UMBC Sustainability Office to Speak at National Conference

GSCHE Conference 

 With a theme of “The future is …”, this year’s Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education reflects the uncertainty about the future that many feel and invites participants to recommit themselves to the urgent work of building a future that is sustainable, equitable, and resilient. We seek to highlight inspiring examples of higher education leadership that empower participants to envision and create such a future. Ultimately, the future is ours to make. Are you committed to leveraging the power of higher education to forge a brighter future? Join us at GSCHE!

Schedule at a Glance: https://www.aashe.org/conference/schedule-at-a-glance/

Sustainability & Facilities 101 : Maximizing Collaboration

UMBC's Asst. Dir. of Sustainability, Ryan Kmetz, is facilitating a session at this year's GSCGE aimed at helping sustainability and facilities professionals better communicate and collaborate. 

Topic Areas: Coordination & Planning, Buildings

Sustainability and Facilities Management (FM) professionals and departments often are tasked with working closely together on various projects throughout campus. Many of these professionals, by nature of their work, are already experienced systems thinkers; yet, sometimes it feels like FM and Sustainability are speaking different languages or living in different worlds. By understanding each department's missions the two stakeholder teams can effectively implement cross-disciplinary collaboration to complete projects that achieve maximum sustainability and operational key performance indicators. Specifically, attendees will learn common concepts unique to each field and how to translate those concepts for application to their discipline. Concepts will include: Deferred Maintenance (DM), Total Cost of Ownership, Risk Management, and Project Scope. For example, when the session discusses DM sustainability professionals will learn what DM is and how it applies to sustainability work; whereas, FM professionals will learn how DM relates to sustainability. Each core concept will feature a simple case study and examples of synergistic overlap between sustainability and FM systems. Attendees will leave this session with a better understanding of strategic concepts and the tools to effectively communicate with their other disciplinary colleagues.

This session provides the opportunity for sustainability professionals to better understand the more technical world of facilities. It will allow participants to gain a basic understanding and to identify tools and resources to utilize at their home campus to more effectively engage and work with facilities to achieve maximum sustainability gains.

The audience will learn how to understand facilities jargon and translate it into a sustainability (and vice versa) context. The goal is to empower sustainability professionals to increase their interactions with facilities staff to identify and implement opportunities to increase sustainability on their campus.

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