A working group has been established to study the scope and organizational structure of a proposed WSU Virtual College of Sustainability and the Environment.
The phase one working group is a diverse group of faculty, university leadership and private industry, including Howard Grimes, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School, John Gardner, vice president for economic development and WSU Extension, Mike Wolcott, director of the Woods Material and Engineering Laboratory, Norman Lewis, director of the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Steve Bollens, director of science programs at WSU Vancouver, Mike Schwenk, vice president and director of commercial partnerships at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Jake Fey, director of WSU Energy Extension Program, George Mount, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Patricia Allen, director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The working group plans to add a graduate student and an undergraduate to the team, Grimes said.
“This is an exciting opportunity to approach complex global issues in a new way,” Grimes said. “One distinct possibility will be to organize ourselves and our external partners around these research problems. This allows us to seek out the best researchers and scholars to then solve, or contribute to the solution of, these problems.”
In his May 15 blog, Gardner discussed some of the philosophy supporting the creation of a virtual college, including the fact that WSU already does extensive research on sustainability issues.
“My quick review of the WSU effort was eye opening as to how pervasively energy and environmental topics are imbedded in our university,” he writes.
Currently, Gardner said, faculty members at all four campuses, in at least seven colleges and in 37 or more departments, are researching and teaching issues related to energy and the environment. In addition, energy and environmental issues are a major portion of at least 30 undergraduate degrees and graduate programs in five colleges.
Other universities are looking for ways to consolidate efforts around sustainability, but Gardner said the new college would go a different direction, looking for ways to encourage true collaboration across discipline, across time, across distance and across the public-private divide.
Gardner writes about the possibility of moving toward an open innovation model of discovery. Quoting Joel West, Gardner writes, “’open innovation is using the market rather than internal hierarchies to source and commercialize innovations.’That sure speaks to my ambitions for the kind of impact and relevancy I envision for this new college.”
After a blueprint for the new college has been developed, Grimes said, phase two will involve presenting the plan to senior WSU leadership and the Faculty Senate for comment and refinement.
If deemed feasible, the process will enter phase three and a plan for implementation will be developed.
