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Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President

From the Provost's Desk

August 27, 2014

Dear Colleagues,

K-State has a core commitment to sustainability as recognized by the inclusion of sustainability as one of our seven common elements in the K-State 2025 visionary plan. In order to advance universitywide sustainability efforts, President Schulz and I charged a K-State 2025 Sustainability Strategic Planning Committee last fall to develop a comprehensive sustainability plan across the breadth of the university mission, including research, curriculum, student life, operations and engagement. I am pleased today to announce the release of the K-State 2025 Sustainability Strategic Action Plan.

The final plan is a product of hard work during the past year by the planning committee, which included broad input from the K-State community and feedback on the draft plan last spring. You can read the comments received here. The resulting plan is ambitious and necessarily broad in scope, with implications for all colleges, units, administration, facilities and infrastructure, and ancillary entities. Key strategic goals, activities, and outcomes have been defined around four areas: Academics, Campus and Public Engagement, Operations, and Leadership.

President Schulz and I thank Bruce Snead and Melody LeHew, co-chairs; Ben Champion, former director of sustainability; and all the committee members for their dedicated efforts in bringing this plan forward. Now it is our challenge to advance the plan as a key component of K-State 2025 and the future of Kansas State University.

In the coming months, I will be working with President Schulz and Vice Presidents Bosco and Bontrager as well as faculty, staff and students to decide next steps. This will include filling the sustainability leadership vacancy due to Ben Champion's departure and the creation of a Presidential Commission on Sustainability.

As a public land-grant and research university, K-State has long had a role to develop and share knowledge to assist society in meeting the grand sustainability challenges of the times. Sustainability is a long-term challenge to the world well beyond 2025, but this plan helps frame where we will focus our efforts as a university during the next decade.

Thanks for all you do.

   April Mason

 

 

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