This is a bimonthly newsletter featuring community updates from Capilano University President and Vice-Chancellor Paul Dangerfield.
August 2024
At a recent Chamber of Commerce event up in Squamish—home to Capilano University’s newest campus—it was sobering to hear the mayor discussing proactive plans to prevent wildfires in the region. When a community surrounded by rivers and rainforests has to confront the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, it really brings home what we collectively need to be paying attention to these days.
At CapU, our commitment to environmental responsibility is deeply embedded in our Envisioning 2030 vision and values, and I’m proud of the accomplishments recently inventoried as part of our inaugural Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) submission to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
While reading our first STARS submission, I recalled the sense of wonder I felt when I first arrived at CapU back in 2016—how fortunate to be able to study and work in such a beautiful setting. I understood then that we were obliged to protect and preserve this shared natural environment, and to respect and uplift the First Peoples who have stewarded these lands for millennia.
That commitment has always been at the grassroots of CapU, with long-running multi-disciplinary programs and partnerships such as EarthWorks, and the Howe Sounds Biosphere Region Initiative engaging students with their communities to advance sustainable solutions to pressing environmental challenges. We have made incremental progress over the decades, steadily improving energy efficiency in our buildings and increasing the number of sustainability course offerings to 90. Now we are formalizing our efforts, seating sustainability principles into all aspects of our strategic planning from land use to learning outcomes, and holding ourselves accountable for action through the STARS process.
When we receive the results of our first report this fall, it will lay a framework for the next 10 years: we will have a baseline on which to build an even stronger culture of social and environmental responsibility, and to make a substantive difference at a national and global level. Our new Squamish campus will epitomize that effort, with two new Bachelor of Environment and Society degrees launching in September that will provide a deep well of research expertise to guide our sustainability journey. And on the horizon, CapU’s new Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Sustainability—the recent recipient of a $1.5 million NSERC Mobilize grant—will support CapU students and faculty to pursue important applied research on regional climate action.
As I approach the end of my final term at Capilano University—I will be passing reins to a new president in 2025—I am heartened to see that so many of our students and employees embrace hope, famously described by the American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit as “the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” And in this deeply polarized and overheated world, I believe that hope balanced by action can spark the right kind of fire.
Stay cool out there!
Paul