Guest Blogger: Breaking Down Silos

This is the second article from Brad McAllister, one of this month’s guest bloggers. Brad's first article about the sustainability “groundhog” cycle that keeps campus from advancing sustainability is available here.

“You Stay on Your Side of Campus and I’ll Stay on Mine”

There is a sense of academic segregation on many of today’s campuses. Business students tend to be on one side of campus and science students tend to be on the other. Public policy/non-profits are somewhere in-between and students of the arts are housed in a completely different place. On larger campus settings the students may not even share the same library, let alone the same social circle and extracurricular scene.

Looking through the lens of sustainability, this is cause for concern. A central tenet of sustainability is collaboration, which includes multidisciplinary integration of holistic systems thinking. In other words, its about getting a bunch of heads with different backgrounds, skills and priorities around a table to develop a solution for the common good. However, on today’s campuses most students, faculty and staff don’t have regular opportunities to learn from and support the intellectual growth of their fellow peers.

This missing piece appears when new alumni enter the workforce lacking multidisciplinary problem solving experience. Considering its impact on sustainability, imagine how a lack of collaboration experience can cause business to perform unsustainably. This simple skill is becoming increasingly desirable as corporations, SMEs and governments are prioritizing sustainability and looking for solutions from the next generation employee base.

So how do you go about breaking down this barrier? Whether you’re a student looking to catalyze your peers or staff tasked with integrating sustainability on campus, the process is the same.

First: Conduct an Inventory to find out what collaboration already looks like.
Reach out to your Student Development office and get a list of the student groups currently registered on campus. Determine what their membership looks like in terms of majors and academic years. Look for those who seem to be attracting students from various backgrounds. Ask the more diverse groups how they are attracting students. Are they using service-based projects or are they relying on social events? If you have the resources, inventory specific courses that are multidisciplinary in nature. This inventory process will also help you in achieving a few STARS points under the Curriculum credit category.

Second: Identify Gaps - In your inventory process you should discover some major silos. For example you might find an environmental advocacy group made up of environmental science students trying to engage a local company. Likely lacking in this group is a MBA candidate with the ability to navigate the real world concerns of a profit driven company. Similarly you might find a group focused on “green” entrepreneurship but doesn’t have a member from outside the business school. On the other hand, you may identify collaborative opportunities that work. Dive into the successful programs and uncover what works. I can’t tell you exactly what they are. Each campus culture is different.

Third: Share with them what you have learned, by going to them - Resist the urge to set up a single meeting and invite all the student groups that you are targeting. Turnout will be spotty at best. You must go to them, one at a time and on their grounds. Begin by asking for 15 minutes on the agenda at one of their meetings. Use this as an opportunity to redefine sustainability as the triple bottom line, making a clear case that it includes environmental, social and economic dimensions, and the reasons it is important to them (i.e. career skills, legacy and the coolness factor). This is your chance to inspire.

After the meeting be sure to follow-up. Students are notorious for not following up. Once you have secured a few leaders from each of the groups then set up a meeting to get the groups (or just the leaders of the groups) around the table together. Facilitate the discussion but don’t lead it. Paint a picture of the opportunity and then let the students’ creativity run with it.

To summarize, it’s a three-step process. First, inventory. Second, identify gaps. Third, share what you have learned by GOING TO the students.

Now that you have a better understanding of what the playing field looks like its time to call the right plays. This begins with proper and effective messaging, which happens to be the topic of my next post. Check back next week.

-Brad McAllister is the Co-Founder and Director of WAP Sustainability Consulting in Chattanooga Tennessee. Brad is also an Adjunct Professor of Sustainability at the Institute for Sustainable Practice at Lipscomb University.

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