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Video Closed Captions

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Shana Weber:
I'm Shana Weber.

Shana Weber:
I direct the Office of Sustainability at Princeton University.

Shana Weber:
We do have a campus Sustainability Plan.

Shana Weber:
And, it's great to have a plan, but what was really exciting

Shana Weber:
is the fact that there was a community that grew up around developing it.

Shana Weber:
The three areas of priority in the Princeton Sustainability

Shana Weber:
Plan are: greenhouse gas reductions;

Shana Weber:
resource conservation; and research, education and civic engagement.

Shana Weber:
One of the things that's special about the Princeton

Shana Weber:
approach is a commitment to having an educational aspect

Shana Weber:
as part of every sustainability initiative.

Shana Weber:
That way, whatever we have going on has more of an impact

Shana Weber:
than it would have otherwise.

Shana Weber:
We think about the campus as a whole, as a sort of an ecosystem

Shana Weber:
when we're thinking about sustainability.

Shana Weber:
One of the ecosystem components that we impact is Carnegie Lake.

Eileen Zerba:
All right, the project has to do with the impact of

Eileen Zerba:
sustainable practices on campus and what effect these land use

Eileen Zerba:
changes have on the regional watershed and particularly Carnegie Lake.

Eileen Zerba:
My philosophy of teaching is to use an experiential learning

Eileen Zerba:
platform, where students work on real-life projects that make a

Eileen Zerba:
difference in some way to either the University or the community.

Eileen Zerba:
They work on some kind of local problem that really translates

Eileen Zerba:
to global and environmental issues.

Eileen Zerba:
We go down to the Kingston boat ramp where we have eight

Eileen Zerba:
different kayaks. Students are first instructed

Eileen Zerba:
on how to make the individual measurements,

Eileen Zerba:
but then you have to get out in the field and do the practical

Eileen Zerba:
how-to and what exactly do you do in the kayak?

Eileen Zerba:
How many tubes do you collect?

Shana Weber:
We hosted a sustainability open house in the fall of 2008.

Jeffrey Domanski:
Today's event is really the sustainability plan laid out

Jeffrey Domanski:
across this whole floor of Frist.

Carl Ferenbach III:
We have this wonderful set of capabilities at Princeton in

Carl Ferenbach III:
science, in policy, in engineering and

Carl Ferenbach III:
applications, and with all of that capability

Carl Ferenbach III:
to teach, to research, to share, we have to ...

Carl Ferenbach III:
very much have to lead in practicing what we preach.

Shana Weber:
One of things I've noticed over the last few years is a really

Shana Weber:
dramatic increase in student-level of awareness about

Shana Weber:
sustainability. The level of engagement in

Shana Weber:
student clubs has climbed dramatically.

Shana Weber:
The level of enrollments in environmental courses has

Shana Weber:
climbed, and the level of interest in incorporating

Shana Weber:
sustainability into undergraduate thesis projects

Shana Weber:
and graduate work is also increasing,

Shana Weber:
and that's very encouraging.

Eileen Zerba:
I think an important goal of higher education is to help our

Eileen Zerba:
students to become problem solvers and responsible citizens

Eileen Zerba:
-- especially, in my point of view, for the environment.

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