Ad Hoc Committee on the OSU Carbon Commitment

Voting members present: Amy Bourne, Lety Cavazos, Tess Collins, Ed Dever, Jon Dorbolo, Keith Jayawickrama, Jillian Gregg, Leela Magdaleno, Jacob Putney, Shelley Signs, Brandon Trelstad, Beth Filar Williams
Voting members absent: Marlys Amundson, Lindsay Andrews, Michael Freitag, Kim Hannigan-Downs, Chris Kulah, Qinglai Meng, Gary Miller, Cinamon Moffett, Marianne Vydra
Guests present: Coral Avery, Nikolay Galtsev, Maddie Moyano, Karen Shell

• Faculty Senate president Dwaine Plaza shared with Brandon a list of social justice resources. Brandon has created this box note to collect these resources where other members can add additional resources.  
• There is a march for kids this Saturday 1-3 starting in Central Park.
• Jon mentioned that the creation of a social justice workgroup might be appropriate for this committee. If such workgroup is created, a focus on electricity zones would be a good scope. If a workgroup is not formed, an agenda item could be incorporated in C3 meetings addressing social justice.

Membership updates (10 minutes)

• College of Science – Shelly will contact the Dean’s executive assistant for recommendations and she will share the committee’s charge.
• CGE – Nobody has a connection there. Brandon will contact CGE.
• ASOSU – Coral is graduating. Coral’s position (Environmental Affairs Coordinator) will be filled sometime over summer, and new person will start working in late September.
• Cascade campus – position has been filled. Member is Jeff Gautschi
• ROTC – Two ways to fill the position: 1) with a student through ASOSU’s Coordinator of Veteran Affairs or Students Veterans Association, 2) or with a faculty member, and Jon Dorbolo will contact ROTC to see if anyone can join.

Leadership succession (10 minutes)

• Election process proposal
• Key for today’s meeting is to define a process to select chair
• Chair should be staff or faculty with the commitment of advancing sustainability
• Two processes were discussed:
  • Conduct an all university call for nominations for chair through Faculty Senate, and have C3 committee members vote on the nominees.
  • Conduct a nomination process where nominees are people who have already been involved with C3, and have C3 committee members vote on the nominees.  
• Second process was selected due to the following: An all campus request for nominations might get attention of people who haven’t been involved at all in the past, but might attract people who aren’t familiar with C3. If leadership comes from the group then the problem of long timeline between project planning and execution might be addressed easier.
• Eligible nominees will be current or past C3 members. Other participants who have shown up consistently to C3 meetings (as visitors) may also be nominees.
• The chair of this committee carries a big responsibility, therefore a 2-year commitment might work better than a 3-year commitment.
• Nominations and Election votes will be run by the Faculty Senate office to ensure fairness. They will send out qualtrics surveys to nominate candidates and again to vote.    
• The C3 approved the process outlined above by consensus.  Brandon will work with Faculty Senate office on the voting process and next steps. 
• Separately from the election process, to increase awareness of C3 to Faculty, C3 committee should go ahead with the forums/quorums discussed last year.
• In order to increase student participation in C3 committee, Coral suggested checking if committee can be changed to a standing committee since students can get paid to be on standing committees, but not ad-hoc committees. C3 is not a standing committee.
• Students should be compensated to be on committees, including C3. If there is an opportunity with C3, there should be clear understanding of expectations for students.

Guidelines for workgroups and full committee (15 minutes)

• Adapted from document created in January.
• Focused on operations instead of content (our charter is for that).
• Should C3 meet twice over the summer?
• At committee member request, we are deferring guidelines conversations until next meeting. Brandon to collect written feedback from members in a week (Wednesday June 17). Members to send feedback by end of Wednesday June 17.

Updates from workgroups (30 minutes)

• Conservation, Efficiency & Transportation
  • Met once in person since last C3 full meeting.
  • Submitted a grant proposal to install solar in Valley Library (EBSCO Solar Grant). Workgroup will hear back from EBSCO in August.
  • GOC, GLC – Green Office and Green Lab Certifications. Library submitted GOC. Going through the process of collecting data brought awareness to all levels in the organization. It proved particularly helpful for the grant application, to demonstrate systemic commitment to sustainability.
• Education and Curriculum
  • Sustainability in the Bacc Core met mainly in fall. Kate Lajtha is on the Bacc Core Review committee. At a minimum, it’s anticipated there will be certain classes on sustainability and climate change that will be required. Changes are expected to happen in 3-5 years.
  • Repository of climate change content. Workgroup has created a spreadsheet with resources on climate change and sustainability. Workgroup will continue to add and maintain it as a curated list available for all faculty. Spreadsheet still needs protocol to edit versions and maintain the links (probably in a quarterly basis). Spreadsheet should be complete by the end of summer
• Reporting and Communications
  • Workgroup hasn’t met recently.
  • Future meetings TBD.

2020 C3 objective updates (10 minutes)

• Green Certifications (covered above)
• Travel Offsets
  • Sent to OSU Today in April and got interest from grad students. Next step is working on funding offsets when travel funding sources do not allow for purchase of offsets.
  • Sustainability Office got lovely emails from climate deniers. One from Princeton and one from MIT.
  • Deadline for submitting qualtrics travel offset request survey: June 1 for bulk of FY operations
  • A deadline of first week of July could be possible but not ideal.  This would capture any last travel not processed previously, via June 1 survey. 
  • How far back in can people submit surveys? For this fiscal year, any travel starting after July 1, 2019.
  • Student clubs and orgs can participate in this program if they have a funding source (OSU index)
  • If library solar grant is not accepted, could we use travel offsets funds to finance it? No, program is still very new and has very little funds to support any type of project in a timely way. 

FYI from ASOSU – ASOSU Joint Resolution 11.01 – ASOSU Statement on the Urgency of Climate Change, and Encouraging Action on the Part of OSU and the Oregon State Legislature)

• Urging OSU administration to take action

Brandon will set up next meeting for late July or early August.