UCI Sustainability Resource Center

UCI students stand to make the biggest impact in our society. We continue to face great challenges to our communities and world. Climate change, environmental injustice, poverty, and gender inequity are some of the greatest examples of sustainability challenges. We have a responsibility to each other to advance a culture of sustainability here on campus and in our communities.

Our programs and initiatives provide opportunities to build knowledge and competencies in sustainability. We collaborate across campus and within the community to integrate sustainability in all opportunities. The SRC is a central location to find resources and opportunities in sustainability for students, staff, faculty, and community members.

About

Mission

The SRC is a central location for resources, education, and programming to forward environmental balance, economic vitality, and social equity. Students, as well as campus and community partners, are invited to share a platform from which to address the root causes of ecological disruption, deepen understanding of the interdependence of all life, and engage the challenges and solutions of sustainability in a campus, community, and global context.

Vision

The SRC will be a centralizing resource for students, employees, and community members for sustainability education and opportunities in sustainability. Every student will graduate with sustainability knowledge and values that will assist them in their careers and communities to provide enough for everyone, forever.

Values

Social Equity
Co-Empowerment
Community
Student Leadership
Interdependence

Land Acknowledgement

The SRC recognizes that the area now known as UC Irvine is within the traditional ancestral homelands of the Tongva (Gabrielino), Serrano, Fernandeno, Cahuilla, Acjachemen (Juaneno), Luiseno (Payoomkawichum), Ipai, Cupeno, Tipai and Mexican peoples. Additionally, these lands have been shaped by Latino, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese laborers who have built roads and railroads and worked California crop fields as well as the African Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps that helped make (southern) California National Parks what they are today.

History

The SRC was first incubated in 2011-2012 by the UCI Environment Institute. Staff facilitated informal weekly discussions, advised students, mentored research projects, trained students in basic skills, and built links among key campus units and students. Then it was supported through the UCI Sustainability Initiative, with a partnership among UCI Community Resilience Projects, the Office of Sustainability, the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. Known at this time as the Global Sustainability Resource Center, the GSRC focused on advancing sustainability opportunities for students.

The SRC was created in 2020 when support through this partnership discontinued and the unit moved under the Department of Student Life & Leadership in the Division of Student Affairs. The center moved into the R.I.S.E. Suite on the fourth floor of the Student Center, along with the Latinx Resource Center, Womxn’s Center for Success, DREAM Center, and UC Immigrant Legal Services.

The SRC enjoys a working partnership with the Student Housing Sustainability Program and staff who are co-located at the SRC.