In January 2023, The Ohio State University launched an initiative to develop a new vision for advancing sustainability education, research and community engagement throughout the university’s academic enterprise. Titled Advancing Sustainability at Ohio State (ASOS), this effort has aimed to build upon Ohio State's sustainability successes to better address growing global and local sustainability challenges.
Sustainability is a topic area that spans across Ohio State's colleges, departments, centers and institutes. Further, the communities where the university works, and partners it engages, seek out Ohio State’s expertise, support and educated students to meet rapidly evolving goals, sustainability targets and workforce needs.
Therefore, this visioning has intended to position the university's collective strengths in a manner that best responds to society's needs.
Visioning process
Ohio State launched a faculty-led planning process to develop an integrated, transformational vision to advance sustainability across education, research and community engagement through a comprehensive approach. This initiative was led by Elena Irwin, faculty fellow in the Office of Academic Affairs and faculty director of the Sustainability Institute.
Over 2,600 faculty, students, staff, administrators, and external partners and experts were engaged in this visioning process. This included three ASOS visioning committees comprising 63 faculty and 8 staff from 12 colleges, 37 academic units, 15 centers and institutes, 5 university offices, and 5 campuses. One-on-one interviews and small group sessions were conducted with over 350 Ohio State faculty, staff, students, and administrators and 140 external participants, including employers, alumni, sustainability practitioners, and academic leaders from other institutions. Additional input came via surveys from over 1,800 students, 127 alumni, and 85 employers and a small group of visiting experts from universities and public and private sectors.
Visiting Committee. This effort was also informed by a panel of external sustainability experts in the private, public, and higher education sectors that invested their time into visiting the Columbus campus to better understand Ohio State's existing programming and the potential for improvements through faculty, staff and student interviews and project observations. This led to a series of recommendations in the Visiting Committee Report.
Visioning Papers
Three separate faculty-led committees were formed to develop visions for Ohio State's approach to sustainability education and workforce development, research, and community engagement. Their work is reflected in the following reports:
• Sustainability Education and Workforce Development Visioning Paper
• Sustainability Research Visioning Paper
• Sustainability Community Engagement Visioning Paper
Integrated Paper
In order to synthesize key elements of the three visioning papers, while highlighting achievable opportunities and outcomes with defined timelines and providing an integrated framework for sustainability within Ohio State's academic mission, a subcommittee of visioning committee members authored an integrated paper to guide implementation activities: