2028 Sustainability Framework
Assignment: Earth is our plan for a healthy, just and thriving campus and world. Authored by the USC Presidential Working Group on Sustainability in Education, Research, and Operations with input from teams across the university, it establishes a vision, aspirations and goals for USC across five domains:
Education
Research
Equity and Inclusion
Operations
Engagement
Assignment: Earth formalizes our commitment to addressing climate change and creating a more sustainable future. It will guide our actions through 2028 and beyond and enable us to adapt to innovations and new solutions as they emerge. Hear USC’s Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple describe how you can get involved.
Overview
Assignment: Earth is structured to guide the university’s actions while remaining flexible enough to adapt to emerging sustainability solutions. It is informed by sustainability definitions that incorporate both universally-recognizable concepts and USC-specific features.
The definitions inform a Vision for sustainability at USC. Five domains support that vision: Education, Research, Equity and Inclusion, Operations, and Engagement. A set of Aspirations guide efforts within each of the five domains, and SMART Goals have been established for fulfilling the aspirations while ensuring accountability, progress reporting, and transparency.
Assignment: Earth’s Vision, Aspirations, and Goals will remain consistent through the 2028 time horizon; its flexibility lies in its Initiatives. These Initiatives include various changes to policies, procedures, and behaviors; development of targeted-programs; investment in physical and organizational infrastructure, etc. The initiatives will remain flexible and fluid. Many will be fully implemented, but over time, others may not be feasible and, importantly, new ones will arise as technology, society, and opportunities continue to evolve.
Vision
USC will serve as a leader in urgently aligning human economic and social systems with nature’s life support systems by:
- Educating future leaders from all walks of life in their chosen field with a problem-solving mindset aligned with human and natural systems, and involving all stakeholders
- Working across disciplines and with stakeholders to generate innovative research solutions that enable society, the economy, and ecosystems to flourish
- Aligning university operations with natural systems and their capacities, engaging stakeholder input to efficiently support the mission and strengthen our local communities
- Engaging our communities at all levels to solve challenges and build a stronger, healthier society, economy, and environment
Aspirations
- Ensure that USC alumni are stewards of the planet, with every USC student engaged in sustainability learning – both didactic and experiential – through courses, research, and engagement at USC.
- Elevate the importance of interdisciplinary undergraduate scholarship at USC so that students graduate with both deep disciplinary expertise and broad skills in developing systemic solutions.
- Create new sustainability-solutions knowledge through interdisciplinary efforts that may be developed locally and regionally, but that are scalable nationally and internationally. Such solutions will be developed by a diverse and inclusive community of faculty, students, and post-docs, and the results will be measurably reported in publications, intellectual property filings, and operational or commercial adoption. The trainees of the USC sustainability research program will be placed in academic, government, business, and non-profit arenas.
- Engage in proactive, creative, and accessible outreach to inform and empower the public, including local and national communities, and including K-12 students. Design community-based participatory research projects to address the needs particularly of underserved communities. Use a diverse and inclusive media toolbox, and engage the community via novel demonstration projects for solutions to the challenges of sustainability. Our initiative will recruit, train, and retain a diverse and inclusive workforce, and it will meet the challenge of reaching parity metrics for characteristics protected by law.
- Create and demonstrate positive impact on the health and well-being of people and of the environment. Direct impacts include protecting lives and property, preserving scarce natural resources, and reducing pollution and carbon emissions. Indirect impacts include research that positively affects policies, the development and implementation of impactful technologies and applications, and participation in high-level advisory boards.
- Address the systems, structures, and policies that facilitate (or hinder) equity-minded and inclusionary practices being adopted throughout our sustainability efforts. We recognize that we cannot adequately protect places or people without more intentionally interrogating our current policies and organizational culture, examining whether diverse voices and ideas are acknowledged and effectively addressed.
- Play a leadership role in monitoring and assessing whether our portfolio of sustainability courses, programs, and projects remain centered on equity, (environmental/social) justice, and inclusion. Accountability for and alignment of our sustainability goals, our DEI goals, and our cultural values initiatives, will be the vehicles for our efforts.
- Mend our Climate Impact – Responding to the urgency of the climate crisis and USC’s contributions to it, USC aspires to reverse our impacts and contribute to the regeneration of the earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gas balance.
- Build a Circular Economy – Respecting planetary boundaries, USC will help build the circular economy by reducing and changing what it buys, maximizing the utility of what it uses, and preparing expended items for their next best use.
- Develop Healthy Ecosystems – USC campuses and buildings will promote human wellbeing, ecosystem biodiversity, and the connections between people and nature.
- Align with New Water Realities – Adapting to the continuing mega-drought in the western United States, USC will utilize the optimal source, quantity, and quality of water for its operations, and use that water as many times as possible before returning it to the broader water cycle.
- Strengthen Transparency and Accountability – USC will leverage the power of technology, data, policies, and management systems to ensure progress, awareness, and inclusion of stakeholders in our sustainability journey.
- Mobilize Sustainability Action – USC will engage community members (on campus, in the broader community and globally) to align their professional, personal, and collective behavior with sustainability best practices. Central to this process, USC will engage in dialogue with community, business, political, and social leaders on how best to pursue sustainability while addressing social inequities.
- Partner in building Inclusive Communities – USC recognizes that diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities not only create a robust and resilient society but are a prerequisite to environmental sustainability. Having broad and inclusive stakeholder representation from the beginning of discussions through implementation will celebrate and best leverage the rich tapestry of our communities in order to achieve sustainability goals.
- Support Arts & Culture Practitioners – USC will empower and support arts and culture practitioners, building a vibrant, shared and enduring sustainability culture at USC and beyond.
- Contribute to Sustainability Leadership in Higher Education and Beyond – USC will serve as a model in collaboratively developing and utilizing tools and applied best practices in accelerating the transition to sustainability.
Goals
1.1. Increase core undergraduate sustainability courses by 10 per year through 2028, plus develop new interdisciplinary certificates, minors and majors.
1.2. Increase faculty capacity to teach sustainability courses—both didactic and experiential—through a focused faculty hiring approach that increases the number of faculty with expertise in sustainability.
1.3. Elevate sustainability-focused research and experiential learning through (a) implementation of a plan and pilot program for experiential course development and (b) new sustainability research partnerships between students and faculty.
USC research is tackling critical sustainability problems by addressing challenges facing natural resources, urban health, infrastructure, mobility, communications, behavior, and equity. In doing so, we strive to address the following goals:
2.1. USC will substantially increase its interdisciplinary research and research training for sustainability and climate change solutions, empowered by world-class scholars in a wide array of disciplines. USC is uniquely qualified to promote this research and implementation necessary to address sustainability challenges due to its location at the heart of a rapidly evolving urban landscape that is impacted by climate change and is experiencing wildfires, air pollution, heat waves, coastal erosion, threats to the marine ecosystems, and drought.
2.2. USC will substantially increase its public outreach, communication, and engagement regarding sustainability and climate change solutions. This will build on USC’s strong ties to stakeholders in city and state government, business and industry, non-governmental organizations and to surrounding communities in developing scalable models of equity-based solutions.
2.3. USC research will have significant real-world impacts and address societal needs though solutions that are replicable and scalable.
Center stakeholder engagement in the design, implementation, and evaluation of USC sustainability initiatives as drivers of (or levers for) the equitable environmental stewardship needed for a vision of our collective future and the common good. The centering of stakeholder engagement will be measured by examining the impact of who participates, our partnerships, and our projects, on USC and the community, from 2021-2028.
3.1. Students, faculty, staff, and alumni from consistently marginalized groups will report higher sense of belonging and being valued as members of the university community, measured by annual (or periodic) surveys.
3.2. Community partners from consistently marginalized groups will be more included and valued in joint programming, planning, and decision-making processes at USC, as measured by annual (or periodic) surveys.
3.3. By June 2023, develop a comprehensive catalog of the sustainability research and programs at USC that work with local communities disproportionately impacted by environmental disruptions and risk exposures, measured by document review and other measures. Updates to the catalog will be done using these and other metrics.
4.1. Mend Our Climate
4.1.a. USC will achieve climate neutrality for annual scopes 1 & 2 emissions for fiscal year 2025 and beyond while seeking to minimize the use of carbon offsets.
4.1.b. USC will achieve climate neutrality for annual scope 3 emissions (air travel, commuting, waste, T&D losses) for fiscal year 2035 and beyond (achieving a 50% reduction by 2028, using 2014 as the baseline).
4.1.c. USC will complete an assessment of purchasing-related scope 3 emissions by fiscal year 2024 and set a related reduction goal by the end of fiscal year 2025.
4.1.d. USC will complete an assessment of scope 3 embodied carbon in all new major construction and renovation projects beginning construction documents in or after fiscal year 2023 and will pursue design and construction strategies for reducing that embodied carbon. For projects beginning construction documents in or after fiscal year 2025, the projects will offset any remaining embodied carbon.
4.1.e. USC will complete an experiential learning project to model the embodied carbon of the existing physical campuses by fiscal year 2024 and create a goal by fiscal year 2026 around removing historical embodied emissions.
4.1.f. USC will complete an experiential learning project to model USC’s historical scope 1 and 2 emissions by fiscal year 2024 and create a goal by fiscal year 2026 around removing historical operating emissions.
4.2. Build a Circular Economy
4.2.a. Achieve Zero Waste (90% diversion rate) by fiscal year 2028.
4.2.b. Achieve 30% aversion (reduction in total municipal solid waste generated, using a fiscal year 2022 baseline) by fiscal year 2028.
4.2.c. Convert at least two additional material streams annually to more-circular or closed loop systems.
4.3. Align with New Water Realities
4.3.a. USC will achieve a 20% potable water use reduction per square foot of total campus building space by FY 2028 (FY 2014 baseline).
4.4. Develop Healthy Ecosystems
4.4.a. USC will develop and begin implementing a long-term plan for grounds and landscaping and strategic planting standards by fiscal year 2024.
4.4.b. USC will update its Design Guidelines to incorporate health and wellness strategies into facilities designs by fiscal year 2023.
4.5. Strengthen Transparency and Accountability
4.5.a. USC will establish a publicly accessible online dashboard to track sustainability resource metrics by fiscal year 2023.
4.5.b. USC will publish annual reports on operational sustainability goals progress within six months of the close of each fiscal year.
4.5.c. USC will incorporate sustainability criteria into operations performance reviews by fiscal year 2024.
5.1. Achieve STARS Gold by 2025 and STARS Platinum by 2028 by engaging all departments, schools, and students on their role in advancing sustainability at USC, and empowering them to take actions that support Assignment: Earth.
5.2. Achieve a university culture of sustainability by 2028, defined as 80% of students, faculty, and staff demonstrating an understanding of sustainability and perceiving USC as having a culture that cultivates sustainability.
5.3. Achieve university-wide practice of sustainability behaviors by 2028, defined as an average of 80% of students, faculty, and staff self-reporting engagement in various behaviors “usually” or “always.”