Fair and Panel Discussion on Sustainability at Yale

Yale University will hold a Sustainability Fair and a panel discussion on The Role of Universities in Advancing Sustainability on Thursday, April 3. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Sustainability Fair will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the President’s Room on the second floor of Woolsey Hall at Grove and College Streets. The Fair will feature a variety of vendors including Yale’s environmentally preferable purchasing vendors, alternative transportation resources, energy providers and a number of Yale departments who engage in sustainability regularly. The Fair is an opportunity to learn how sustainability is being incorporated into Yale’s operations, and is a source of ideas and practices that may be implemented in one’s own home.

The panel discussion will be held at 4:30 p.m. in Rosenfeld Hall at Grove and Temple Streets. Members of the panel are Julie Newman, director of Yale’s Office of Sustainability; Davis Bookhart, who directs the Sustainability Initiative at Johns Hopkins University; and Leith Sharp, director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative.

Newman was named the first Director of Sustainability at Yale University in 2004. She came to Yale from the University of New Hampshire’s Office of Sustainability Programs, where she assisted with the development of the program since its inception in 1997. In 2004 Newman co-founded the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium to advance education and action for sustainable development on university campuses in the northeast and maritime region. Newman also co-coordinates a sustainability working group of the International Alliance of Research Universities. A lecturer in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Newman holds a B.S. in Natural Resource Policy and Management from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in Environmental Policy and Biology from Tufts University; and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies from the University of New Hampshire.

Bookhart was appointed in 2006 to create and direct the Sustainability Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. Bookhart is also chair of the Johns Hopkins Sustainability Committee. Bookhart is founder and president of Charm21 – Clean and Healthy Air through Renewables in Maryland – a non-profit group advocating the use of renewable fuels and resources in the Baltimore region. Bookhart has helped a number of Baltimore-based companies develop “green” marketing plans, and was senior project director of the public interest group Consumer Energy Council of America. In 2008, Bookhart was appointed by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to serve on the City’s Sustainability Commission. Bookhart holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a master’s degree in American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Sharp founded the Harvard Green Campus Initiative in 2000. The Initiative is an interfaculty program dedicated to the integration of campus environmental sustainability throughout Harvard University. Areas of focus have included high performance building design and operations, renewable energy, behavioral change and environmental procurement and campus master planning. Sharp has a bachelor of Environmental Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia and a Master of Education in human development and psychology from Harvard University. Sharp has worked with universities for over 12 years, in both Australia and the United States, to achieve organizational change in the pursuit of campus environmental sustainability. Sharp is a LEED accredited professional and is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education and Sustainability: The Journal of Record. She is on the advisory council of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education and is on the steering group for the North East Campus Sustainability Consortium.

The Fair and panel discussion April 3 are the final events of Yale’s first annual Sustainability Summit, a week of events on campus designed to further the University’s sustainability efforts. Details of Yale’s sustainability programs may be found at: www.yale.edu/sustainability