University of Florida

ORIGINALLY FOUNDED IN 1853 as the East Florida Seminary, the institution later renamed the University of Florida (UF) moved to its current location in Gainesville in 1906. The largest and oldest university in the state, UF resides on 2,000 acres and provides educational opportunities for over 46,000 students. As the flagship institution of higher learning in the state, UF has acted as a steward in addressing global warming and climate change issues through its sustainability initiatives.

In 1994, UF president Charles Young signed the Talloires Declaration in an effort to convey support for actions to reduce environmental degradation and the depletion of natural resources. Three years later, members of the UF community initiated a grassroots campaign called Greening UF to engender a sense of environmental stewardship on campus. During 2000, the need for an administrative presence to develop sustainability initiatives was realized in the creation of an Office of Sustainability, housed within the College of Design, Construction, and Planning. In 2001, UF took another step along the path to greater campus sustainability by mandating that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria be followed on all new building and renovation endeavors. UF's own Rinker Hall became the first building in the state of Florida to earn LEED Gold certification in 2004 and the newly renovated Library West achieved Gold status in 2007.

The call for a campus-wide Office of Sustainability was made by the Student Senate in 2004, and in fall 2005, a national search was initiated for a director of a centralized Office of Sustainability. The search for a director of the Office of Sustainability concluded in 2006 with the hiring of Dedee DeLongpré, a former development director for schools in California and program administrator for Fauna and Flora International. UF galvanized support for statewide sustainable action by hosting the inaugural Florida Campus and Community Sustainability Conference in October 2006.

Though UF began supporting major environmental initiatives over a decade ago, much of the university's recent push to enhance its stewardship has taken place during the tenure of President Bernie Machen (2004-present). In 2005, UF became the first university to be recognized as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Society. Speaking of this accomplishment and of sustainability during National Campus Sustainability Day on October 25, 2005, President Machen described the challenges and opportunities that the university has faced. President Machen espoused a full-spectrum approach to increasing sustainability by addressing the university's effect on the environment through green building, decreasing energy dependence, and reducing waste disposal to zero by 2015.

A year later, at the Florida Campus and Community Sustainability Conference, President Machen took on a much more direct tone regarding the issue of climate change, which he declared to be an urgent problem. In his speech, he described how UF would tailor its sustainability goals for 2007 specifically to decrease the university's emissions to combat climate change. President Machen outlined the progress made toward this end and also described new programs that UF would implement. As an academic institution, UF has already made strides to integrate sustainability into the classroom, as evidenced by the over 100 courses, 10 programs, and over 20 research entities relating to sustainability that are offered by the university.

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