Kapiʻolani Community College’s Director of the Office for Institutional Effectiveness Robert Franco will be in Boston from October 1–3 to represent Chancellor Leon Richards at the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate. The summit will bring together more than 250 college and university leaders from across the United States to focus on ways to strengthen campus climate action and sustainability challenges in community, regional and national contexts. Most summit participants are signatories of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).
Franco will be a lead presenter for a poster session entitled, “Educating for Civic and Moral Responsibility in the Energy-Climate Era,” focusing on the college’s national leadership of a Teagle Foundation sponsored project to develop faculty and student commitment to building diverse, equitable, healthy and sustainable communities.
The college currently has 28 courses that are designated with sustainability integrated curriculum and funds from the National Science Foundation and Keck Foundation are supporting undergraduate research on terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The Mālama i nā Ahupuaʻa service-learning project is now in its 20th year having engaged more than 2,000 students in caring for traditional Hawaiian watersheds on Oʻahu. The campus is also developing a new strategic plan metrics to reduce electricity, greenhouse gases, water and waste from 2015–2021.
More on the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate
Convened by Second Nature, Inc., the supporting organization for the ACUPCC, the summit reflects the centrality of higher education’s role in preparing new generations to meet the challenges of climate change.
The program focuses on ways to build on the success of climate action plans and sustainability initiatives on ACUPCC campuses and develop solutions to the most pressing environmental problems facing the community.
Read the Kapiʻolani CC news release for more.
