Registration is open for a new certificate program aimed at helping business professionals achieve sustainability.
Drury is slated to offer two summer sessions for its one-week Certificate of Environmental Sustainability course, which was created based on community need, said Doug Neidigh, director of Drury’s Ozarks Center for Sustainable Solutions, which primarily works off-campus with businesses and organizations.
“A lot of the requests we get from (those entities) is, ‘We want to learn more about sustainability. What can we do with our organization?’” he said. “We just recognized there’s a need to provide a formal education training program for working professionals in these companies that are looking to move toward sustainability.”
At press time, no one had registered for the course, but Wendy Anderson, Drury’s director of campus sustainability and an environmental science professor, said different types of businesses might have the right in-house candidates to send to the course.
“Ultimately, organizations can move toward their sustainability goals more quickly and more effectively if they have their own staff trained rather than relying on an external consultant,” she said.
Broad perspective
Anderson said the Certificate in Environmental Sustainability isn’t meant to replace the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Accredited Professional designation, which focuses on green building.
Drury’s program, she said, covers a wide range of topics, including water conservation, waste prevention, marketing sustainability efforts and environmental economics and ethics.
The program will be project-oriented and heavy in experiential learning, Neidigh said, noting that participants will be expected to come in with a sustainability project in mind.
“They work through that project while they’re here and go back, complete it and present the project to their organization,” he said. “It provides a real-world application. Rather than coming in and learning something in theory, we’re asking them to actually apply it.”
Shared knowledge
Much of the instruction will be done by Drury’s faculty. The school also asked outside experts to teach, including Loring Bullard, executive director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, who will address water quality, and Art Boyt, a professor emeritus at Crowder College and chief technical officer at SolSource Teknologi, a company that provides solar services and products.
Among those who are considering enrolling in Drury’s sustainability certificate program is Web Freeman, communications coordinator with Partnership for Sustainability, a joint effort launched in 2008 by organizations such as the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, City Utilities, the city of Springfield and Greene County, to encourage green practices in the community.
“Part of the reason that Partnership for Sustainability began was to help share ideas,” he said. “So getting in that setting where you are in a class with a dozen other professionals, (the attraction is) the whole sharing of ideas. ‘We’re doing this. We’ve gone paperless with this product. We’re using e-mail where we used to put items on the bulletin board.’”
The course costs $1,500 for general admission and $1,200 for Drury students. Registration is available at
www.drury.edu/ces.[[In-content Ad]]
