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Sustainability Strategic Planning

Provost's Charge

In October 2022, the Provost appointed Dr. Melissa Bilec to serve as Special Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability. Dr. Bilec led a Faculty Ad Hoc Committee of Sustainability to determine how to most effectively advance a broad academic and research sustainability program to the benefit of our Pitt faculty, students, and community and was charged with producing a set of recommendations for a university-wide sustainability institute. The full report can be found here.

Faculty Ad Hoc Committee Members

The 17-member committee represented faculty and leaders from throughout campus. They were charged with (1) developing a shared vision, mission, and goals of the sustainability institute; (2) developing measurable actions to elevate research, education, and engagement in sustainability; (3) exploring options and support for a faculty cluster hire in sustainability; and (4) exploring governance options and developing phased budget models.

Recommendations

To advance the Plan for Pitt and University-wide Sustainability goals, we must build on our existing strengths to elevate a new Pitt Sustainability Institute. This Institute will constellate existing sustainability functions, create new value propositions for Pitt, and fundamentally align our University to tackle the biggest sustainability challenges we claim to aspire to address. The ad-hoc committee has identified strategic priority recommendations, a vision and mission, and goals. The full report can be viewed here with detailed information on actions.

Learn More about the Pitt Sustainability Institute