Universities embrace LEED for Cities and Communities Academic Learning

Feature image: Students at Clarkson University were instrumental in achieving LEED Gold for the Conference Center at Lake Placid. Photo courtesy of Erik Backus.

LEED for Cities and Communities helps government leaders benchmark and enact sustainable changes in their municipalities. In the 2022–2023 school year, the rating system’s tenets will be used by university professors at the classroom level to prepare students for jobs in sustainable design, policy and development.

USGBC partners with colleges and universities interested in leading academic learning programs associated with the rating system. Professors design their own programs and collaborate closely with USGBC to implement them. In many cases, professors’ curriculums include a component of experiential learning that puts students in direct contact with the aforementioned government leaders, sometimes within their college neighborhoods. The result? Measurable, lasting impact made by students at the beginning of their sustainability careers.

Professors at the University of South Florida, Clarkson University and Utah State University are making sustainable education accessible to undergraduate and graduate students, in addition to those seeking to bolster their understanding of sustainability.

University of South Florida

Florida hasn’t always had the best track record when it comes to sustainability.

“[Florida] could have actually been the Sunshine State. We could have been the leader in solar technologies, but instead we’re behind,” says Brooke Hansen, Ph.D., director of sustainable tourism for University of South Florida’s Patel College of Global Sustainability.

However, Florida’s status makes it the perfect place to apply a framework such as LEED for Cities and Communities to make the state more sustainable.

The Sunshine State currently faces a multitude of environmental issues: plastics pollution, transportation crises, climate change, the threat of Category 5 hurricanes and sea level rise. But Florida, like every place, is experiencing a critical moment—one in which the state can “build forward better” and heal, Hansen says. Education is an invaluable factor in doing that, which is where Hansen and the University of South Florida come into play.