Sustainability Initiative
Community-Engaged Capacity Building and Solutions
The Sustainability Initiative provides a platform for interdisciplinary scholarship on the critical climate, environment, and resource issues confronting society. The Initiative aims to infuse sustainability across the University of California, Irvine, empowering students and faculty with the rich institutional history of impactful research. The Sustainability Initiative promotes collaborations with diverse communities on and off campus in developing solutions to challenges affecting California and the globe.
Community-engaged scholarship and practice are integral to UCI’s excellence as a research university and underlie how we create knowledge to serve society.
Sustainability Initiative Goals
• Transform sustainability education at UCI
• Embrace climate neutrality as an institution
• Enable skills sharing and capacity building for transformation
• Communicate the legacy of UCI’s sustainability scholarship and practice
• Facilitate connection and resource sharing on and off campus
• Incubate new projects by faculty, staff, and student leaders
• Reinforce campus efforts to inspire, enable, and evaluate public impact through interschool research, education, and engagement.
Sustainability and Green Campus Initiatives
The Green Campus Initiative has led the transformation of UCI’s physical campus towards sustainable practice and operation, while the Sustainability Initiative focuses on academic components, including research, education, engagement, and philanthropy. Combined, these efforts work with the students’ Global Sustainability Resource Center to engage our entire campus community in the University of California’s commitment to embrace sustainability and climate neutrality in all that we do, study, and teach.
Leadership
Abigail Reyes, Director, Sustainability Initiative
Travis Huxman, Faculty Director; Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
“The Sustainability Initiative inclusively cultivates the curiosity, proficiency, and leadership of society’s next generation as they build a resilient and equitable Earth future for humanity.”
-Professor Travis Huxman
