A Letter From the NYU Sustainability Task Force
Lynne P. Brown and Alison Leary
As a private university in the public service, NYU has a responsibility to embed environmental sustainability as a core value of its academic mission and administrative operations.
Sustainability is rapidly altering the face of NYU. Though our current effort is a young one relative to the green initiatives of many other major American universities, we are proud of our progress so far.
Through investments in renewable energy and infrastructure, community-wide programming, academic research, and the fostering of a deep understanding of environmental values, NYU is poised to become a leader in urban environmental scholarship and practice.
Technology, and its utilization, has a central role in this story. Short-sighted resource consumption and technological development have driven environmental problems such as global warming and biodiversity loss. At the same time, by thoughtfully drawing upon technologies as diverse as networked information systems and renewable energy, we can respond to these challenges more effectively.
Sustainability means bringing together diverse segments of the NYU community — students, faculty, administrators, staff, parents, alumni, neighbors, and beyond — to solve environmental problems and improve everyone’s quality of life.
We have the collective opportunity to act on many levels — by reducing our direct physical impacts on the environment, by educating our student body about their own ability to enact positive environmental change, and last but not least, by engaging with the research function of our world-class university to develop new tools and ideas for confronting global problems.
To learn more, visit our website at www.nyu.edu/sustainability. We thank you for your help in making NYU a greener place to live, work and learn!
Author Biographies
Lynne P. Brown is co-chair of the Sustainability Task Force and the Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs.
Alison Leary is co-chair of the Sustainability Taks Force and the Senior Vice President for Operations.