Photo courtesy of Kenneth C. Zirkel via Wikimedia Commons. Mount Holyoke hosted the Global Confrence on Sustainability in Higher Education this semester.
Sophie Frank ’26
Staff Writer
This year, Mount Holyoke College’s Miller Worley Center for the Environment is a host institution for the Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education. The conference, which is hosted virtually, has over 4,700 attendees from 353 institutions across 23 countries. The event is hosted by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, which works to “[empower] higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students to be … drivers of sustainability innovation,” according to its website.
Meghan Fay Zahniser, the executive director for AASHE, said that “host institutions truly champion sustainability advancements in higher education” in a College news publication. Being a host institution means the College has been recognized by AASHE for its commitment to sustainability and has been given the chance to provide free conference access to its students. Mount Holyoke has set the goal of being carbon neutral by 2037 and has been making changes to its building and dining standards in order to make life on campus more sustainable, as detailed on its “sustainability” website page. In addition to plans for the future, Mount Holyoke currently supports the Miller Worley Center for the Environment, which worked to make hosting the conference possible and allows students to delve into issues of climate justice and sustainability.
Students have been given free conference access, with the recorded materials remaining available asynchronously following the close of the conference, according to an Oct. 12, 2022 MHC This Week newsletter. On its website, the conference describes its mission as “[bringing] together sustainability leaders from around the world … to share effective models, policies, research, collaborations and transformative actions that advance sustainability in higher education and surrounding communities.” Conference materials include virtual discussion groups, as well as lectures spanning topics from “Centering Justice and Equity in Environmental Center Work” to “A Student-led Process for University Carbon Footprinting.” Speakers range from university professors to students to climate organization leaders.
When examining events like this one, it’s important to consider what it truly means to be a global conference. Here, global inclusivity seems to come from multiple places — bringing in issues of sustainability from countries around the world, the participation of diverse institutions and students and a focus on intersectional identities and how that pertains to the fight for climate justice.
The conference did not always have a global focus, with both AASHE and the conference once representing only North America. Now, the conference has citizens from 23 countries in attendance. One of the panels, “Co-Learning Partnerships & Carbon Management in Denmark & Canada,” focuses specifically on climate work in those countries. The other panels do not reference specific countries, but rather integrate global ideas and the work of many social justice groups into panels on a wide variety of topics. Multiple panels, including one called “Weaving for Resilience: Indigenous Knowledge and Place-based Learning in Sustainability Education,” discussed Indigenous approaches to sustainability, community and engaging with one another. Several talked about “racial equity and social justice,” according to AASHE. The “Is a Campus a Community if Everyone Isn’t Paid a Living Wage?” panel encouraged the institutions in attendance to look at themselves by examining “higher education institutions that voluntarily increased the pay of low-wage workers,” the conference description reads.
Around the world, conferences such as this one, organizations such as AASHE and the College are working towards global solutions and community building, and examining their roles in fighting for social and climate justice.