own energy and that begs several

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questions about the contextual dependent abilities to generate energy sustainably. Will they rebuild those areas at all? Will they work to build a tsunami prevention wall? What will nuclear power production look like for them? He expressed that he felt it could provide many answers for the rest of the world. Steve believed that this gives all of us the opportunity to watch how a country that over consumes, that is technically advanced, and whose people still hold deep reverence for the environment, might restructure their way of life to become more sustainable in the aftermath of a natural and man-made disaster. For the most part the discussion surrounding the environment was ecocentric. Participants again emphasized the importance of community, a reduced reliance on technology and reconnection to nature. The importance of community was shown through Steves (ANTH) statement that we are all in this together, that unity is what Kathryn (POLI) believes will act as a vehicle to rediscovering a human connection to the natural world. For Anu (ENG) this connection is as part of a system of material flows. While Anu does not reject the appreciation of nature for natures sake, her idea of environmental and human connection is still technocentric, peoples needs come first. Rafael (GEOG) on the other hand sees reconnection as human improvement in and of itself. It is almost as if each narrative is a necessary contribution to a sentence about the environmental approach. They seem to streamline together showing each disciplines important contribution as well as its divergence from the other disciplines. While more than not, participants discussed ecocentric ideas they did bridge their narratives with recognition of technocentric benefits. The real difference between participants who recognize technocentric values is the level to which the environment is a passive background. Clearly, technology and the promise (potentially faulty) of a green economy arent disappearing anytime soon. Its perfectly fine to acknowledge

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technologies contribution but participant responses show that a few emergent questions need to be examined. When do we become aware of the fact that technology is not enough and change our behavior? How do we deal with the fallibility of the rush to technology, particularly when it is used, as Rafael (GEOG) points out, to continue the status quo of consumption and capitalism? During Kathryn Cheevers narrative, the idea of intention is discussed in relation to how technology is used. This is an interesting concept. Two participants, both working with technology, expressly state their intention and show the rift in ideology. One was very open in their intention, the work they developed and the way in which it was to be used was determined contextually by local populations. The other had very specific intentions in how their work was to be used to address environmental issues. Their differences create a political ecology of technology, if you will. While political ecology was not discussed directly, narratives had undertones of the political and multi level relationships that inform ecological approaches. In this section, Steve Koesters comments about Japan highlight this the most. However, ideas put forward by Wolf (1972) regarding hegemonys dictation of human and environmental relationships are more pertinent. Participants also deal with emergent themes of political economy, which informs political ecology. In this section, their connection is most notably related to Cardoso and Falettos (1979) concentration on non-capitalist modes in places where globalization and neoliberalism are being introduced. Others, who focused on community, seemed to be informed by modern versions of PE that focus on identitys relationship to environment (Biersack 2006). This fits in with Bryants (1992) contextual examination of environmental change; conflict over access; and the ramifications of political interests involved in environmental change initiatives. Those who took a

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contextual approach, fit well with PE philosophies that emerged from geography (Blackie & Brookfield 1986). This means identifying needs, and environmental use through geo scales and hierarchies of socio economic status. Ultimately participants show an interesting array of beliefs, sometimes shared, sometimes bridged and at others contrasting. The trend seems to be ecocentric but the divergence in ideas about technology shows contrasting opinions. The continuation of narratives through the three primary Es develops a foundation from which participant ideologies can be understood. This ultimately informs how sustainability is approached in the signature group and how it is taught in the classroom. With this in mind, it is important to try to understand how participants evaluate environmental education and action at UCD. Identifying these themes and combining them with expressed ideologies in the sections discussed already may provide a start to the working framework that was previously suggested by one participant. Education and Evaluation Education is defined as the life long commitment of people and organizations to create authentic choices for action intended to affect sustainability by expanding their knowledge through learning. Evaluation is the measurement of program outcomes to find indicators that allow for improvement in existing programs that show signs of success. In interviews with participants, their narratives regarding education and evaluation seemed to be linked. Before discussing participants evaluation of education programs at the university by participants, it is important to discuss the narratives of two additional informants who were contacted to provide personal evaluations of the university outside of the narratives of the sample. Their evaluations mainly centered on the sustainability signature areas approach to the sustainability minor. The first thing

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that a former professor expressed was that he was no longer a part of the institution, which unlike current faculty gave him the ability to speak freely about his experience. By asking faculty to discuss their opinions on the university there were already limitations on what they could say without fear of ramifications, particularly those without tenure. In contrast to the acceptance of what the university can do, this informant felt that the university could always do more. He felt that the faculty needed to take a much more directed approach to educational programs. He used the IGERT program as an example of the university's use of a vague set of terms and concepts to create an inclusive curriculum, but pointed out that the program was actually not inclusive at all. Instead of being inclusive, he felt the program became limited in its use by the university to compete with curriculum at CU-Boulder and Colorado State University. Ultimately, the benefits of having the program were uneven for the stakeholders involved. The sustainability minor, on the other hand, has kept its inclusive framework by remaining open to all undergraduate students, offering a small number of core courses (SUST I and SUST II) and supplementing the remaining credits with existing courses in other departments, and requiring an applied internship or field study as its capstone. The former professor felt that the problem was a lack of university support coupled with a lack of direction. He believed that UCD's entrepreneurial spirit had created an environment of competition that was detrimental, especially to interdisciplinary academic communities like the signature areas. He stated that they do not receive the necessary funding or faculty to keep the courses going, yet the university has not worked to build the sustainability minor until it can prove its viability economically. This could not be done without help from the university to obtain funding to expand and improve the program since student credits alone do not pay for the courses.

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In an effort to find out how to help the minor overcome barriers, one administrator in the Deans office undertook a short evaluation during the sustainability signature areas workshop meeting to address curriculum formulation in 2008. In the meetings for the Sustainability Workshop held for the signature area in 2008 an anonymous survey revealed how staff members felt about enacting curriculum regarding sustainability. The debate mostly centered on whether sustainability should be made into a separate program or incorporated into existing degrees. One respondent felt existing resources should be given to improving the quality of existing programs instead of creating new minors and majors when colleges was already strapped financially. Others mentioned that sustainability was so popular it should be required for all undergraduates but not as separate program, much like the case study at Oakland Community College discussed in the literature search (See page 49). However, some felt that the topic was too important not to immerse students. They felt that students who would otherwise be limited by their disciplines would be able to broaden their perspective to make them more marketable in the world. One respondent really touched on equity and human relationships to the natural world. This respondent stated that in order to make the curriculum meaningful and marketable the curriculum should be creative and should tap into the arts and business. A similar approach discussed by Delind and Link (2004) in the literature review. Despite the evaluative effort, the resulting action was limited. The informant working in the Dean's office expressed the lack of commitment by others involved in the signature area and the minor. She discussed the inability to successfully enact suggested approaches to the curriculum, including getting students into internships and setting up field studies, without the help of faculty. This lack of staff support was a major problem when trying to help students to complete the minor. These barriers

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create large vulnerabilities for the program and as one of the key informant mentioned, since the sustainability minor has taken years to develop there needs to be a realistic and committed approach for it to succeed. All of the participants identified interdisciplinary education as the committed approach that would give students a life long commitment to sustainability. In regard to evaluation, all of the participants discussed the need for the university to support and recognize this model of education. They discussed interdisciplinary work as an indicator of successful programs but also explained that success was contingent on the sustainable actions of the university to foster an atmosphere for encouragement of students to become invested in these programs. This section is broken into three areas that are representative of emergent themes about interdisciplinary education. The first discusses the importance of interdisciplinary programs, the second provides some examples of how the participants feel the university supports them and the third is a data driven evaluation of how the university could improve its approach to not only educational programs but also sustainability in general. Participant narratives are presented below with brief discussion. Interdisciplinary Education All of the participants included interdisciplinary education as a necessary component of sustainability. Many participants shared examples of interdisciplinary work in research and curriculum development and express that it is a growing interest among academics. Steve (ANTH) expressed that there is a high level of faculty interest in the topic and that creating a solid understanding for students means bringing those minds and approaches together. Through research in public policy, the participant from political science explained that interdisciplinary education is the only way that society is going to see

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breakthroughs in science, physical or social. Kathryn Cheevers experience working across discipline with the representative from geography highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary work. She felt that it was helpful that each had a nodding understanding of the others backgrounds and that the bridging of their backgrounds in physical and social sciences was important for students. Greg (BIO) also felt that this bridge was important for students because sustainability is a part of most disciplines, which was exemplified by Rafael Morenos calculations of 75 or more faculty members on campus who were interested in sustainability. Greg explained that through his interaction with other disciplines involved in sustainability he had come to value multidisciplinary approaches. Some of the members in his home discipline were involved in collaborative efforts but it was surprising how many people were not. For him working with anthropology and political science showed him that as a tenured professor he was no longer interested in limiting himself to biology as he approached sustainable initiatives in his research. Rafael (GEOG) believed that the move to interdisciplinary work has been a long time coming and was the future of education that involved issues of sustainability. Weve been talking about this for decades, interdisciplinary work, interdisciplinary education. Breaking those stovepipe education systems in which we are broken into departments and the colleges. He explained that Sometimes we tend to behave or have the values that have been passed on to us by the previous generation and that is not gonna work for sustainability. And thats the general role of the university is to encourage novel thinking in people. Novel thinking is meant to get people to think expansively about their ideologies and change them as they become educated. Interdisciplinary programs are able to do that. For him the value of the courses in the sustainability minor is their ability to generate

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new ideas and remove old habits that no longer apply. In this approach, he believes multidisciplinary understandings will lead to a more sustainable future. This idea was also present outside of the CLAS representatives. Anu (ENG) also expressed the need for interdisciplinary work. She acknowledged her own scholastic experiences as lacking the interdisciplinary model she promotes and how she had to come to it on her own. This encouraged her to develop programs at UCD for engineering students so that they could have the opportunity to receive the benefits that had not been available to her. She discussed the success of both the IGERT program and the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems. She believed that through interdisciplinary and community based approach with local cities the programs have contributed to the value of creating interdisciplinary educational structures at UCD. All of the participants had experience with interdisciplinary work. Those who were members of CLAS actually cited each other in their experiences with research, as well as developing curriculum for the sustainability minor. Greg Cronins experience stood out in that his interactions literally changed the way he thought about and approached sustainability. Anu and Kathryn were informed by work outside of their disciplines, and through work with policy makers and community members outside of the university. Further, participants expressed the importance of interdisciplinary work and education. They felt that it is the future of higher education and the only way our society will be informed enough to shift beliefs towards more sustainable actions. Anu Ramaswamis programs are examples of successful sustainability education. The successes of her programs are due to interdisciplinary work and community based approaches. An approach Steve (ANTH) felt the university should push to keep Masters programs competitive, viable, and inexpensive, particularly in

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the face of the current economic crisis. Despite this consistent expression of support for interdisciplinary work and education, there are still contradictions present. These contradictions arise through the fear that individual disciplines will lose their value on campus. The difference between expressed and internalized feelings about interdisciplinary education is present in the anonymous responses to the sustainability signature areas online survey provided by a key informant. Some respondents believe that sustainability, as a concept, should be handled by all departments but independently of new interdisciplinary programs. This is in response to hard economic times and the fear of losing valuable resources to an increasing number of programs in the face of existing departments struggling to stay open for students. In a personal conversation with a professor outside of this study, it was expressed that old habits take time to change (Brett, J. Personal Communication February 20, 2008). The process of moving students through generalized studies and putting them through discipline specific curriculum is what Rafael (GEOG) calls stovepipe education systems. These types of education systems are built on individualism and lead to disconnect between and within disciplines (Youngblood 2007). What disciplines fail to recognize is that involvement in interdisciplinary education reinforces inclusion (Brett, J. Personal Communication February, 2008). Rather than competing for resources, disciplines can work together through mutual trust and investment to ensure their existence in the face of vulnerability. As for existing environmental education and interdisciplinary programs, students who have participated in them have express disappointment in their experiences. Students asked to remain anonymous, fearing that their relationships with professors would be tarnished and affect their ability receive a fair grade or letters of recommendation. Despite the clear power relationships between students

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and professors, these students agreed to let their comments be used to contribute to the evaluation of the university. Both students were involved in programs that dealt with sustainable development and both expressed that their interdisciplinary work was limited to the discipline in which the degree was housed. One students interdisciplinary experience was limited to one course and when they expressed interest in continuing this path they were not encouraged to continue due to credit requirements within their discipline. The other was involved in an interdisciplinary program that bridges CLAS with another college. This student explained that while the program claimed to be interdisciplinary it seemed partial to the physical sciences and lacked the ability to approach social issues in sustainability. If interdisciplinary work is the future path of higher education then participants need to work towards relationships of trust to develop programs free from internal doubt. Based on the comments by students this also needs to occur between disciplines in different colleges to ensure a balanced and consistent interdisciplinary experience. However, to achieve a culture of inclusion, disciplines need support from the university itself. Support of the University The discussion of support from the university seemed to center on the existence of the minor and other programs aimed at sustainability. Participant responses generally suggest that the university is supporting interdisciplinary programs because students demand it. Yet, personal communication with students in the previous section indicates that the response to their demands is not as action oriented as participant narratives suggest. These students show that getting access to interdisciplinary education is not as easy it seems. The combination of narratives raises questions about the voicelessness of professors. If the only way for the

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university to support interdisciplinary education is through student demand then what does it mean for students if professors are not able to provide it because the university system requires them to stay in their disciplines? However, some identified other types of support including the provision of finances and infrastructure to house programs. Kathryn (POLI) for example felt that the universitys research department had been supportive in bringing people together and providing funding opportunities and other materials. She expressed her excitement in watching the university change its visual landscape to include green facilities but felt other steps should be taken that were not. While Anu (ENG) felt the university supported her programs as much as any other financially but the administrations true contribution was in providing them the space necessary to work and teach. Greg (BIO) and Rafael (GEOG) both believed that the university was supportive of the push for interdisciplinary education in the sustainability sector for several reasons. 1) The demand by students and the community to become sustainable and to work across disciplines, 2) the development of jobs, strategic plans and task forces that deal with sustainability at higher levels in the university, and 3) the investment of administrators including the Dean of CLAS who have backgrounds in physical or soft science that have given them a working understanding of sustainability. Despite the discussion of support being brief, participants identified different types of capital as university support. Anu (ENG) identified infrastructure, Kathryn (POLI) identified funding, and Greg (BIO) and Rafael (GEOG) discussed job creation. With the exception of discussing the research center and the dean of CLAS upper administrations support seemed absent. In fact, in a conversation with one of the participants, the support of the CU systems president Bruce Benson was under question due to his public rejection of anthropocentric climate change. This

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participant, who will not be named, believed this was due to the presidents involvement in the oil and gas industry prior to becoming a part of the university system. The presidents past was cause for concern, in that funding for education and/or programs aimed at sustainability would come from unsustainable sources. Something that Deresiewicz (2011) tells us is happening at many universities particularly in hard economic times. Despite the one critique from a former employee, all of the interviews seemed passive when addressing the condition of interdisciplinary programs aimed at sustainability at UCD. While they provided great suggestions for what it would take to bolster the work being done on campus, they all qualified their statements by acknowledging the universitys efforts as as much as they can provide at this time. The qualification of critiques sends a message that power relations exist between upper administration and professors, much like those perceived by the students and their professors. The discussion of the sustainability minor by key informants shows that there is limited support from the university. The limitations of support cannot be linked to politics of upper administration but can be linked to common structural barriers. The sustainability minor was meant to attract a diverse body of students from any discipline on campus. The statements made by the key informants indicate that its interdisciplinary function is limited by a lack of support to operate outside of the expectations of academia (Orr 2010; Stephens et al. 2008). These expectations include the requirement of professors to teach and conduct research within their disciplines to achieve promotions or even keep their job. This requirement keeps them from gaining release from their departments to teach in interdisciplinary programs like the minor. Nor can the university justify the funds to hire fulltime faculty to teach courses in the minor.

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While research for this thesis was being conducted, the anthropology department had to bring in outside instructors to teach the foundational courses for the minor. One was an instructor from another university and the other was a researcher from a non-academic institution. Deresiewicz (2011) believes that this type of teaching structure does not work as home departments cannot control the consistency of what is taught and does not ensure that end goals for interdisciplinary programs are met. In addition, the administrator working to make the program successful shared the limited amount of help she received from administration and professors alike to guarantee students were able to complete capstone courses. Not having a consistent base of professors from UCD teaching in the program diminishes the ability to form collaborative relationships to maintain and eventually advance the minor. Ultimately there seems to be a contradiction between the level of perceived and experienced support between faculty and administration. Evaluations While discussion about support seemed guarded, when asked what the university could do to improve sustainability on campus and in the classroom, participants provided much richer narratives. Alongside key informants suggestions, participants provided several insights into how the university could enhance interdisciplinary education on sustainability. Their suggestions embraced more inclusion and recognition of staff on campus, as well as stronger attempts on the universitys part to be more environmentally friendly.
Kathryn (POLI) was excited to see the new developments on campus in regards

to sustainability; however, she felt it was contradictory to build new infrastructure without addressing the existing sustainability issues. In her opinion, the university needed to conduct cost benefit analysis on energy use including policies on computer use (shutting them off versus logging on) and heating. The university also needed to

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change its catering policies. She considered it ridiculous to have catering show up with nothing but plastic dinnerware, a disappointment shared by the representative from anthropology. Kathryn also felt it was important to include other voices in the universitys sustainability programs. This included facilities, maintenance, students, and the community. For her, they all play a role in the development of UCDs sustainable future. In her opinions students had the most power to demand these changes and that the university needed to listen to them when they ask for sustainable infrastructure like community gardens, bike paths, and increased natural landscapes. She hoped that There will be a community garden somewhere that trees and plantings that we live with are sustained as are the students. That we help students connect with the world they live in, both the street-scape and the natural environment, so that they can have an appreciation and walk a little more lightly on the land. It almost seemed hypocritical of the university to offer the sustainability minor and not create an environment on campus that assisted students in feeling connected to becoming sustainable. She also cited the universitys history of mistrust in the surrounding communities. In what she called her checkered past she worked for NEWSED Redevelopment Corporation where she worked with local Denver communities. And there was a strong feeling among the community folks that we worked with on a daily basis, that the University wanted to take over their space. Sort of run rough shot on the families that lived there for a long time. And if we look at 9th street and realize this was a neighborhood, we have some trust issues to address with the people who live here. She felt that the university had a great opportunity to create a literal and figurative learning lab if it took the time to access its strong student base and the local community. She felt this was something that the university needed to improve to create opportunities for sustainability on campus. For her the

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question is whether the university and others involved have the energy and mutual respect to do so. Anu (ENG) additionally discussed the need for academics to conjure the energy to expand and improve existing curriculum. She explained that it takes a lot of time and energy for the programs she oversees to operate. Not only do they create classroom-based curriculum, they also create community-based curriculum where student interact with the local level populations. She felt that sometimes the university didnt understand just how much time this takes, nor do they understand how unique her programs are. For example, she explained that through her work with students and governments a new carbon-counting tool was created for the city of Denver. Efforts like this have drawn a lot of attention; particularly form other schools interested in implementing a similar type of curriculum. Anu felt that more could be done to build on these innovations to turn existing courses into certification programs for city workers to become familiar with new advancements in the field of engineering and sustainable infrastructure. She also felt that existing track of study in her programs could be turned into minors if not undergraduate degrees. She justified this through the high enrollment numbers for the offered classes despite zero efforts at marketing them outside of their cross listings in student handbooks. Understandably, she had pride in the many success of her programs and when asked what other programs like the sustainability minor needed to do to achieve similar milestones she explained that for them to flourish in communities People need to recognize that they dont have all the answers, they are a small piece of the big picture. They need to be open or else the conversation stops. She explained that the field of sustainability was growing rapidly and that you can no longer put people into boxes regarding their discipline. Otherwise, she felt that

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people would be removed from conversations before they ever reached the table. This for her was something that interdisciplinary programs needed to overcome. Rafael Morenos critique resembled Anus suggestions to remove the boundaries of disciplines. He felt that it was the universitys responsibility to remove the stove pipe educational systems that divided people into departments and colleges. He explained that the sustainability minor was an example of trying to work around a rigid system to get communal work from different disciplines. Rafael (GEOG), Steve (ANTH), and Greg (BIO) all discussed the barriers of developing interdisciplinary work at a university not yet positioned to change. Steve stated that the future of sustainability has to be problem based, applied, linked to the community, and interdisciplinary. It was unquestionable for him that this was where the university needed to be going. Greg felt that to improve sustainability students needed to be incorporated. He has taken an active approach to that inclusion by getting involved with the sustainability student group on campus. He provided an example of how he became involved in the student run sustainability fair on campus by booking entertainment and bands that wanted to promote sustainability. He himself brought in his 1988 Chevy Sprint, which he converted to an electric engine that was charged by passive solar panels at his home. So I have a 1988 Chevy sprint that's had the gas tank and internal combustion engine removed and its been replaced with batteries and an electric motor. And so its an old beat up car that is now sustainable, because it recycled an old car and it gets its electricity from the solar panels on my house so its not even from a coal burning power plant. He invited graffiti artists to paint the car to promote 350.org a website dedicated to education on carbon emissions. He felt that getting involved with the students through art was meaningful and would accomplish more. He expressed that the bulk of action taking place on campus was not from the

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top down. Instead, students were responsible for sustainable efforts on campus. I see most of the action though so far being student driven. So the sustainable campus program which was funded by Auraria students has done a lot to actually put sustainability practices into place on campus. They offset the electricity on campus 100% with wind credits, they replaced a lot of the water fixtures with low flow fixtures saving millions of gallons a year and other activities like that. Greg thought that the administration was making progress in their efforts to enact sustainability but that in comparison to students they had a long way to go. One way that they could advance their efforts was to bolster interdisciplinary efforts through academic freedom within the university and CLAS. Anthropologys representative had some very important thoughts regarding the implementation of sustainability on campus as well as the continued development of curriculum around sustainability. The piece that stood out was his desire for a fundamental understanding regarding what sustainability means. He expressed that his initial goal when his involvement with the sustainability signature area started was to obtain a little funding to hold a semester long faculty seminar to discuss the meanings of the term. Steve (ANTH) did not want to develop a standard definition from which to operate but to inform a working framework that made the interdisciplinary valuations of the term understandable. For example how does a physicist think? Alternatively, how does a biologist approach things and where do those overlap? Where do they conflict? This was important to him because he felt that without this line of questioning people stayed in perpetual state of discord when enacting interdisciplinary work around sustainability. He felt that he could not speak for everyone else because people approached sustainability from their disciplines, but he had confidence that they felt the same way. To approach the complex issues that were addressed in previous sections he felt

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that the signature area needed to have an understanding of how different ideologies worked. According to Steve it was necessary to bridge the complex problem solvers who designed new technology with the social explorers who understood the need to re-qualify standard of living and quality of life when teaching students about sustainability. As for the actual sustainability minor, he echoed the minutes from the Sustainability Workshop in that he didnt know that a separate sustainability program was the best route. That at this time it may be easier, more efficient and appropriate for existing disciplines to require sustainability as a part of their program, a structure carried out at Oakland Community College (Rowe 2004). He explained that for a tenured faculty member to teach one of the required core courses they had to receive released time from their department. Steve explained that departments arent willing to give up staff to teach outside of the department because it causes problems for course requirements in their home disciplines. He expressed that the sustainability minor had been taught by members of geography, biology, communication, and public policy but that they were no longer willing to release professors. Additionally despite the location of the minor in anthropology, there has never been a release from the department to allow a professor to teach SUST I or SUST II. The root of the issue is not that departments dont want to release faculty to teach, its that they have an obligation to their students and cannot afford to give up staff. Therefore, the university needs to help the sustainability signature area find the resources to hire staff. This is a cautionary suggestion. Due to economic pressures, universities have come under increasing pressure to adopt new models of higher education oriented towards business practices like efficiency (Dereieswicz 2011). This has led to a reliance on an undervalued contingent faculty to teach outsourced courses, which is

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problematic for the consistency of curriculum delivered to students (Bradley 2004; Felder & Brent 2005). Ultimately this creates disconnect for students and departments when attempting to access resources to complete the program or to effectively understand issues in sustainability. Steve held similar beliefs to the representative of political science regarding the universities exaction of sustainability on campus. He felt the lack of sustainable infrastructure was a direct reflection of American society and the contradictions of our beliefs. He explained that the university needs buildings to accommodate a growing student body and that despite having bus and light rail access the university is surrounded by parking lots. He felt that the university should do more to encourage students to use alternative transportation methods to get to campus and free up parking space to build necessary infrastructure. While UCD has made some significant action on campus, there is still work to be done regarding meeting the educational communitys needs and changing the basic standards and policies on campus. He stated, these may be minor things to some people, but the university has to start somewhere. Ultimately, the responses from participants show some paradoxes between the support and action of the university. Participants describe feeling supported and yet narratives showed the limitations of tangible action on the universitys part. The following statements show the contradiction of support based on student demand without the provision of resources to keep that demand. Rafael (GEOG) stated: I think the university is very interested in supporting sustainability and the integration of sustainability and sustainable development issues into education. Because the students have been demanding it and the world is demanding it. In contrast Greg (BIO) stated:

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Its a real challenge, we need faculty to teach the courses and teach it with some consistency have the courses offered on a regular basis. Because if students want to get the sustainability minor but the courses aren't consistent the courses that they need to graduate aren't being offered it doesn't take long for word to get out that the sustainability minor, though a good idea, isn't worth the effort. There is also a contradiction in the support of upper administration. when the president of the university does not believe in anthropogenic climate change. Gregs narrative shows how the university has included sustainability in its mission. Sustainability is in the strategic plan of the university so its mentioned several times in the mission. There is a chancellor's task force for sustainability that I'm a member of. So there are things being done to promote sustainability. Another participant who will remain nameless shows that despite this inclusion support is questionable. Even the President of the University of Colorado, Bruce Benson, has stated that, or at least when he was being considered for presidency questioned the role that humans played in global warming. There was also a paradox in the perception of funding. Kathryn Cheever stated that: I think there is some support for interdisciplinary research, seed money from the university research people. That the potential for those things beginning to generate revenues, faculty release time, have the potential to make sustainability more sustainable as a minor in the undergraduate program. However, Greg (BIO) showed a different picture: So I think these programs will struggle until the college finds ways to provide them with resources they need to succeed. Such as regular faculty. The minor doesn't have funds to bring in seminar speakers, or to help support grant applications. The staff support that departments have for the sustainability minor as well as other interdisciplinary programs does not exist. Another paradox present in narratives involves the atmosphere of

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sustainability on campus. Kathryn (POLI) stated: Im excited just looking at the visual sort of landscape of it all. I see positive things coming with the sort of green house facilities going in with the new science building (LEED). This was contrasted by Steve Koesters belief that: The new buildings on campus are all going to be built with this LEED criteria and yet we are surrounded by parking lots. I mean almost every student comes here in a car; that to me is its an absurdity. We don't have enough classroom space, we don't have classroom buildings and we need buildings, we have all the things we need, but we are surrounded by these massive parking lots. There is a real disconnect there for me. We order these lunches and they still come with all this plastic they still give us the plastic water bottles; those are small things but on the other hand if we are going to be sustainable lets start somewhere, lets stop that. The participants believe that interdisciplinary work will strengthen the minor however there is a large point of disjuncture between the desire to use this model and the ability to do so based on the universitys structure. Rafael Moreno shared his perspective on interdisciplinary education. The future of sustainable, sustainable development education. We are striving towards it, we have been working towards it for a long time, you know things change little by little. But it has to be and weve been talking about this for decades, interdisciplinary work, interdisciplinary education. Breaking you know those stovepipe education systems in which we are broken into departments and the colleges. Kathryn Cheever shows how this is difficult to achieve within the university. I think we have the structural barriers at universities. Our tenure track faculty are rewarded for staying within their discipline which doesn't bode well for interdisciplinary study. You have to reach some level in your career before you have the opportunity to really explore that in any detail. By contrast most of the more contemporary policy change research I'm exploring at this point in time says interdisciplinary is the only way we are really going to see breakthroughs in science, physical or social science. To start dealing with these contradictions the group collectively asks a few things of

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the university. The first was to take a more grounded approach to understanding how much time it takes to develop curriculum and create successful interdisciplinary programs. Second, to recognize that sustainable action on campus has not been from the top down and the university has some catching up to do with its students. Third, that the university needs to address the contradiction of building green infrastructure that has public relations value and its unsustainable practices elsewhere on campus. Fourth, that the university needs to be present to multiple voices when addressing issues like sustainability. This includes maintenance and facilities as well as the local community. Fifth, university administration including department chairs, need to actively promote the removal of disciplinary boundaries and change the stovepipe education system to an applied, and problem based approach. This has been identified as the future of education and is what Stephens et al. (2008) calls delta education (see page 44 for discussion). Lastly, university and faculty members need to work collaboratively to find the necessary resources to make these changes. When it came to the evaluation of curriculum development through the signature area, participants felt that it was necessary to address a common understanding of sustainability. Participants are aware of the frustrating contradictions but are open to working together to advance interdisciplinary education and sustainability. Steve Koester was the most vocal about creating a working framework for the group and as the director of the minor; he did not feel people were on the same page. The groups suggestions included the bridging of technocentric and ecocentric ideologies. They also promoted the idea of using innovative methods to teach sustainability, much like the course created at Michigan State University, to infuse sustainability with the humanities, participants advocated for the use of music and art in the spread of sustainable concepts (Delind & Link 2004). Based on the

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discussions in previous sections, it would seem that requiring the issue of needs, quality of life, equity, and poverty in curriculum would equally provide a unique and innovative touch to the program. CLAS, the sustainability minor, and UCD as a general entity share many of the same barriers other universities face. As discussed in the literature review, most notably in the collection of narratives in the book by Barlett and Chase (2004), other universities have found ways to overcome these common barriers. The primary achievement has been the reinvigoration of faculty buy in, rejuvenated passion and relationship development. This can be replicated at UCD, and as Anu (ENG) stated it is necessary to pay attention to what can be replicated. It is time for those working in the sustainability signature area, and the minor to define what education and curriculum will look like. As she stated, in interdisciplinary work people should remove labels to avoid devaluing other disciplines and pigeon holing individuals or the conversation stops. It is clear through the narratives participants shared that their identities are fluid and improvised. Anus statements show that in order to make sense of each other and develop collaborative relationships that improvisation of self should be honored. Its important to find programs that have worked and see what fits for UCD. There are already so many barriers that as one key informant stated, the survival of the sustainability minor is an issue. At the universities mentioned in the literature review were able to find ways to work together, value each other and build trusting relationships. Building on innovative designs and working with suggestions from participants of this thesis may help members of the signature area advance interdisciplinary programs at UCD. This means building on personal experience as well. In anthropology and I am sure in other disciplines there is an ongoing paradox

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between the relationship of structure and agency. The debate regarding structure and agency is complex and details of that disjuncture cannot be addressed in this thesis. The issue of structure and agency is present in participant narratives. According to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (Ritzer 2010), structure is related to the continuation of patterned arrangements that influence or limit the choices available. Agency is the ability of an individual to act without restraint to make choices. Great minds have argued over the relationship to, importance of, and presence of one or the other in the worlds affairs (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984;). So far, the narratives provided by participants have been focused primarily on structure. The structure of the classroom, a curriculum, research, the university. With structure comes agency and it seemed important to probe for it in interviews, particularly when the actions of participants influence the fluidity of the structures they participate in. Participants have come to understand certain ideas and feel connected to them through their experiences. Ideology and experience become mutually informed by one another. Interrelation theories like sense-making show that reflection on personal agency that is shared with others creates shared understanding. By sharing our experiences with our ideologies, we make understandable our ethos. The section that follows is an attempt to capture the source of participants ideologies, their experiences. The effort is also aimed at inspiring the reader to be reflexive, to relate with the participants, and to share their experiences with others to make sense of complexity and solutions. Ultimately though, it is an attempt to encourage people to remember why they cared to become involved in sustainability in the first place. Ethos As mentioned at the start of the discussion of findings, the relationship between cultural experience and sustainability requires that ethos be included in the discussion. Ethos is the inclusion and reflection of personal experiences and

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motivating factors that have led individuals to become involved in teaching or enacting sustainability and sustainable development. Initially this was not the intention of the project but after reading the literature and becoming aware of interrelational theories like sensemaking it became clear that personal experience was important to complex relationships in interdisciplinary work. In order to understand how personal experience influences work, participants were asked how they came to care about issues in sustainability. They shared their experiences and in many cases, they seemed to inform the theories or ideologies they discussed in previous sections. Some participants spoke at length on their personal experiences, providing rich details about their introduction to sustainability. One participant from biology stood out because his experiences were now a symbiotic element of his research interests. Even the participants whose explanations were brief provided enough information to make a clear connection to the academic philosophies they had adopted. Anu (ENG) had been a part of a project that had collected written geographies about professors and their personal experiences and how they changed her. She recounted that the first thing that led her to become involved in sustainable efforts was her childhood in India, which she felt gave her a well informed understanding of the holistic relationships between people and their environments. As an engineer she always thought it was interesting that many of the local level technologies she and her family used were now becoming popular for green engineering. Anu felt that this level of knowledge was helpful for her as she entered her own studies in engineering. She believed it gave her the edge to become involved in community development work, which was not an emphasized mode of operation in the curriculum she received. Due to the lack of community based work in her academic career ENG felt it

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was necessary to build those programs for the students she would teach. Particularly since the opportunities were not as present for her, she essentially had to make them. She explained that this was why she was so involved in the development of interdisciplinary programs at UCD. It is clear that her extensive work with communities, including the construction of infrastructure for water and energy provision and systems analysis for governments, that her approach to sustainability is contextual. The diversity of her clients has given her an understanding of why the concept of needs remains a loosely defined concept. Her childhood in India and the experiential understandings from knowing the condition of another society reinforces her use of the capabilities approach in an attempt to even the playing field for cultures to have equal opportunities. There is always a warning with the concept of contextual sustainability and loosely defined needs. Actors involved in sustainability cannot always ensure that the demands of a group or population are ethical and altruistic. As another participant stated, sometimes it is necessary to define needs that are sustainable and those that are not; you would not build something sustainable for a group that has unsustainable motives it flies in the face of what we work for. That said, her experience becomes relatable to those who outside of her discipline. For example, after reading her narrative I perceive her as a woman who successfully pursued the freedom to expand her education and contribute to the betterment of her society despite entering a traditionally male dominated field. Her work to provide students with interdisciplinary opportunities that she was not given seems altruistic. While I dont share her belief that infrastructure in sustainability is better because it is time intensive, her narrative allows me to make sense of her positions and come to trust them even if I do not agree. Rafael Morenos approach to sustainability centered on capitalism and the

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separation of people from an understanding of natural systems. He described how he felt that people needed to have a mandatory week in the woods to provide for themselves in order to realize how much it takes to provide services. For him our consumption and emphasis on growth was something that distracts our society from the glaring issues of inequality and environmental degradation. In his brief discussion of ethos, he explained that from his first memory he had always loved the trees. He explained, I love forests, I love trees in urban environments in natural environments, I love being in contact with nature. He continued by sharing that as he saw how forests and other ecologies were being destroyed by human action and he felt that there had to be something that could be done. This led him to obtain his undergraduate degree in forestry and eventually a career in geography working with geographical information systems. He stressed, We have to preserve the systems that allow us to live and be aware that we depend on them. He explained that he felt people were detached from these systems, being urbanites, people dont think about ecologies like the forest and just assume that we will be able to live and breathe without them. That was just not true and so he became involved in sustainability. Rafaels experience growing up outside of the U.S. and in contact with nature, much like Anu Ramaswamis childhood in India, paired with his move to the U.S. provides him with a positioned understanding of capitalisms influence on social and ecological systems from both the core and the periphery. His discussions in previous sections borrowed from critical ecological and economic theories that are once again displayed in his experiential narrative. It would seem that his desire in seeing people better understand their environment is not only to preserve systems for human life, but to share in an appreciation of nature, similar to his love of forests. What is interesting about this position is that taking responsibility for ones

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place in and of nature is intrinsically deep ecology (Naess & Sessions 1995). GEOG states previously that theories like deep ecology are stigmatized and other theories can be used to explain these ideas. His proposition is that in physics the implications of a vegetarian diet can be explained through efficiency rather than ethos. Perhaps he is right, deep ecology is heavily criticized as metaphysical and therefore unfit for objective science (Bron 2000). Yet, to ignore the prospect of spiritual or personal inclusion as a method to reach more people is counteractive to the ability to reconnect people to nature. After all, his experience with the natural world and his passion to find solutions for something he felt connected to in nature determined his career path from forestry to geography and potentially whatever awaits him in the future. Rafaels ideas relate well to the following quote from Bateson in the movie An Ecology of Mind (Bateson 2010): The major problems in the world are a result of the difference between how nature works and how people think. To Bateson our limited perceptions, and to Rafael our limited experience as operators in our natural world cause us to break ecological systems (Bateson 2010). Under this ideology, theories like deep ecology should be bridged with systems theories, and critical economic or ecological theories in order to help people reconnect as Rafael has suggested. Steve Koesters personal narrative discussed process and the impact of coming to understand access and equity. Steves work on his dissertation focused on the historic impact of capitalism on a non-capitalist community (Koester 1986; Cardoso & Faletto 1979). More specifically, he studied how the rural populace responded to stages of capitalism as they manifested in different plantation regimes and uses of the environment. His experiences in St. Lucia while working on his dissertation reflect his expressed position on the contradiction between meeting peoples needs in an equitable way and creation of new needs through the influence

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of the global economy. His narrative about St. Lucia in the section on equity specifically shows how through his friends candid statement, Steve participated in sensemaking. The expression of wanting to have certain needs met and the difference in assumptions about how to meet them (his friend through obtaining American amenities and his own through using appropriate technology) defined the differences between his friends desire to live life a certain way as well as his own. It also created awareness as to how difficult it is to allow for both. Despite living in different places and having distinctive forms of access, Steve and his friend share in some mutual experience of environmental and social degradation. He described a trip home to Michigan where he grew up. He got there and his hometown didnt resemble itself. He had created an expectation based on his memories. Despite the romanticized construction of place, the changes created by development of junk space reflect the historical manipulation of environments by corporate interests that he had studied while working on his dissertation in the Caribbean. By coming to understand another persons ethos and experience in a world that was is in many ways temporary, but familiar in his own experience, Steves alignment between a critical economic approach and political ecology is reinforced but also reinformed. While this experience stood out to Steve, he felt there were other life events that shaped his involvement in sustainable issues. He went to school in Colorado and considered this a luxury. He was introduced to backpacking and sleeping under the stars allowing him to develop an awareness and love for the natural world. He explained that going to college in the late 60s, early 70s helped mold his activist spirit, stating I was hit full force by social and political movements including civil rights, Vietnam, and the environmental movement. Through his own personal experiences with nature and the movements that developed him as a passionate

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activist for equality, he was exposed to the impacts humans had on nature and each other. In the section on environment, Steve discussed the necessity of reconnection to the natural world. This connection was discussed through spirituality and ideas similar to the ones required in deep ecology. It is important to note that while he is a supporter of recognizing spirituality as it is linked to pragmatism, he himself is not a religious or spiritual person. His experiences growing up have pushed him away from dogmatic belief. What is so powerful about Steves position is that he portrays himself as an objective researcher but despite that, he sees the benefit of paying attention to spirituality. Gregory Bateson (1982) discusses the use of religion to understand systemically, or prevent behavior that is responsible for our actions towards the destruction of nature. Under this supposition, religion and its relation to ecology become what part of what Rappaport (1968) discussed as cultural relativism; religion becomes a social roadmap (Bateson 1982). Steves discussion of communities and cultures that have or still hold reverence for the environment is an example of this. As an anthropologist, it is exciting for him to be able to study these types of cultural constructions but in his opinion, measurable function and spirituality need to be treated as two sides of the same coin. The idea of religion or spirit as a function of cultural control holds a certain hint of academic expectation for objectivity. Steve has experienced nature in a way that allows him to relate to people who infuse their experiences in nature with spirituality, without being spiritual himself. It is the appreciation that comes with these mutual experiences that make them relatable. Having someone like Steve Koester who holds to the stringency of academic and scientific processes but who can also champion the metaphysical is extremely important. There are researchers in this

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world, like Ian Stevenson or Dr. Jefferey Long, who focus on the metaphysical and despite following the same strict requirements of the scientific process, are rejected by their communities (Shroder 1999; Houran 2004; Long 2010). This does not mean that science should be informed by the politics of dogmatic belief, but it means ending the orthodoxy, that spirituality is not present in our world. There are people who are scientists who hold beliefs, spiritual or religious. The understanding of objectivity in work through rejection or reflection of bias should be upheld since it is clear that behavior can be negatively influenced by religious institutions. We see this in the spread of inequality and the strongly held belief of mans dominion over nature in Judeo Christian traditions (Jepson 2001). However, a major point is missed when such a large cultural trait as spirituality is ignored. In order to get people to change their behavior, to reconnect to nature, or simply understand science we need to use these long standing social institutions as sounding boards. By recognizing spirituality researchers dealing with sustainability could work to undo disconnect created by dogmatic philosophy and reach more people in less time. If science can find a way to be relatable and trustworthy, to encourage sensemaking outside of research or academia, social attitudes may have a good shot at changing (Mooney 2011). Steve is an example of the open-mindedness necessary in science to complete work in sustainability that is interdisciplinary and community based. Kathryn Cheever (POLI) described her journey towards becoming interested in sustainability as a long time coming. Her first experience with environmental education came through reading Rachel Carlsons book Silent Spring during High School. She believed that Silent Spring was monumental in making people aware of how they defile the environment. Kathryn later became an elementary school teacher

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with an emphasis on environmental education, which she enjoyed. There is evidence of Kathryns future role in public policy when she received a scholarship from the soil conservation district in Greeley to attend discussions about the use of pesticides. She describes a time where a farmer came to prove that DTD was not harmful and that he had been putting it on his breakfast. She explained that in the long term who knows how it would affect him, but it had already been shown to harm birds. Her story is a perfect example of the disjuncture between community and science that she has discussed in other sections. The scientific community was working in the policy realm to regulate the use of harmful pesticides. The farming community was resistant, perhaps out fear that they will not be able to sustain themselves. An interesting point is whether the farmers resistance to regulation of pesticides qualifies as a freedom in the capabilities approach brought forward by Anu (ENG). Kathryn also discussed growing up in rural Kansas. She talked about growing food without pesticides and how things were cleaner and tasted better. She also discussed communities in small towns. She cites the work of Daniel Kemmis several times in previous narratives. Kemmis is an attorney and author and his work deals with community, place, and government (Kemmis 1990; Kemmis 1995; Kemmis 2001) She relates to Kemmis in his discussion about growing up in rural Montana and how people in his town worked together to meet each others needs despite labels or judgment (Kemmis 1990). Kathryns experience growing up in a clean rural area with community mindset is linked to academic work that she accesses in discussion about her ideology. The relationship between her experiences and her disciplinary ideology is also carried into her current experience. In a previous section, she discusses working with the women in her neighborhood to build a community that

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much like Kemmis narrative meets each others needs. Kathryns work in environmental education and public policy seem to be related to an improvisation of her experiences in the past and present. For Greg Cronin (BIO), art influenced him to become interested in environmental issues. He started as pre-med and was accepted to medical school but decided to become an ecologist instead. While he was pursuing a career in medicine, he was made aware of environmental degradation and social inequality through the music of Midnight Oil. Midnight Oil is an Australian band most known for the song Beds Are Burning and their outspoken position on the mistreatment of the environment and aboriginal cultures. The impact of music has also led him to get involved with his own band named Mute Mans Microphone. Mute Mans Microphone is described as having several meanings but the meaning he was most attached to was that mute man's microphone gives a voice to people who are voiceless. Their lyrics are socially conscious and they have an applied element to their performances. He provided an example of a show the band put together to raise money for Haiti after the Earthquake. We were able to raise over a thousand dollars to send to Haiti, we didn't have a song, we didn't perform songs about Haiti or anything. We were able to use that to raise awareness, raise money for causes that we felt were important. It is not just music continues to inspire him to get involved in sustainable initiatives. Greg shared another story about being on sabbatical in Florida during Hurricane Katrina. He explained that after he returned he watched the Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke. He describes watching a scene where Sean Penn was going through the flooded streets on a boat, rescuing people from their roofs. He felt guilty because while on sabbatical he had access to the same boat and was close enough to get there to help but did not go.

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So I'm watching this movie and there's a scene in there where Sean Penn is going around the flooded streets of New Orleans in a boat and he's rescuing people from the roofs, I mean he literally saved lives. And when I saw that footage it made me feel extremely guilty. Because at the time I was on Sabbatical living on a sailboat in Ft. Pierce Florida, which was about a seven hour drive to New Orleans and I had access to the same kind of boat Sean Penn was using and I did nothing. After watching the film, he swore that he would do something to help victims of natural disasters if he ever had the opportunity. When Haiti was hit by an earthquake he volunteered to go help at Sean Penns organization JPHRO, something he may not have done if it hadnt been for the inspiration of the arts. Greg was able to volunteer and work to help people rebuild their homes and meet medical needs but wanted to access his artistic abilities to help the community. Just before he was getting ready to leave to pursue his interests he met Sean Penn and was convinced to stay, but not for long. He soon went out on his own to work with artists and rappers to create public service announcements to educate Haitians about washing their hands, throwing their garbage away and other methods that can decrease the spread of cholera. He was able to work with local people to address issues that mattered to them and through the backing of his band he was able to achieve their purpose by giving rappers access to equipment to have their voices heard. His experiences not only informed his work but his passion to blend the two created trust with community members that were willing to work with him outside of JPHRO. You know when you build a house for somebody and you are standing there, and it only takes 2 hours to take down their old house and build a new one, you really get to know the people and they are really thankful for what you provide them. And so I'd build a house and they'd come up and get big hugs and people would invite me into their homes and feed me lunch. So I got to know the Haitians. Greg has not only used the arts to work with people in other countries towards

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empowerment but also to educate people here in Colorado. He explained how he uses the arts to work with the sustainability student group at UCD to plan the sustainability fair. He organized a lineup of bands, hip-hop artists and dancers and other forms of art to grab peoples attention. He combined his technical resourcefulness with art and showcased a 1988 Chevy Sprint that he had converted to run on electricity (generated from passive solar at his home). He also invited graffiti artists to spray paint the car to promote the 350.org a website dedicated to the reversal of carbon dioxide emission levels to reverse climate change. He felt that he was able to do these things because there is still academic freedom in universities. Greg is unique because he is able to use his technical and systems knowledge to inform his social efforts and vice versa. It is hard to pin his work to a particular theory since his work is so inspired by the humanities. He has a clear knowledge about ecology but allows himself to be influenced by experience and the thoughts of others. As he stated previously his ideas about what sustainability is have changed after working with other disciplines. He believes that Universities are places where ideas get debated thrown around, and academic freedom allows professors to study what they want. They have the freedom and they can't be silenced. There are pros and cons to that but I think overall universities are a benefit, for having academic freedom because it allows a diversity of ideas to be shared and expressed. Greg is an example of improvisation in academic and applied work. Using his technical abilities to construct sound solutions in ecology and then translating them in meaningful ways provides discussion and shared experiences that can develop trusting relationships within the universitys community. The participants academic narratives and their connection to personal dispositions is an example of what Pierre Bourdieu calls habitus. Habitus exists in

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an individuals mind and is based on personal experiences and interactions with other people; this produces common practices and perceptions (Bourdieu 1990). Jenkins (2005) tells us that these dispositions can be durable, existing for or informed by a lifetime, transposable, existing over or created in multiple and diverse fields, and structured, inevitable incorporations set by social conditions. As we see with participants, each person carries dispositions from each category. Durable dispositions seem to come in the form of childhood experiences that shape the transposable dispositions that arise as participants were introduced to new things. In this thesis, the former dispositions are often shaped or barred by the structure of a global economy, but most commonly the structure of university systems. Regardless of the type of disposition they are all shaped by history, past circumstances directly relate to current conditions much like chaos theory (Jenkins 1992). Similarly to sensemaking, Bourdieus (1990) work conveys, these conditions of the past and present cannot be related in the mind without understanding the social conditions that produce them. Whats more is that these conditions of knowledge production based on experience and vice versa, create a habitus that is individualized and collective. The individuals dispositions relate to others in groups and habitus becomes organizational. The conditions and dispositions that construct an individuals experience also influence the perspective of others who share in similar conditions or practices (Jenkins 1992). Much like the analogy of the sand pile in chaos theory, individuals become variants to the habitus of other individuals as well as the structure. However, this only conveys a type of agency that is bound by structured dispositions. This thesis is meant to look at that structure but also understand the improvisation of agency that allows people to experience and relate to each other.

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To test the waters as to whether sharing personal experiences can lead to meaningful discussion and foster relationships; I created an example narrative video, highlighting three personal experiences with sustainability (http://vimeo.com/30873772). It was used in interviews to spur discussion with participants regarding three things. 1) Their personal ideas about sustainability, 2) whether they felt that sharing these experiences could lead to lasting relationships and 3) if modern technologies like video work were realistic methods to display those themes. All of the interviewees expressed interest in the idea of sharing experiences to help interdisciplinary work. In the interviews, when asked they if story telling was a relevant means to communicate ideas they responded with Yes and Absolutely. As it turns out Anu (ENG) had participated in a slightly similar project. So actually, I have a personal geography that has come out for educators in sustainability. They interviewed like 20 people and they each had to write up a small geography. And they said you know highlight things that changed you. Participants also all agreed that using digital and visual formats was a valid medium for telling stories, and that these mediums would bolster existing relationships, and help develop new ones. When asked to extend this point some of the most meaningful dialogue came from the discussions that took place after viewing the example video. The most notable example of how a video and narrative could foster communication came in the form of a thirty-minute long conversation between Kathryn Cheever (POLI) and me after our interview had ended. One of the chapters in the example video narrative highlighted a trip through the Anasazi ruins of Chaco Canyon. Kathryn shared some stories about the personal and spiritual experiences she had either heard about or encountered in the Mesa Verde National Park outside Cortez, Colorado.

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She described a conversation with a man she knew who was involved with the native nations of southern Colorado. In this story, she detailed his work as a park superintendent through the negotiations between the Smithsonian and the 24 descendent clans of the Anasazi regarding the repatriation of ancestral remains that had been taken from Mesa Verde. She recounted his description of the first meeting between all relevant parties sitting on the deck of his housing, looking out over the cliffs during negotiations. He described the appearance of several animals not typically present at the cliffs edge during talks. The native representatives as well as the institutional parties agreed that the appearance of these revered animals was an auspicious sign and took it to mean that the negotiations were heading in the right direction. She also shared her own experience and talked about her attendance at an event held in honor of an educational program called Sister Cultural Events that this same individual created to link youth from indigenous cultures around the Americas who shared the use of maize in their cultural traditions including diet. She described walking into a party held for the participating groups and how one moment stood out to her. When she went into the event it was sunny and clear but as a woman named Buffy St. Marie played music with other council leaders for the event the weather shifted and it began to rain as they sung. She expressed that she enjoyed the experience but at the same time, her rational and scientific mind was trying to figure the coincidence out. We agreed that there was room for some metaphysical appreciation in our understandings of sustainability and while there may or may not be scientific explanations behind natural experiences, we dont always have to look for them. Sometimes they are just there for us to enjoy. While interviews were taped with the intention to create a video tool for

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participants to use for communicating themes in sustainability, this discussion changed my focus towards the personal expressions of sustainability. The video companion piece instead contrasts common reference of sustainability, like the Brundtland Report and the Triple Bottom Line, with the expression of personal experiences provided by participants. Due to time constraints, the video could not be completed with this thesis. However, draft narratives from some of the participants are available online at http://vimeo.com/album/1726159. Participant narratives include other topics. Due to time restraints as well as the necessity to formulate a story not all responses could be included. Ethos was selected as the central theme for draft narratives; it seemed to be the topic best able to tie personal and academic experience or understanding together. Once the video companion is complete, it will be available for viewing online as well as in DVD format and can be used by participants and other members of the university as a tool to begin discussion between signature area members and continue future research on the subject.

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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION The purpose of the study is to understand the diversity of ideologies used to approach sustainability at UC Denver in CLAS and whether that diversity is impeding or assisting interdisciplinary programs aimed at sustainability. Through the analysis of interviews, I argue that participant ideologies (how they teach and theoretically approach sustainability) are determined by personal experiences. Based on this deduction I assert that the concept of ethos should be included with evaluation, education, and the three Es as a standard domain for sustainability and should be used as a means to transmit personal information that can be used to build relationships and overcome barriers. This thesis accessed what Malkii (2007) calls improvisation. This means that my selection of theory was performative, derived from experience, and engaged with reflexivity (Stanley, Wise 1993; Nordstrom 2008; Malkii 2007). Political ecology was important for looking at knowledge producing members at the university because they are a collective political body whose research defines generalizable knowledge about the relationship between economics, environment and livelihoods. Equally, political ecology acted as a method to understand emergent theories that surfaced in participant narratives. This includes capabilities approach, world systems theory and development theory. Some would argue that the emergence of critical economic theories should be encompassed by political economy and on a larger scale I agree. However, I feel that it is necessary to funnel down to dependency theory since it directly addresses the historically unequal relationship of financial and natural capital between the positions of the Core/North/West and the Periphery/South/East that are identified by participants in the findings.

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Chaos theory was used in order to understand the structure of the sustainability group and the minor. Chaos theory is organizational and systems oriented, dealing with large numbers components or parts, and was helpful for understanding the multiplicity of ideologies (Mann 1992). The divergences and adaptations of the group are understood by factors that inform its foundation. First, the initial shape of the system, in this case it is the original design of the sustainability minor in the anthropology department. Second, the underlying structure which is the acceptance of orthodoxies like the Brundltand Report by the people involved in the sustainability signature area. Third, the cohesion among actors, in this case it is the desire to implement interdisciplinary education on topics of sustainability. Last, the energy that arises from conflict among individual actors, which is found in the diversity of ideologies and the paradox between university action and perceived support. Inter-relational theories like sensemaking are used to understand collaborative group relationships and how to work past conflict. For this thesis, sensemaking was used to understand how personal experience informs professional ideologies and how that can be used to create understanding. Sensemaking states that people relay circumstances and experiences for others to comprehend and fill gaps of understanding (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005). Gaps of understanding exist due to a multitude of reasons but what matters is that when we are able to relate to ideas, when they are made understandable, we are able to turn them into agreements (Kellar-Guenther & Betts 2011). The sustainability signature area has a divergence of ideologies and needs a better agreement on sustainability to inform the minor and advance their goals. Reflexivity was used theoretically and methodologically to frame connections between academic knowledge and personal experience. Reflexivity is important if

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otherness that exists between disciplines is going to be broken down (Ortner 1984). Despite disciplinary differences, the sharing of narratives, personal and professional, does not require changed minds or uniform agreement but it allows other positions to be understood so that the structure is comprehensible and individuality is honored. Using semi-structured interviews, the five participants were asked to be reflexive in their opinions about sustainability. The structure of narratives was divided into different sections including environment. economy and equity would have been separated from one another. The initial design was modified when participants began to discuss other concepts including evaluation, and education. While participants shared common themes, narratives show just how different the underlying expectations were. Participants are all interested in moving forward but their ideas about how to do so uncover the divergence in the group. Participants believe that everyone is on the same page and yet they do not always agree with other peoples disciplinary approaches or the perception of their discipline by others. The primary divergence is between those whose narratives identify as more technocentric versus those who are ecocentric. This is particularly present in beliefs about emphasizing a relationship between local policies and technology but not addressing behavior change. The trend of the ecocentric and technocentric divide carried through the various approaches to inform a set of common themes. The strongest themes revolved around the problems of capitalism, the reduction of consumption and a reliance on technology, contextual ethics of needs, and the importance of community. As narratives advanced, the themes were informed by other topics including addressing power issues in knowledge sharing, reconnection to nature, artistic representation, as well as the intentionality of research and technology use. Despite the varying emphases of participants along the line of technocentric or ecocentric

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beliefs, at the root of these themes narratives are informed by critical theories and a desire for social justice. The intention of the curriculum provided by participants in their teaching is to allow students from any discipline to come and in theory get a split understanding of physical and social sciences as well as ecocentric and technocentric ideologies as they pertain to sustainability. As it has been shown with informal interviews with students this isnt entirely the case. In addition to facing multiple barriers, the education provided is formulaic. All of the participants felt that they were understood by other academics and that others agreed with their approach. However, the only agreement is begrudgingly on the Brundtland Report. When asked about the construction of the minor and the signature area one key informant stated: Originally we wanted to focus on things like fetishism, consumption, humancentered behavior. The use of the Brundtland report was really pushed by Deb Thomas. People were unsatisfied by this and a lot of people left the group. This is an important statement because it shows how the use of the Brundtland Report was agreed upon out of convenience and that has masked the conflict in approaches that have caused people to leave the signature group. Participant responses show how different their ideas about sustainability are from the agreed upon definition. This highlights the politics of informing an interdisciplinary group based on particular orthodoxies and how it is not representative of the sustainability signature areas membership. Ultimately if people cannot be passionate about something that they cannot buy into, they will not offer up their time or effort to participate or locate needed resources. There are a few implications for this. The complexity created by a diversity of opinions can act as a barrier to collaborative efforts and goal completion. It can

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also be a benefit, as chaos theory tells us it is often acting as both (Mann 1992). Alternatively, the vagueness of orthodoxies, like the definition found in the Brundtland Report, allow unsustainable interests to manipulate sustainability. As discussed in the literature review things like natural capitalism, green-washing and false indicators like Kuznets Curve are contradictory and harmful to the pursuit of a healthy planet and global populace. What is more is that these same harmful interests have become a common presence at conferences as orthodoxies are designed. The Brundtland Report in and of itself was designed as a political definition. Rafaels response echoes this: The Brundtland definition has value in the literature, but it is a political definition. Something so vague that it is something and nothing at the same time. It is something everyone can ascribe to. The issue with political definitions is that they allow interests who are not sustainable to influence action and policy. Maurice Strong, a Swedish billionaire was responsible for the inclusion of corporate sponsorship at the Rio Conference in 1992 (Bruno & Karliner 2002). This decisions has allowed corporations to define sustainability to suit their own interests through documents and treatise agendas developed at other conferences including Kyoto, Johannesburg, and most notable Copenhagen (Dubash 2009; Lavina, Hoff & DeRose 2003; Bruno & Karliner 2002). Such high profile conferences and the products they create are used to inform our understanding of sustainability. With corporations influencing the common perception of sustainable solutions things like green washing become acceptable. This misinformed approach to sustainability creates a standard practice where by universities and academics engaged in sustainability take funding from unsustainable sources. At UCD this includes the constant promise of funding from mining corporations, Walmart, and AT&T. All of which participate in green washing and back politicians who create

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unsustainable policies. This leads to another key finding, the paradox of university action and perceived support. Participants were asked about how the university supported the signature group and how it promoted sustainability on campus. Key informants created a base of knowledge that showed a bleak landscape of limited resources, overworked faculty, and a lack of direction. Surveys created by one lone administrator showed that in regards to education there was a host of contradictory beliefs about how education involving sustainability should be enacted. Based on this existing material, how sustainability is enacted at UCD and how support is perceived is paradoxical. Participant narratives show conflicts in perceived support based on student demand without the resources to supply or continue that demand. There is a paradox in the availability of funding and the perception of support from the research department, in the construction of green infrastructure without behavioral changes on campus. Participants provided several suggestions for the university to overcome the disjuncture of support and action. y First, to take a more grounded approach to understanding how much time it takes to develop curriculum and create successful interdisciplinary programs. y Second, to recognize that sustainable action on campus has not been from the top down and the university has some catching up to do with its students. y Third, that the university needs to address the contradiction of building green infrastructure that has PR value and its unsustainable practices elsewhere on campus. y Fourth, that the university needs to be present to multiple voices when

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addressing issues like sustainability. This includes maintenance and facilities as well as the local community. y Fifth, university administration including department chairs, need to actively promote the removal of disciplinary boundaries and change the stovepipe education system to an applied, and problem based approach. This means letting go of discipline specific requirements for promotion, allowing professors release time to teach or hiring an interdisciplinary staff to teach courses in the minor. y Last, the university and faculty members need to work collaboratively to find the necessary resources to make these changes. This last point was agreed upon by all participants, that to overcome some of the barriers on campus that interdisciplinary approaches are key. Yet, there is structural conflict with this belief. The university structure focuses on disciplinary research that forces academics to limit themselves to their own field if they are to advance in the university (Youngblood 2007). This is not in line with the interdisciplinary work required to enact sustainable initiatives and educational programs. Instead, this creates a multitude of approaches that are used to justify the superiority one disciplines methodology over another. As Stephens et al. (2008) discuss, education has progressed through various science types. The old educational system is becoming antiquated, and will give way to a new type of knowledge that Stephens et al. (2008) calls delta science. Participants echo this in their statements that academias future is based in interdisciplinary and community based approaches. However, until this change occurs the same barriers will exist. Actors will have to deal with the divergence of disciplines, the endless jargon in sustainability, the lack of support from universities for funding and jobs, and all the other things that contribute

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to stagnation. What seemed to be helping overcome these barriers was not just the shared proposition that interdisciplinary work is needed, but sensemaking. Participants took part in sensemaking without awareness of doing so. Several participants renegotiated their understanding of sustainability when they had the opportunity to interact with other disciplines; one was inspired by this change to use other means like art and pop culture to attract students. Two individuals were able to use their backgrounds in similar fields from undergraduate studies to unify curriculum for the courses in the minor they were co-instructing. As the findings show sensemaking occurred between participant and myself. This occurred in conversations after participants were shown my example narrative video. One way that faculty involved in teaching environmental education can bridge the development of relationships with the development of their respective educational structure is to create a digital narrative. The example narrative used in interviews and the working video being created are two examples. The working narratives should be used as illustrations of how people can talk about their beliefs and experiences. Currently Marty Otaez, a professor in the anthropology department, is leading the Coalition for Excellence in Digital Storytelling (www.dscoalition.org). The intention of the coalition is to create a campus-wide digital storytelling initiative that can assist professors, students, and community groups to develop personal narratives on their own. I suggest that this coalition be accessed as a resource to accomplish this suggestion. Participants shared suggestions for their own group. Members of interdisciplinary groups have to engage themselves and find the energy to work towards group goals. They also need to address their fears of exclusion and build relationships that access trust and participate in collective support systems, not

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resource competition. The primary suggestion to start this change in approach is for the group to come together and do exactly what Steve Koester suggested and create a working framework around sustainability. By attending a semester long seminar, issues of ideology can be discussed and members can get to know the ideas of other disciplines and individuals. It would be interesting to follow this study up with other group members participating in a workshop and sharing their stories together in a meeting or a seminar on sustainability. A unified seminar could also assist participating faculty on using their collective voices to get what they need. Student demand may bring pressure to upper administration to enhance or implement sustainable initiatives but they cannot be relied on as the sole catalysts for change. There is a lack of procedural knowledge that faculty can and should assist with, and not just in their departments. Faculty should also engage separately with upper administration. Students come and go but faculty should engage in stronger mentorships with higher ups to help maintain the structure and ensure goal completion over time. Most importantly, faculty need to consider themselves valuable, reclaim the spirit of activism, and create a support system to keep their voices heard when the university becomes inflexible. Participants pointed to some sizeable barriers including a lack of funding, the turn over rate of instructors and administrative positions, lack of communication and agreement, and disconnect from upper administration. One might ask whether a program like the minor will survive let alone grow. The answer is yes, but conditionally. The future of the minor is dependent on how willing faculty, students, staff, and administration are to build the structure back up. This means listening to suggestions provided by participants, replicating other schools that have faced the same barriers and being open to the possibility of change. Using the sand and Christmas light analogies in chaos theory, depending on

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how the grains of sand (factors) fall onto the sand pile (structure) the pile either builds or experiences a landslide. This process of stability and instability allows change to occur and create new structures (Thietart & Forgues 1995). In the case of this thesis, statements by key informants show how the groups structure was built and now how it has gone into a landslide. The lights are twinkling out. To turn this around I have some suggestions based on participant responses. Participants acknowledged an agreement of convenience on the use of the Brundtland Report to inform the base understanding to inform the sustainability minor and the signature group. Yet, all were critical to some degree of the definitions vagueness, political use, and at times hypocrisy. So why not change it? If the group were in the midst of what seems to be structural change then it would be acceptable to select a new definition that is digestible to the group. The Brundtland Report can still be acknowledged but something like the definition created by the Presidents Council on Sustainable Development may work as well (See page 22 for discussion). That being said, sustainability is generally understood by participants but it is so broad it is hard to define. The group believes that sustainability should not be the focus, sustainable development should be. They determined that development should be understood first in order to have some concise understanding of sustainability. However, if this is true then the group and the minor should be changed to sustainable development for consistency in ideology. It is important to consider that sustainability is the most commonly understood word to describe the application of environmentalism to social systems. However, sustainable development better encompasses the common themes provided by participants including capitalism, consumption, reliance on technology, ethics of needs and importance of community As the sustainability signature area is rebuilt, members need to take consideration of what the future looks like. Should the minor stand-alone or should

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disciplines be required to infuse their curriculum with topics of sustainability? Should the minor be housed in anthropology or should it be in a neutral administrative space? Should the minors curriculum remain in its current design or should it focus on the key themes brought up by participants? It is clear that interdisciplinary work is the future of sustainability so where the minor is housed or how sustainability is handled should be addressed with a realistic audit of available resources, accountability, commitment, and the level of energy and support available. The university needs to pay attention to the suggested points of support provided by participants to address the paradox of perceived and experienced support. This means increasing different types of available resources. The minor needs faculty to teach the courses, as one key informant shared there is such a lack of faculty involvement that students in the minor cannot complete their capstone projects. The university needs to find funding to pay for a consistent faculty or staff base. If student demand is the reason for increased support the university needs to provide it in the capacity it is required. The university also needs to provide financial support for the signature area group to host the semester long seminar proposed by the participant from anthropology. This would provide an opportunity for renewed membership and a working program to create some framework that accurately represents sustainability in CLAS. The university needs to emphasize the use of existing resources to create interdisciplinary connections. I believe that additional funding should be provided to assist faculty in participating in workshops to develop digital stories through the digital storytelling coalition. Ultimately the university should work towards a new structure that doesnt favor the separation of departments and colleges. However, if the university is unwilling or unable to start that process, the seminar and the workshop can at least create working relationships that can assist in bolstering

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participant energy. Last, the university should provide staff to assist the administrator in CLAS who has been overworked to support the minor. This assistance would include iterative studies to understand student needs and the structure of the sustainability group while facilitating the signature area to meet its goals. In order to enact these suggestions the university needs to provide financial assistance, it is an important point that the university does not use or advocate for the use of corporate funding that is counterintuitive to the signature areas mission for sustainability. I believe that the minor will survive and that it should be interdisciplinary. This thesis ultimately suggests that to ensure a future for the minor and sustainability signature group the structure should be reshaped by agency. This includes sharing reflexive narratives and the acceptance of cultural norms and soft theories that have been rejected based on empiricism. Participants shared their experiences and their ethos in this thesis. In combination with the analysis of narratives, they provided the ability of readers to make sense of their positions. Other members of their disciplines, colleges, or academic groups would benefit by doing the same. An atmosphere of reflection and expression would help fill in the gaps of the group. It would also help academics reach outside of universities to help disseminate their ideas. Our system of support internally is not enough, we must become important to people and communities outside of the university. As a student I have had personal conversations with lawyers, an economist in the Governors office, urban growers, video producers and engineers that have shown me that things have become so academic with disciplinary jargon and theoretical competition that relatable human experience is obscured. The public has a hard time relating. Studies that access community based participation and participatory action research show us that the community is essential to the genuine efforts of sustainability (Chambers 1994). Researchers must expose themselves as people with lives and experiences and relate that

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back to our scientific approach. In a conversation with a Psychology professor I was told, There is a reason that political movements like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street have become so mobilized without a clear framework or even a clear mission. They allow their ethos and experiences to come through, even their spirituality, to create and build ties, trust and understanding. They get more people because relatable human experience is something they can all participate in (Betts, W. Personal Communication October 5, 2011). The importance of exposing ourselves as people before experts is echoed by Chris Mooney (2011), who discusses constructed cognition through social institutions as expectations. If those institutions, most notably religion and spirituality, do not change their stance, their membership will not be likely to either. As Steve Koester stated science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin, and yet the spiritual side is dismissed outside of cultural relativism. Yet, our world is rotating with people playing out their lives in real time with spirituality. To them it is not a factor of analysis, it just is. The signature area should connect with those in philosophy and theology in order to approach a major contributor to unsustainable action. Gregory Bateson (1982) said in a letter: The split between consciousness and the rest of the mind was rectified with religion to make visible mans systemic and imperceptible place in nature. The result of which, was humanitys separation from nature by handing over responsibility to elite classes, this shortsighted perception of purposefulness created free enterprise. Anu (ENG) discussion of freedom and free enterprise might very well be included. In this instance, free enterprise has become the religious and corporate belief that man holds dominion over nature. This does not mean that science should be informed by the politics of dogmatic belief, but it means ending the orthodoxy that spirituality is not present in our world. There are people who are scientists who hold beliefs, spiritual or religious. The understanding of objectivity in work through rejection or reflection of bias should be

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upheld since it is clear that behavior can be negatively influenced by religious institutions. We see this in the spread of inequality and the strongly held belief of mans dominion over nature in Judeo Christian traditions (Jepson 2001). However, a major point is missed when such a large cultural trait like spirituality is ignored The results of this thesis and its sample are a part to the whole. The participants provide insights into how sustainability is approached in CLAS and how to advance their goals. The use of narrative is a way to make things comprehensible but in no way stands for the entirety of sustainability at UCD. As chaos theory discusses groups, organizations and structures change. In five years from now this landscape of knowledge may look entirely different. Additionally, this structure of understanding does not account for other colleges and programs. To understand sustainability at UCD in full, similar studies should be used to capture the narratives of staff who work in facilities and maintenance, administrators in all levels of the university as well as within in specific colleges, professors from other colleges that provide programs focused on sustainability, and students who participate in them. Future studies should also reflect on funding, power structures, curriculum development, and the infusion of our work in other communities. This thesis, at its base, is about communication. There are 6.5 billion people on the planet and 6.5 billion definitions of sustainability and many include political, cultural and spiritual influences. Some overlap, some are in direct opposition. They are all informed by experiences in life. Instead of a vague definition or concept, we must use experience as the unifying factor that makes sustainability relatable and understandable to others. We strive to be understood and when we are it creates a union. It is important that future research on this topic include the personal reflection of its author and its participants. This is the key to ensuring that ideologies are understood and translated across disciplines as means to strengthen relationships and tool sets to complete our goals.

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APPENDIX A CHAIN OF THEORY Selected and Emergent Theory

Improvisation
Frames the organization of findings & the emergence of critical economic theories Used to understand how a collective, politicized body uses their research to define generalizable knowledge about the relationship between economics, environment and livelihoods

Chaos Theory
Used to examine the initial structure of the sustainability signature area. Frames participant ideologies as variables that contribute to the structure. Measures cohesion and conflict between ideologies. Used to understand how personal experience informs professional ideologies and how that can be used to create understanding. Bridges gaps to create trust and agreement.

Sensemaking

Political Ecology

Capabilities Approach
Leading alternative to traditional economic frameworks aimed at poverty, inequality and human development Examines freedoms and capabilities required to enhanced livelihoods and cultural development.

Addresses historically unequal relationship of financial and natural capital between the positions of the Core/North/West and the Periphery/South/East

Dependency Theory

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APPENDIX B NARRATIVE VIDEO SCRIPT Intro: We all have unique perspective that should be shared in meaningful ways. These are
the experiences that have shaped my pursuit of sustainability.

Equity: Respect means listening until everyone has been heard and understood, only then is
there a possibility of balance and harmony. Dave Chief, Ogalola Lakota. Theres always going to be racism, theres always going to be prejudice. Its time we start talking about freedom and quit being refugees in our own country. Im not going to explain to the Italians anymore. -Russel Means. Columbus Day Parade Protest. Denver, Colorado. 1992. When asked to choose between prayer and action, I looked up at my parents and told them I would be marching. I was too young to understand the conflict of my Italian heritage and the protest of the Columbus Day Parade. But I knew that I stood for the right thing.

Ecology: We all share this small planet Earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama. I dug into the dirt and felt at peace with my peers. We were bringing life into a neglected community garden and we were being taught to be citizens of our planet. We gave him a poem as a gift for our lesson and he took my hands and gave thanks with a blessing I knew my connection to the Earth. Environment: Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.- John Clapham, Economic Historian. I turned my attention from the telescope to a monarch butterfly that had landed on my leg. I was hiking through an eleven thousand year old cultural center, the wall street of the Anasazi and I was thinking about the length and the scale of that butterflys journey to get here. Standing at the epicenter of Chaco Canyon I thought about the fragility of this once viable culture and the vulnerability of our current existent and everything its taken for us to get here.
Through my research Ive learned to define and communicate issues of sustainability in my discipline but through my experiences Ive come to appreciate sustainability as a part of who I am. It is knowing that you are a part to the whole, where landmarks, the environment and other people are as much a part of you as your organs, dreams or achievements.

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APPENDIX C INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 1) In your own words, define sustainability 2) What does sustainability mean to you? 3) How would you explain sustainability to someone else? 4) What are the biggest issues for sustainable action? 5) What can we do to be sustainable? 6) Is becoming sustainable possible? Please note: probe questions were used during interviews to expand participant response. This is a common practice in semi-structured interviews. Additional questions were impromptu and arose as each participant provided their narrative. Due to this, probe questions are not included with those approved through the HSRC process, which is limited in its ability to account for the fluid and improvisational structure of qualitative research.

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APPENDIX D EXAMPLES OF INDICATORS USED IN SUSTAINABILITY

Benchmarking Efficiency indicators Input Indicators

A point of reference against which the performance of an organization can be measured Indicators that measure the cost, unit cost or productivity associated with a given outcome or output. Indicators that report the amount of resources, either financial or other that have been used for a specific service or program Indicators that report the amount of work done or service provided to perform a function or carry out a program. They are also known as workload indicators. Indicators that report the quality of work accomplished or service provided. These assess the actual impact of an agencies action. They are also known as effectiveness indicators. Indicators that define dimensions of efficiency and effectiveness in a single indicator. Understanding natural system processes of landscapes and watersheds to guide the design of sound economic development strategies. Guaranteeing equal access to jobs, education, natural resources and services for all people, balancing the playing field.

Output Indicators

Outcome Indicators

Productivity Indicators Ecology- Natural Ecosystem Capacity Equity- Societal WellBeing for All People

Education- Life-long Citizens and organizations obtaining adequate and Learning, Awareness and comprehensive information in creating authentic choices for Training action intended to affect sustainability; developing interdisciplinary curriculum to train students for careers in sustainable development Evaluation- Measuring the Making of a Difference Identifying key sustainability indicators that measure the direction and extent of impact from economic and social activities on natural and human systems; providing feedback to allow for corrections in ongoing work towards sustainability.

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Factor 10

Over the next 30 to 50 years (one generation) a decrease in energy use and material flows by a factor of 10 and an increase in resource productivity/efficiency by a factor of 10 is required to achieve dematerialisation. Cleaner production (CP) is a preventative approach to managing the environmental impacts of business processes and products. CP uses changes in technology, processes, resouces or practices to reduce waste, environmental and health risks; minimise environmental damage; use energy and resources more efficiently; increase business profitability and competitiveness; and increase the efficiency of production processes. Cleaner production is applicable to all businesses, regardless of size or type. Eco-efficiency generates more value through technology and process changes whilst reducing resource use and environmental impact throughout the product or service's life. Eco-efficiency applies to all business aspects, from purchasing and production to marketing and distribution. Ecological Footprints (EFs) are an assessment of humanities dependence on natural resources. For a certain population or activity, EFs measure the amount of productive land and water required for the production of goods and the assimilation of waste required to support that population or activity. An Ecological Rucksack is the total quantity (in kg) of materials moved from nature to create a product or service, minus the actual weight of the product. That is, ecological rucksacks look at hidden material flows. Ecological rucksacks take a life cycle approach and signify the environmental strain or resource efficiency of the product or service. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a project specific tool used to identify and assess the actual and potential environmental implications of a project before the project commences. An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a voluntary management tool that provides a framework for an organization to pro-actively manage its potential and actual environmental risks and opportunities. EMSs identify,

Cleaner Production

Eco-Efficiency

Ecological Footprints

Ecological Rucksack

Environmental Impact Assessment

Environmental Management Systems

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document, monitor, evaluate and communicate an organizations environmental performance. Developed inline with the organizations environmental policy and extending throughout the organization, an EMS is part of the organizations overall management system. An EMS provides order, processes and procedures, assigns responsibilities, allocates resources and provides continual evaluation of planning activities, organizational structure and practices. The Factor Four The Factor Four concept visualizes a quadruple increase in resource efficiency using existing methodologies whilst avoiding negative impacts on the overall quality of life. The concept aims for society to last twice as long or enjoy twice as much whilst using half the resources and placing half the pressure on the environment. Green Productivity (GP) is a strategy for enhancing productivity and environmental performance for overall socio-economic development. t is the application of GPmethodology comprising the appropriate techniques, technologies and management system to produce environmentally compatible goods and services. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) identifies, quantifies and evaluates the environmental impacts (inputs and outputs) of a product, service or activity, from cradle to grave. That is, the environmental impacts of all phases of the product's life are assessed, from the time materials are extracted through manufacture, transportation, storage, use, recovery, reuse and disposal. Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is a voluntary process of local community consultation with the aim to create local policies and programs that work towards achieving sustainable development. Local Agenda 21 encompasses awareness raising, capacity building, community participation and the formation of partnerships. Natural Capital is the environmental stock or resources of Earth that provide goods, flows and ecological services required to support life. Examples of natural capital include: minerals; water; waste assimilation; carbon dioxide absorption; arable land; habitat; fossil fuels; erosion control; recreation; visual amenity; biodiversity; temperature

Green Productivity

Life Cycle Assessment

Local Agenda 21

Natural Capital

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regulation and oxygen. Natural capital has financial value as the use of natural capital drives many businesses. Natural Step The Natural Step (TNS) framework is based on scientific principles; is focused on the beginning of cause-effect relationships; and incorporates the wider environment-socialeconomic system in its thinking. Designed to guide actions and behaviors, TNS framework works towards achieving sustainability.

Strategic impact assessment (SIA), also known as strategic environmental assessment (SEA), is the assessment of the wider environmental, social and economic impacts of alternative proposals at the beginning of a project. That is, at the decision stage - the policy, planning or program (PPP) level. Courtesy Global Development Research Center http://www.gdrc.org/sustdev/index.html

Strategic Impact Assessment

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APPENDIX E DEFINITIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Brundtland (1987)

This is the most commonly quoted definition and it aims to be more comprehensive than most: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable agriculture is a system that can evolve indefinitely toward greater human utility, greater efficiency of resource use and a balance with the environment which is which is favourable to humans and most other species. Sustainable development involves devising a social and economic system, which ensures that these goals are sustained, i.e. that real incomes rise, that educational standards increase, that the health of the nation improves, that the general quality of life is advanced. We thus define agricultural sustainability as the ability to maintain productivity, whether as a field or farm or nation. Where productivity is the output of valued product per unit of resource input. Lack of a precise definition of the term 'sustainable development' is not all bad. It has allowed a considerable consensus to evolve in support of the idea that it is both morally and economically wrong to treat the world as a business in liquidation.

Harwood (1990)

Pearce, Makandia & Barbier (1989)

Conway & Barbier (1990)

Daly (1991)

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Heinen (1994)

No single approach to 'sustainable development' or framework is consistently useful, given the variety of scales inherent in different conservation programmes and different types of societies and institutional structures Sustainable development, sustainable growth, and sustainable use have been used interchangeably, as if their meanings were the same. They are not. Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely. Sustainable use, is only applicable to renewable resources. Sustainable development is used in this strategy to mean: improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems. Development is about realising resource potential, Sustainable development of renewable natural resources implies respecting limits to the development process, even though these limits are adjustable by technology. The sustainability of technology may be judged by whether it increases production, but retains it other environmental and other limits. Sustainable development is concerned with the development of a society where the costs of development are not transferred to future generations, or at least an attempt is made to compensate for such costs. Most societies want to achieve economic development to secure higher standards of living, now and for future generations. They also seek to protect and enhance their environment, now and for their children. Sustainable development tries to reconcile these two objectives.

IUCN, UNEP, WWF (1991)

Holdgate (1993)

Pearce (1993)

HMSO (1994)

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APPENDIX F POLITICAL SCIENCE PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Discipline/ID Kathryn Cheever Professor of Political Science/ POLI (Member of CLAS)

Research Interest y Inter agency collaboration y Urban administration y Community based organization

Taught in the Sustainability Minor? Yes

Campus or Community Involvement Director of Center for New Directions

Theory or Coursework Examples y Daniel Kemis y Rachel Carlson y Deep Ecology is an interesting theory and it is ok to discuss in sustainability

How Do You Approach Sustainability?

o o o o o o o o Sustainability is a diverse topic for all disciplines Disciplines have a common goal but different paths for achieving it Should include community in sustainable opportunities Sustainability and policy created for it should improve life not degrade it Economic policy is not always aligned with good science Decisions are easily swayed by other interests i.e. business, constituency Ignoring the environment in economics and policy is irresponsible Economics is tied to behavior i.e. the resistance to organics in farming due to fear of cost

Economics

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Equity
o o o o o Building communities is key for equality and empowerment Communities are impacted by preconceived ideas about needs by larger systems or institutions When issues are addressed major players voices are always heard but local communities impacted the most are not represented She is interested in understanding the relationship between government, policy and communities effected by policy She has personal experience of community involvement, people on her own block work together to meet each others needs. Environment is often left out of decision making, policy ignores degradation in favor of meeting human needs All interests and disciplines need to be present to solve environmental issues and balance human needs Technology is an easy concept for people to understand in relation to environmentalism and wind and solar are better than old technologies like transmission lines that are still being pushed in southern Colorado

Environment
o o o

Education and Evaluation  Interdisciplinary Education

o o Interdisciplinary work is the only way society will see breakthroughs in sustainability She has had personal experience in successfully working with a member of another discipline who is in physical sciences to teach a sustainability course Research department is supportive in finding funding for sustainability research University is taking some effort to build sustainable infrastructure including the new LEED science building There is a contradiction of the construction of green infrastructure and unsustainable practices on campus i.e. plastic ware at catered events, lack of bike paths, policies for computer logons and energy use University needs to do more audits on energy use and products used on campus Need to include more voices on the campus including facilities and maintenance to address sustainability University has a history of mistrust with local communities, need to include those voices to create applied, working learning lab for everyone to better understand three Es Students should demand more from the university in the way of sustainability including recycling, on campus urban gardens, and bike paths

 Support of the University

o o

 Evaluation
o

o o o

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APPENDIX G GEOGRAPHY PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Discipline/ ID Professor of Geography / GEOG (Member of CLAS)

Research Interest y Resource management y Sustainable land management y GIS technology

Taught in the Sustainability Minor? Yes

Campus or Community Involvement y Director of national center for disciplinary research in coservation and improvement of forest ecosystems (Mexico) y Member of sustainability signature area

Theory or Coursework Examples y Class watches 15 minutes of financial channels for a month to understand contradiction of capitalism and sustainability. y Deep Ecology has negative connotations that make it seem extremist, should use other means to get point across

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How Do You Approach Sustainability?

o o o o o Sustainability is overused/abused, the understanding of sustainable development is lost. Sustainability and Sustainable Development are separate Brundtland report is a vague and political definition. Development needs to be understood first to grapple with the ethics of needs. Need to address capitalism, consumption, and contextual needs

Economics
o o o o o Capitalism is the biggest issue and there is no other economic model in its place Sustainability requires zero growth. Need to change consumptive behavior that is manipulated by corporate interests Paradox of sustainability and growth is in all industries We are just arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Equity
o o o o Equitable needs are a big part of sustainability and sustainable development Defining equity and needs is ugly and sticky. Social sciences are key to getting people to acknowledge and be critical of what they conceptualize as a need Reconnection to the environment may help people become more aware of issues of equality

Environment
o o o Human improvement should include new ways of relating to the natural world Technology is needed for energy, however, behavioral changes are critical for change Technology wont save us (Eco-Economics, Ecocentrism)

Education and Evaluation  Interdisciplinary Education

o o This is the future of education University I responsible for promoting novel thinking through interdisciplinary programs to change values and sustainable action

 Support of the University

o o o o o

University is responding to the demands of students to have interdisciplinary support for sustainability Shown through the creation of programs, task forces, and groups to deal with push.

 Evaluation

Remove disciplinary boundaries and change the stovepipe education systems (The sustainability minor is an example of an attempt to do this) There are lots of barriers present (reflective of those listed in literature search) Future approach of education needs to be problem based, applied, and linked to the community

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APPENDIX H ENGINEERING PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Discipline/ID Professor of Engineering/ ENG (Not a member of CLAS)

Research Interest y Environmental Engineering y Bioremediation y Sustainability

Taught in the Sustainability Minor? No

Campus or Community Involvement y Director of IGERT program y Director of center for sustainable infrastructure

Theory or Coursework Examples y Amartya Sens capabilities approach (CA) y Deep Ecology is not a valued theory

How Do You Approach Sustainability?

o o o o o o Recognizes the Brundtland Report, and the triple bottom line/three Es Sustainability is too varied in definition and should not be talked about before defining development Should focus on technology and infrastructure because it is more time intensive CA is linked to sustainable development through economic utility Must understand development first Economic belief is exemplified by Amartya Sen who is a Nobel Prize winning economist who knows about real poverty

Economics

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o o o o o o

Economics in sustainability includes the freedom to enhance human capabilities

Equity
Ethics of what qualifies a need is important Researchers should always include community needs to address sustainable solutions Use infrastructure in context of location or needs to address solutions There should be equal reverence for systems or expert knowledge and local, community knowledge

Environment
o o o Urban metabolism is a holistic approach to looking at how infrastructure and urban material flows affect the environment Technology is the solution to decreasing harmful impacts on the environment but must bridge knowledge types to implement in communities Environment and technology are meant for meeting peoples needs, utility

Education and Evaluation  Interdisciplinary Education

o o o Interdisciplinary education promotes interdisciplinary work Success of her programs has to do with them being interdisciplinary and community based She didnt have the opportunity to participate in this type of education when she was in school, created programs for students to have what she didnt get and had to find for herself

 Support of the University

o o

University supports her programs as much or as little as any other, others in the medical field probably get more funding Largest provision by university is space and the elevation of sustainability to a signature area

 Evaluation
o o o o

Need energy to improve curriculum opportunities that could engage community professionals to continue their education and stay up to date on latest concepts University does not understand what it takes in time and energy to develop programs, including sustainability programs Need to pay attention to process of replication by other universities of programs being developed at UCD In interdisciplinary work people cannot be boxed in by assumptions of what their discipline is. No single discipline has the answer and if one thinks they do they become a barrier. The conversation stops

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APPENDIX I BIOLOGY PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Discipline/ID

Research Interest

Associate y Applied aquatic Professor of ecology Biology/ BIO y Aquaponics (Member of CLAS)

Taught in the Sustainability Minor? Yes

Campus or Community Involvement y Involved in sustainability student group y Auraria campus sustainability advisory committee member y UCD chancellors task force for sustainability

Theory or Coursework Examples None discussed Emphasis on applied work using art.

How Do You Approach Sustainability?

o o Recognizes the Brundtland Report, pass on a better world to his children In some ways sustainability is an oxymoron

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New perspective due to interdisciplinary relationships with faculty in other disciplines, more holistic understanding beyond ecology.

Economics
o Not an emphasized approach.

Equity
o o o o Achieving equity means helping people meet their needs Needs may be getting food or water but can also be solutions i.e. controlling the spread of cholera in Haiti after the earthquake This can be done using non-traditional methods Things like art and music can act as vehicles to increase awareness about needs and solutions to meet needs

Environment
o o o Uses disciplinary expertise to create sustainable systems and decrease pollution. Using technology like aquaponics to meet peoples needs efficiently without undue stress on the environment Criticism of the use of technology to reduce degradation to increase consumption and population i.e. the use of aquaponics to feed more people while using less land is not meant to create more food to increase the population

Education and Evaluation  Interdisciplinary Education

o o Interdisciplinary education is necessary for students Interdisciplinary work in education has changed his perspective on sustainability, he cannot share this experience because other members of his department do not engage in interdisciplinary work

 Support of the University

o o

University supports interdisciplinary education in sustainability because students demand it Support recognized through the development of jobs to teach, task forces and the plans they create as well as the investment of upper administration i.e. the Dean of CLAS

 Evaluation
o o o o

Students need to be allowed to become more involved because sustainable action is not top down Students so far have been responsible for most of the major changes on campus that deal with energy and water use Administration needs to catch up to the efforts of students this can be done through interdisciplinary academics and enhancement of academic freedom He uses art and pop culture to engage students to accomplish

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APPENDIX J ANTHROPOLOGY PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Discipline/ID Steve Koester Professor of Anthropology/ ANTH (Member of CLAS)

Research Interest y Political ecology/political economy of the Caribbean y Spread of blood born disease in intravenous drug use

Taught in the Sustainability Minor? No *Note the anthropology department houses the minor and has yet to be able to release anyone to teach foundation course

Campus or Community Involvement y Director of sustainability minor y Chair of anthropology department y Note both positions have changed during the research process (August 21st, 2011)

Theory or Coursework Examples y Appadurai imagined identies y Political economy and political ecology y Deep ecology helps show spirituality and scientific pragmatism as two sides of the same coin

How Do You Approach Sustainability?

o o

o Economics
o

Sustainability is equal to behavioral change and a reduction in consumption Sustainability is disciplinary, limited by boundaries of different fields, and it shouldnt be Sustainability should involve identifying needs first and solutions second

Capitalism and consumption prohibit sustainability

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o o o

Economics should be used to meet peoples basic needs but context of geography, and class confound this Critical of developed countrys greed and consumption Modes of capitalism like marketing create new needs that the world cannot support Definition of quality of life is a matter of choice in developed countries and should be attached to the ability to connect with your environment Should be distinguished between materialism ad need i.e. technology fair in St. Lucia. His desire for sustainable technology and his companions desire for amenities in developed countries Equity I defined by access, people in less developed countries (LCDs) deserve better and developed countries need to give something up Youth are critical for making these changes Limitation of the plant and need for cooperation exemplified, we are all in this together Technology for pollution reduction is interesting but it will not solve our problems, must lower consumption Spirituality and culture (cultural relativism) is a means for environmental appreciation i.e. NW coast Indians salmon ceremony Japan post tsunami will be an interesting social experiment to see how a technologically advanced society that is very animistic will deal with a man made and natural disaster

Equity
o o o o o o o o

Environment

Education and Evaluation  Interdisciplinary Education

o

There is a common interest to have interdisciplinary education at UCD, it may be the only way the university system can survive the economic challenges of our

 Support of the University

o

Support is seen through founding of sustainability faculty groups but funding and emphasis are uneven between colleges and programs

 Evaluation
o

o o o o

The university needs to have some fundamental understanding of sustainability and sustainable development beyond the Brundtland Report. This does not mean an agreed upon definition but a working framework Need to bridge social and physical sciences to teach students about concept of needs and quality of life Creating separate programs on sustainability may not be the answer, existing disciplines should be required to teach sustainability in their programs Major barrier is giving faculty release time to teach in the minor. There is an unequal and limited involvement from different disciplines University action is contradictory lack of meeting campus needs i.e. more space in favor of parking lots

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