UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State will be well-represented at the 2018 Conference and Expo of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Taking place Oct. 2–5 in Pittsburgh, AASHE’s annual gathering is North America’s largest conference focused on sustainability in higher education. The event is expected to draw nearly 2,000 participants from around the world to share innovations, activities, frameworks, learning outcomes, tools, research and more.
The focus of AASHE’s conference this year is examining the critical role of higher education in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Penn State will be a host institution, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, Duquesne University, Frostburg State University, the University of Pittsburgh and Messiah College.
Paul Shrivastava, Michele Halsell and Leslie Pillen, all part of the Sustainability Institute, will be presenting.
- Shrivastava, chief sustainability officer, director of the Sustainability Institute and professor of organizations at the Smeal College of Business, will serve as the closing keynote speaker.
- Halsell, assistant director of the Sustainability Institute, will present the poster “Lifting up the UN SDGs in Pennsylvania: The Power of the Penn State Sustainable Communities Network,” and co-present “Taking It To The Next Level: Campus-Community Partnerships.”
- Pillen, associate director of farm and food systems, and Angela Fishman, assistant teaching professor, will co-present “SDG2: Global Challenge, Local Solutions Powered by Penn State University Food Security Initiatives.”
Other presenting Penn State faculty and staff include:
- Somayeh Asadi, assistant professor of architectural engineering, will present the poster “Evolving Building Sustainability: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Framework Principles.”
- Russ DeForest, lecturer and doctoral candidate in mathematics, will present “Mathematics for Sustainability: A New General Education Course and Textbook.”
- Laura Guertin, professor of earth science at Penn State Brandywine, will present “Measuring Student Attitudes Towards Sustainable Development with a One-Semester Sustainovation” with Karen Theveny, lecturer of communications at Penn State Brandywine.
- Lisa D. Iulo, associate professor of architecture, will co-present “Community Impacts Through Energy-Efficient Housing Education.”
- Yumna Kurdi, architectural engineering doctoral candidate, will present “Evolving Pennsylvania State University’s Sustainability Policy Within a Regenerative Paradigm,” a presentation about her work to evolve Penn State's Office of Physical Plant's LEED policy.
- David Riley, professor of architectural engineering, will be a co-presenter in “Evolving Pennsylvania State University’s Sustainability Policy Within a Regenerative Paradigm,” along with John Bechtel, assistant director of the design and construction division at the Office of Physical Plant and Somayeh Asadi.