University community gathers for UNE Climate Action Plan World Café

The UNE Climate Action Plan World Café brought together senior leadership, faculty, students, staff and alumni for two hours of collaborative exploration of how UNE can achieve a carbon neutral footprint.

On October 18, 40 members of the UNE community came together in Leonard Hall to discuss UNE’s sustainability initiatives and how the university could achieve a carbon neutral footprint. The UNE Climate Action Plan World Café, co-hosted by the Office of Sustainability and the Innovation Hub, was a UNE first, using a design-thinking model to tackle a community wide challenge. Over the course of two hours, senior leadership, faculty, students, administrators, staff and even alumni joined in three facilitated conversations, capturing their ideas on tablecloths, sticky notes and poster paper.

UNE Sustainability Coordinator Alethea Cariddi co-hosted the World Café to help gather new ideas to create a roadmap for the next UNE Climate Action Plan. President Ripich affirmed the university’s dedication to environmental stewardship in 2008 when she signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, a pledge of carbon neutrality. With a new Climate Action Plan for 2022 due in 2017, Cariddi wanted to bring the community together for meaningful conversations that could impact UNE’s sustainability future.

“The World Cafe was an opportunity to gather aspirational ideas from a large group of people, representing many areas of our university community,” she stated. “We heard from students, faculty, staff, administration and alumni that this goal -- carbon neutrality -- is the responsibility of us all. There were some really exciting ideas proposed last night and I think a lot of energy behind seeing them through.”

World Café conversations are based on the principles and format developed by the World Café, a global movement to support meaningful conversations in corporate, government and community settings around the world. The method is based on three principles: people already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges; the answers we need are available to us; and we are wiser together than we are alone.

The UNE Innovation Hub was eager to facilitate and co-host the event. The World Café model and the topic are well aligned with the Hub’s mission and methods, according to Chief Innovation Strategist Holly Parker. “The Innovation Hub’s mission is to promote and facilitate creative thinking around challenges and opportunities facing the UNE community,” she said. “We believe that a diversity of voices creates the best opportunities for innovation resulting in local and global impacts. The World Cafe was a perfect fit.”

As participants moved from table to table, they built on each others’ ideas, reading the notes and doodles left behind and listening carefully to each others’ stories and observations. The evening culminated with eight poster presentations responding to the question: “What does UNE’s response to climate change look like and what strategies will UNE be employing by 2022?”

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jeanne Hey said of the evening, “The World Café was an extraordinary experience. It brought students, staff, alumni, faculty and administrators from both campuses to map out UNE’s future in response to global climate change. The format was ideal for creative brainstorming and careful listening. The energy in the room was solar-powered electric!”

“It was a great night to be a member of the UNE community,” said Parker. “My only regret was that as the facilitator, I couldn’t dive deeply into the conversations and get my hands dirty tackling an issue central to UNE’s pursuit of ‘Innovation for a Healthier Planet.’”