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Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cThe award is obviously a great honor,\u201d said Shi, who was unaware of the four-page nomination letter that Weston Dripps, executive director of the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, had submitted on his behalf.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately felt a profound sense of humility and gratitude because the award actually represents the work of hundreds of people at Furman \u2013 faculty, staff and students \u2013 and so many others who supported our efforts with grants or with research projects,\u201d Shi added.<\/p>\n
But Dripps, who routinely leans on Shi for advice in leading the institute, gives the environmental historian the credit.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid is truly deserving of the AASHE Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been and continues to be an inspirational leader of the sustainability movement in higher education,\u201d Dripps said. \u201cHe was a pioneer who set us on a sustainability pathway that has made Furman one of the top-rated colleges advancing sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n
What’s more, said Dripps,\u00a0\u201cPursuing sustainability takes a village and an entire campus community to get us there, but if it weren\u2019t for David\u2019s leadership, we wouldn\u2019t be positioned where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter, he described the many initiatives, accomplishments and other elements that Shi either influenced directly or set in motion to make sustainability an integral part of Furman\u2019s national identity.<\/p>\n
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- Shi was a charter signatory of the Association of College and University Presidents\u2019 Climate Commitment, now known as the Presidents\u2019 Climate Leadership Commitments. Furman aims to be carbon neutral by 2026.<\/li>\n
- Initially named by the Board of Trustees as the Shi Center for Sustainability and now known as the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, the institute serves as a hub for exploring complex sustainability issues on campus and beyond.<\/li>\n
- A general education requirement in sustainability was established for all students in 2007 \u2013 Humans and the Natural Environment.<\/li>\n
- 2010 saw the creation of a Bachelor of Science degree in sustainability science \u2013 the first at a private liberal arts and sciences university in the U.S.<\/li>\n
- In 2006, Furman built South Carolina\u2019s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified building. Furman now boasts eight LEED buildings.<\/li>\n
- Furman\u2019s Community Conservation Corps was established in 2009 \u2013 a program conceived by President Shi and funded by Piedmont Natural Gas that mobilizes students, faculty and staff to weatherize homes for low-income residents in Greenville.<\/li>\n
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The Furman Farm is located behind the Shi Institute.<\/p><\/div>\n
Furman developed an organic practice farm> that is tended by students and supplies weekly produce to the university\u2019s dining hall.<\/li>\n
- The Greenbelt Engaged Living Community fosters sustainable living and lifestyle choices among 16 student residents who live in the cabins along Furman Lake.<\/li>\n
- The first of its kind, a faculty affiliate program comprising 65 faculty members incorporates sustainability themes and research projects in curricula across multiple disciplines.<\/li>\n
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The Swamp Rabbit Trail meanders through downtown Greenville at Falls Park.<\/p><\/div>\n
Shi led a community task force that collaborated with municipalities and the county to build the Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail, a nationally recognized, 22-mile rail-to-trail, a portion of which runs through campus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But for everything he catalyzed, Shi is most proud of the unintended consequences of planting a flag in the sustainability turf \u2013 from attracting prospective students intrigued by sustainability to creating outdoor learning labs to nurturing a fresh crop of graduates at Furman and elsewhere to pursue careers in the burgeoning sustainability field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget meeting a Furman student from Maine who told me it was Furman\u2019s commitment to sustainability that led her to apply and enroll at the university,\u201d Shi said.<\/p>\n
The irony is that 25 years ago, Shi made several trips to the New England area to identify and learn from schools that had sustainability programs well underway. Now institutions regularly look to Furman, sending delegations to campus to see how the university has embedded the concept of sustainability in its curricula, campus operations and community outreach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many respects, what excited me about sustainability and Furman were the ways in which it was going to enhance the educational experience and reinforce our longstanding commitment to experiential learning \u2013 helping students apply what they were studying in the classroom directly on campus through various projects,\u201d Shi said.<\/p>\n
Furman Lake with some of its residents.<\/p><\/div>\n
He points to research conducted by the biology and earth, environmental, and sustainability science departments that used Furman Lake as a learning laboratory to study its biochemistry. Those studies eventually inspired an ambitious lake restoration project to improve water quality through the use of organic barriers along the shoreline to help prevent runoff-borne pollutants from entering the lake.<\/p>\n
More broadly, Shi is gratified by AASHE\u2019s recognition that he has contributed to \u201cpromoting sustainability as an essential aspect of higher education, not just at Furman, but overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having served on several boards of organizations that advocate for sustainability, Shi has witnessed sustainability blossom from \u201cbeing just an ideal and an aspiration to being in the very forefront of academic innovation and campus transformation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI often would tell students before I retired 11 years ago that some of the best new jobs on campuses were those related to sustainability. Now, virtually every campus has a sustainability director and additional staff members. That wasn\u2019t true 30 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even in retirement, Shi continues to fuel environmental stewardship. Already one of the most generous benefactors of his namesake institute, he is involved in leveraging his influence toward fully endowing the institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the institute itself to be sustainable, it must be fully endowed,\u201d Shi said. \u201cSuch an endowment will bring more opportunities for student research fellowships and interactions with various community organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurman is one of Greenville\u2019s greatest assets \u2013 and vice versa \u2013 and the city and campus will continue to better themselves by working hand-in-hand on shared issues related to environmental quality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When President David E. Shi \u201973 began elevating sustainability as an essential strategic pillar for Furman University some 25 years ago, the idea drew support \u2013 and some skepticism. Several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":9684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,19,17,37,98,42,18,9,61,13,1],"tags":[197,198],"class_list":["post-9660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-biology","category-centers-and-institutes","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-heller-service-corps","category-history","category-shi-institute-for-sustainable-communities","category-sustainability","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-four-news-4th-story","category-uncategorized","tag-aashe","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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