The Sustainability Advisory Committee (SAC) is a coalition of students, faculty, and staff committed to increasing sustainable behaviors on campus and fostering individual responsibility for living sustainably.

The committee typically meets monthly during the academic year. If you're interested in attending a meeting or learning more about how you can work with SAC, please send us an email at recycling@pugetsound.edu.

Structure

SAC reports to both the Provost and the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The committee is jointly led by an administrative co-chair and one or more faculty co-chairs. The current co-chairs of SAC are John Hickey, executive director of community engagement and associate vice president for business services, and faculty co-chairs Joel Elliott (Biology) and Kena Fox-Dobbs (Geology, Environmental Policy and Decision Making).

SAC is divided into five subcommittees corresponding to the categories in Sustainability Tracking and Rating System (STARS).

  • Climate Subcommittee
    The climate subcommittee focuses on energy and transportation issues, administers the Presidents Climate Commitment, and is responsible for STARS reporting related to climate, energy, transportation, and buildings.
  • Consumption Subcommittee
    Formerly known as the Waste Reduction Task Force, this subcommittee focuses on STARS tracking topics related to dining services, purchasing, waste reduction, care of campus grounds, and water conservation.
  • Curriculum Subcommittee
    This subcommittee supports the revised sustainability grants program, soliciting proposals to pilot a variety of sustainability-related projects on campus. Based on clearly defined criteria, the curriculum subcommittee makes recommendations to the larger Sustainability Advisory Committee about which project proposals to fund, tracks project progress, and researches external opportunities to help secure additional sustainability funds for the university's efforts. This subcommittee is also responsible for tracking the STARS areas related to sustainability in the curriculum and research.
  • Outreach Subcommittee
    This subcommittee includes planning programs for the campus community, updating the website, and making regular reports to the campus community about sustainability issues on campus. The outreach subcommittee is responsible for the measurement of the co-curricular education and public engagement segments of the STARS reporting system.
  • Executive Subcommittee
    This subcommittee organizes and runs the monthly SAC meetings, administers the committee budget, and is responsible STARS reporting related to investments, diversity, and human resources.