Future University — Green Campus, WKU is always in action

“WKU has been working on sustainability, from the modern buildings and infrastructure of the campus to the international awareness of our students, staff and faculty…” Dr. Zheng said.

This is an organizational behavior class taught by Rob Kim Marjerison.This summer some WKU students worked on a project for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)-  Greening Universities. The students are part of the Wenzhou Business Consultancy Group (WBCG) at WKU CBPM. Since 2017 the WKU WBCG has worked with over a dozen businesses in the Wenzhou area to provide consulting and business support services including data gathering and analysis. The Mission of the WBCG is to connect with local businesses, to assist and support them, to add value, and to interconnect with the community by supporting and encouraging business transformation, economic growth and development in the greater Wenzhou area.

The project was led by Vice Chancellor Dr. Xiaodong (Tony) Zheng and Prof. Rob Kim Marjerison as advisor. The students presented their ideas on Friday 6 July at CBPM with posters and video presentations. The goal of the project is to explore ways for WKU to lead in sustainability for university campuses. The presentations focused on ways for students, faculty and staff at WKU to support the initiative for WKU to be a leading sustainable campus and provide an example to other universities on the importance of sustainable education and development. The presentations included Green Talent, how to develop leaders, Green Transportation, ways to develop on-campus transportation with low carbon footprint, Green Living, how to support a balanced ecosystem of living things on campus, an enhanced recycling program and others. For example, the campus garden group, in line with the concept of “food to waste, waste to plant, plant to food again”, showed how to use compost bins to turn food waste on campus into resources for recycling.

Yang Xinwen, a student who participated in this project, said that every afternoon they discussed ideas, made plans, made videos, designed posters and a unique green campus plan for WKU. What they gained in the short three weeks was not only the rich theoretical knowledge, but also the real sense of accomplishment of seeing the team’s results in practice.After reviewing the ideas Dr. Zheng added that he was impressed with the quality and thoughtfulness of the students’ work, and that he looked forward to continuing the work in the Fall semester.

Over the past decade, WKU has actively promoted the integration of green concepts into practice and teaching, building the campus into a green eco-lab, while integrating sustainability concepts into various disciplines. WKU has been committed to green campus construction, striving to achieve clean and low-carbon use of energy and improve energy resource utilization efficiency in campus planning and construction, and playing a pioneering and leading role in achieving a carbon-neutral society. At the same time, WKU actively create a green culture on campus, advocate a low-carbon lifestyle, actively carry out low-carbon science education and technology innovation activities to create a green culture, and make a good voice for China’s green development.

Writer：Rob Kim Marjerison