Updating Our Sustainability Strategic Plan: New Vision and Guiding Principles

In January, we kicked off our efforts to update the University’s Sustainability Strategic Plan. Since then, we have conducted focus groups with student leaders, faculty, and staff to understand their opinions on what a shared vision of sustainability should look like at UK, the most important sustainability issues we will face, and potential goals we could set to address those issues. We then developed a community input survey to receive the wider campus community’s feedback on this process. 

Based on the focus groups and campus feedback, we have developed the first draft of the vision statement and guiding principles for the Sustainability Strategic Plan. 

UK Sustainability Vision Statement 

In support of UK’s mission, the vision for sustainability is two-fold:

• Ensure that the operations and activities of the University are ecologically sound, socially just, and economically viable; and
• Support and encourage curricula, research, and creative works on critical environmental and social challenges.

This principled approach positions our students, faculty, and staff to be leaders for a sustainable future in the Commonwealth and beyond.

5 Guiding Principles

1. Make the pursuit of these goals an integral part of the UK student experience
2. Reinforce the University’s commitment to our people
3. Decarbonize campus operations
4. Become a zero-waste campus 
5. Model environmental excellence

A conceptual model for the guiding principles

An ordered list is not the best way to think about the relationship of these principles to one another and the overall plan. The conceptual model below does a better job communicating these relationships.

Leadership Engagement

The vision statement and guiding principles above were developed with input and approval from many points of leadership from across the campus including those listed below. This same group of campus leaders will be asked to engage with the each phase of the plan as it is developed.

• The Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration
• The Executive Vice President for Health Affairs
• The Provost
• The Vice President for Research
• UK Athletics
• The Office of Institutional Diversity
• The Faculty Senate
• The Staff Senate
• Office of Student Success
• The UK Alumni Association
• The UK Student Government
• The Student Sustainability Council
• The Graduate Student Congress 

Get Involved: Provide Feedback! 

Task forces are currently being assembled for each Guiding Principle. The task forces are responsible for developing specific, measurable, actionable, and time-bound goals for their guiding principles to help set a path forward towards implementation and measuring success. This process will take place throughout the summer with the goal of releasing a draft plan in the fall semester. 

If you are interested in providing input on these task forces, please comment below! 

Finally, we will have another round of community feedback on the draft plan, so be on the lookout for that in early fall.