Northridge Magazine

For many, the term “sustainability” is familiar. Just don’t ask about specifics. Something about the environment, right?

There seems to be no single definition that nails the concept down, but an often quoted 1987 United Nations commission said sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainability guru Debra Rowe is more to the point. It would “improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future,” she said.

For Tom Brown, executive director of Cal State Northridge’s Physical Plant Management Department (PPM) and a multiple statewide award-winner for sustainability leadership, the concept is not new; it has been a heartbeat of his operation for decades. “In our vintage perception,” he said, “sustainability means systems that are robust and that last a long time.”

Whatever its application, it is working up a head of steam at CSUN, where leaders from the ranks of faculty, administration, staff and students are earnestly working on sustainability projects and raising awareness, all with a collective eye on the university’s environmental future.

“They say a campus is green when it is looking at three different aspects of itself: operations, curriculum and research,” said former CSUN urban studies and planning professor Ashwani Vasishth, founding director of CSUN’s year-old Sustainability Institute. “We’re trying to do all three.”

Vasishth, now teaching on the East Coast, was part of a core campus  “greening” team, the busy idea and implementation arm of the institute, established in October 2008 to “promote, facilitate, and develop educational, research, and university and community programs related to sustainability.”

Today, veteran advocates like Brown and his department can be found at any given time working with the greening team, whose members are engaging students, faculty and staff, who in turn are sponsoring campus wide workshops, and so on. “Before,” said Vasishth, “we were operating in silos. That’s changing. Conversations are happening on campus that have never happened before.”

On a 356-acre campus full of green growing things, sustainability is a big conversation. Read on for just part of it.

— Brenda Roberts

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