AASHE Experience

College of Menominee Nation representatives attended the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) conference in Los Angeles, California earlier this week!  CMN President, Dr. Verna Fowler, and two staff from the Sustainable Development Institute (Julie Edler and Kate Flick) attended.

In a candid interview with the two SDI staff, hear what Kate Flick and Julie Edler have to say about the experience:

So, what is AASHE?

It's the biggest campus sustainability conference in North America. It is an excellent way to get a grasp of what exciting initiatives are taking place on campuses around the nation. We attended sessions, gathered some new ideas and contacts, and are ready to head back to Keshena, Wisconsin with a new energy and some great projects to implement. Not to mention, guests at the conference heard about the College of Menominee Nation and learned about Menominee's model of sustainability. It was a great place to meet new people, learn, and share ideas.

What was the best part?
There were so many great aspects, it's hard to narrow it down to one "best part."  I have a bunch of key takeaways from a few different sessions.

Like what? What were the sessions like?
One presentation focused on developing campus sustainability tours. Since SDI is in the process of making one, it provided us with a few ideas. They highlighted how important it is to have communications and marketing in line with the school and reminded us that branding shouldn't be forgotten. They had their tour available to look at and QR codes to scan to see ideas for facts, information, and videos on their campus sustainability efforts.

Some AASHE workshops focused on enrichment workshops for health in relation to sustainability. We learned how important and helpful it is to interweave health and reflection throughout all areas of sustainability whether it be with the community, interns, or even within our own staff.

We've got other great processes to implement about working with students and interns at the Sustainable Development Institute. We learned new ways to train, evaluate, and help our students get the best experience they can. In addition, another session about "Trends in Sustainability and Education" as well as another session on preparing interns for the workforce highlighted new ways SDI can make the intern program better.

That's just a tidbit of the information from the conference. There is much more that we have to bring back. A special workshop on Wednesday highlighted how to build a better "Community of Practice." It taught us the importance of trained and experienced leadership skills and included ideas how to better communicate what's happening in a moment and where direction is headed.

Also, SDI has some workshops in motion and we got some great ideas and training how to better run them. SDI also has an idea for the possibility of doing a film festival, so we got some great contacts and facts about sustainability film festivals and how to go about doing that.

What's the weather like?
Beautiful! We really can't complain!

Julie Edler and Kate Flick will be back on campus on Monday and look forward to it!