Our Commitment to action is to make the Brown is Green Coalition which I will explain below a continuing part of Brown University. Around the middle of last semester, I came together with 5 other students under the guise of an almost serendipitous revelation: that for all the exciting work going on in Rhode Island and at Brown University around the very real issues of climate change and sustainability, many of those efforts and initiatives were unconnected and at times even came into conflict. We have brought together a coalition of professors, students, administrators, and engineers as part of the Brown is Green initiative. Through this effort, we are helping to coordinate, among other things, a sustainability career seminar and a large conference around forging new efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. The results of this effort are already apparent professors and students are talking to each other in new ways and about new collaborations, and we intend to make this originally ad hoc group into a part of the University that can connect on all levels those who are concerned with taking Brown forward into a sustainable future. In the immediate future, we specifically intend to reach out for this conference to the largest group possible, so that high schoolers, local activists, businesspeople, and policymakers can interact and find new avenues to work collaboratively

Goals

Within Brown, we intend to set up mechanisms for continuing communication among the sustainability and climate-changed focused groups and individuals on campus.  On a basic level, this means identifying students (as this coalition, fittingly for Brown, was student-initiated) who want to continue to organize this coalition.  We will formulate a strategic plan for the next 2 years, which will include identifying essential individuals and departments for including in this effort.  In the immediate future, the most important quantifiable action will be, as stated above, ensuring that our upcoming conference is inclusive of all interested parties and stakeholders in RI.  To that end, I will be working to draft an outreach plan, and arrange meetings with all interested parties (especially high school principals and policymakers in various RI departments, such as the Treasury and Department of Transportation) to find how they feel they could be best engaged.  At our conference, we are considering creating our own types of Commitments to Action, namely involving ways that Brown students can share our considerable privilege and resources with others in Rhode Island.  Frankly, as an Ivy League institution in a city that has both many wonderful facets and many difficult issues to face, Brown has a serious obligation to utilize its resources to create a space for others who do not have such prestige and power.  In terms of carbon reduction and sustainability, Brown has many departments that could provide considerable resources to outside groups in collaborative ways.  So we commit to finding ways to motivate departments and individuals to support carbon reduction throughout Rhode Island, as Brown is already starting to do with other programs.  This includes setting up workshops within the University on how we can take this community orientation farther.  It also means working with the administration to take the community-focused mentality to the next level in pushing them to find long-term ways the University can support carbon reduction in Rhode Island.  Specifically, we intend to coordinate the writing of a long-term community support plan, that does not just rely on University funding community projects but includes the creation of partnerships in the community.  As part of our immediate commitment to this, we are planning to have one day of the conference be a community outreach event; in this case, hopefully helping install compact fluorescent light bulbs and low-flow showerheads in local homes. 

Plan

I will identify and reach out to students and other faculty/administrators who want to see the Brown is Green coalition continue, and work with them on formulating what form we envision for the group's further path, and write a strategic plan.Before the conference, we will sit down and identify what ventures we can form with outside organizations, and ask them to come to the conference with specific work available to those interested.  We will set up meetings with professors and administrators to find ways that Brown can support local work aimed at reducing city- and state-wide carbon emissions.  If possible, we will then organize workshops and/or brainstorming sessions on how this can be accomplished, with the hope of a long-term plan.  We will interact with community groups, asking them what we can do to work with them on bringing interested stakeholders into a statewide coalition, and most immediately, to the table at our upcoming conference.