The Power of Narrative:Telling the Story of Sustainability in

Higher Education

Blaine Collison, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Joshua Lasky University of the District of Columbia (UDC)

Paul Morgan West Chester University of PA (WCU)

The Power of Narrative

“Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future.”

Neil Postman, The End of Education

Introduction:Where we’re going today

Presentation:The elements of successful narrativeExamples from campus sustainability and

beyond

Discussion: How do we tell stories that drive more

action?What are YOUR campus sustainability

stories?

Later: Telling Your Sustainability Story

1. What’s the story you have actually been enacting?2. What’s the story you want, hope, need to enact?

Are they the same?3. How can you retell the story of your work in a way that celebrates successes while acknowledging the enormity of the sustainability challenge?4. What can you do that makes it more likely that surprising, non-linear change will happen?

Later: The Elevator Pitch

What is your institution’s sustainability story? Tell that story in one minute or less to the person sitting next to you.

Later: Tweet-sized Bite

Tell your institution’s sustainability story in 140 characters or less.

Elements of an Effective Story

Engage your audience (Hey! Over here!)Give them something (Here’s something you want)Hold their attention (Gotta get to the next step)Drive reaction (DO something; Think, act, buy)

Examples - Six word stories:Smoking my very last cigarette. Again.

Knife hidden, he rings the doorbell.Solar energy spill: Nice summer day.

EFFI

CIEN

T

CREDIBLE AUTHENTIC CULTURAL

VALU

E-AD

DED

SYST

EMS-

BASE

D

AWAKENING PIONEERING TRANSFORMATION

AWARENESS

APPLICATION & INVESTMENT

PROGRESS

UNDERSTANDING

CHANGE

(TRANSITIONAL)

(TRANSFORMATIVE)

INITIAL RECRUITMENT

COALITION BUILDING

MUTUAL SYMBIOSIS

PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION

LOW-RISK PILOT

INTEGRATION

Campus Sustainability Journey

PEOPLEPROJECTSINSTITUTION

Concept: Julie Newman, Leith Sharp, & Norman Christopher

X-AXIS: SUSTAINABILITY PERCEPTIONSY-AXIS: DECISION-MAKING BASIS

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

>

All narratives are imperfect, and potentially

dangerous. Yet we cannot live without them

so we should tell and enact our stories wisely.

Mastering Behavior Change

How can we take back the art of storytelling and put it to use in the

sustainability movement?

(Master storytellers are behavior change engineers. Right now, the masters are people who have managed to successfully get us to buy stuff we don’t need, get us to eat things

that are slowly killing us, and otherwise waste our time/health/money.)

West Chester University: Green Campus Pioneer (sort

of)WCU’s Green Campus Committee was charged by President Adler in November 1992 “to function as a

task force and spend one year studying the feasibility of West Chester University becoming a

green campus.”

But . . . . . .

By Fall 1999, the only remnant was the Campus Beautification Committee, which was selecting

furniture for Main Hall.

West Chester University Mission Statement

2000-2001

This did not appear in the 2001-2002 catalogs

“As part of this commitment to the future, the University is becoming a green campus designed to demonstrate that a community can, through inquiry and education, act in a

manner consistent with the goal of a sustainable earth.”

Plan for Excellence 2007 Update

“Encourage environmental awareness through training, curricula, and co-curricular programming, assess and reduce the ecological impact of the University, and promote research and service that foster regional and global sustainability.”

Mitch Thomashow

Visited WCU:February 23-25 2009

President Greg Weisenstein’s

Inaugural Address“Regardless of our students' choice of major, upon graduation from West Chester University, they should be clearly identifiable as champions of the environment.” (September 25, 2009)

Are you ready to start earning a certificate in Education for Sustainability? Learn how to help others understand the challenge of sustainability and become active

participants in solutions. You’ll be prepared to create real change in your profession, community, and daily life with courses that emphasize outdoor, experiential, and project-based learning.

Visit www.wcupa.edu or contact Dr. Paul Morgan at 610-436-6945 pmorgan@wcupa.edu

Sustainability Coordinator (Half-Time) Reports directly to the President

WCU Strategic Planning Process

WCU Strategic Planning Committee

“Sustainability” one of 5 Themes

Reflections & Lessons

•Think big, but don’t fail; it poisons the water for years•Learn how the bureaucracy works•Focus on critical leverage points (e.g. The Strategic Plan)•Make effective use of outside experts•Top-level support helps, but start where you are•Act like you belong at the table, not like a marginalized, glorified student environmental club•Reach out – go beyond the usual suspects

But . . . I often get the feeling that

all of this is happening in a bubble

Occasionally we glimpse a bigger story outside the

institutional bubble with its familiar paradigm of change management: goal-setting,

action-planning, implementation, assessment, evaluation, etc.

Once upon a time . . .

there was a planet

6th Mass

Extinction

6th Mass Extinction

Footprints and Consumption

Climate

Change

Crisis of Professional Narrative

This story of the planet has brought me to a crisis point in my story as a

sustainability professional. For sustainability in higher education, these are “good” times, but the

reality is that there is an enormous gap separating the severity of the planetary crisis and even my best

responses to it.

Grappling with the Crisis of Narrative

How can we operate in the old story – where we have our current jobs and a

habitual way of life – while simultaneously telling and making a new story in which we open up the

possibility of a viable future?

Here’s how I’ve been grappling with the gap . . .

A story about a civilizational train . . .

A Hard Truth

“Almost everything being done in the name of sustainable development addresses and attempts to reduce unsustainability. But reducing unsustainability, although critical, does not and will not create sustainability”

--John R. Ehrenfeld, Sustainability by Design

“Avoidance”“Magical

Thinking”

Some Problems

Deliberate worldview change is

1) Unprecedented

2) Not widely desired

3) Fraught with paradoxes

Less Unsustainable

Where do we go from here?

A Creative Storytelling Leap

How do we mind the gap?

Less Unsustainability Sustainability

Daniel Quinn

“If there are still people here in 200 years, they won’t be thinking the way we do. I can make that prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they’ll go on living the way we do—and there won’t be any people here in 200 years.”

What story will they tell?

What is the story people will tell – in 2212 – about how

we managed to get off track, cross the chasm, and begin telling and making a

new story?

What is the story of how this happened?

Telling Our Stories

Keep it positive . . .

Be bold and visionary

Telling Your Sustainability Story

1. What’s the story you have actually been enacting?2. What’s the story you want, hope, need to enact?

Are they the same?3. How can you retell the story of your work in a way that celebrates successes while acknowledging the enormity of the sustainability challenge?4. What can you do that makes it more likely that surprising, non-linear change will happen?

Inspiration

• What historical lessons can we take inspiration from?

• What will inspire us to see our work in epoch-making proportions?

Instructions – Elevator Pitch

What is your institution’s sustainability story? Tell that story in one minute or less to the person sitting next to you.

Instructions – Tweet-sized Bite

Tell your institution’s sustainability story in 140 characters or less.

“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.”

--Thomas Berry

The Power of Narrative:Telling the Story of Sustainability in

Higher Education

Blaine Collison Collison.Blaine@epamail.epa.gov

Joshua Lasky jlasky@udc.edu

Paul Morgan pmorgan@wcupa.edu