Clement Loo  00:00
Hi, I'm Clement Loo, welcome again to Just Sustainability. Here's conversations about sustainability, equity and social justice. For the last episode of season one, I said I'd offer you something slightly different. The conversation being featured isn't one that I recorded specifically for Just Sustainability. Rather, it's an outtake of a presentation that Troy Goodnough and I recorded for the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges 2021 meeting. The presentations about a program that Troy and I created with the support of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. The program, which we named ISLE, or the Intercultural Sustainability Leaders Program, invites a cohort of students who are all engaged in social justice advocacy to spend a year meeting with various sustainability leaders across Minnesota to discuss the intersection of sustainability and equity. Because there's so much overlap between what we talked about in ISLE and what gets discussed in the show, I thought you might also be interested in listening to Troy and I chat about ISLE.  Hi, and thanks for joining us to learn about the ISLE program. I guess we should start by introducing ourselves. I'm Clement Loo. I'm a assistant professor of environmental studies. And I'm the student success coordinator in the Office of Equity Diversity Intercultural Program. And I'm one of the folks who put together ISLE and have been hosting it for students. And then I'll turn it over to Troy, who can introduce himself as well. 

Troy Goodnough  01:34
Hello firends, my name is Troy Goodnough. And I serve as sustainability director here at the University of Minnesota Morris, and have had the pleasure of doing so going back to about 2006. And so it's been, it's been fun having colleagues like Clement to try new things, and we're excited to share this experiment with you.

Clement Loo  01:58
So, let's go to our first question. So you came up with the idea for ISLE originally, why do you think UMN-Morris needed that program? What were you hoping that the program would accomplish?

Troy Goodnough  02:07
There are a couple of things that have been bubbling up for the past couple of years. And you know, one of the most immediate responses to that is that over the last decade, plus, you know, at least as a director in the Office of Sustainability, you know, every semester I hire a lot of interns, like anywhere from 10, to 15, interns. And while we've, we've had a lot of amazing students come through the office that the last decade or more, I guess, I was feeling on a personal and professional level, like maybe we weren't having as diverse students come through the office as I think we should, or I wished we would given-given our diversity profiles a campus, which is a very diverse campus. And so I was wondering if there were some things that I could do in partnership with other friends to help improve the diversity of the Office of Sustainability. But also just more broadly, asking questions about inclusion, do people did people feel included across our campus in the sustainability conversation and feel like that there was something in sustainability for them? And so we'll say more about this later. But-but coinciding with those feelings, it was just really awesome that the University of Minnesota has resources and has something called the Institute on the Environment. And, and they, they created this new grant funding round, that was really focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, pilot projects. And so that-that was kind of-lit the fire for trying to do a new project like this. And so, in terms of what we were, you know, hoping to accomplish with-with this in terms of what we said we were going to do, the the brief nutshell of that is we said we were going to create a new program; the program was going to be called the Morris Intercultural Sustainability Leadership Program or ISLE Program, which we could have fun with as a name and you know, you want to have fun names for things. We did say we wanted to bring together a diverse group of students with different identities and backgrounds to explore the meaning and impact of sustainability for themselves and in their home communities. So we did want to, our goal was to, connect with these students, to invite them to go back or reconnect with their home communities, to learn from elders or others in their own community about what they thought sustainability or environmental work meant. We were hoping to, to, to also, you know, visit with other elders from across the state like find other diverse sustainability leaders from across the state. And then maybe they would learn by doing that. And then we also wanted them to, to, ideally, for us to have a shared experience, and to even share more with the student body about what they, what they learned about sustainability for themselves. So those are some of our initial goals. And but, so, so I think moving moving on from that big picture. You know, partnership is so important. It's been awesome. Clement, working with you. So maybe you could just talk a little bit about, you know, ISLE is based on a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability and the environmental studies, which you're a part of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Intercultural Programs. So why do you think a partnership like this was important for this ISLE Program and, and for generally promoting sustainability? And sustainability education?

Clement Loo  05:57
Yeah, no, it was terrific working with you too and still working with you. Sounded like I said it in the past tense, but this is present tense, we're still working together. Well, so I think the first part of my answer would be just to note that equity and inclusion are, are important parts of sustainability, right. So like, I think sometimes there's a mistake in thinking that folks who are interested in equity and inclusion, and folks who are interested in sustainability are different folks, when I really think if you're interested in sustainability, you, you have to be interested in Equity, and Diversity and Inclusion, and social justice more broadly. Because when I think about sustainability, what I think about is an endeavor that, there's, that's intended to develop a society that supports mutual flourishing, right? So like, mutual flourishing over time. And then when you're thinking about what mutual flourishing means, right? When you think about what it means for people, at least the people part of right, sustainability to do well, it requires that they live in a just and fair society, right? It's hard to do well to have a good life to flourish, if you live in a society that's oppressive, right? Particularly if it's oppressive to you, but to oppressive to anybody, no one really wants to live in an oppressive society. And then if you're looking at the other side, right, if you're thinking about equity, and inclusion and social justice, it requires being involved and thinking about environmental, economic and social disparities, right? So like, what how does inequity manifests and manifests and things like environmental racism, it manifests in terms of like, you know, right, like wealth gaps, and poverty, and it manifests in, right, like, you know, social exclusion and in marginalization, right. And those are all things that sustainability folks should be thinking about. And so when it comes to the various units are involved in this project, right, environmental studies, Office of Sustainability, Equity, Diversity, and Intercultural Programs, the work when it comes to our work is overlapping, right, because sustainability and inclusion are such sort of, importantly, like, overlapping, tied together things are individual kinds of projects overlap with one another. So it makes sense for us to, like, do a project together, and to think about how we can do these things in an integrated and holistic way. And to help our students to also think about those sorts of things when, right, because they're going to be us in 10 years, hopefully. And so they should be already now starting to think about these topics integrated in a cohesive way. And so why I think it's important that we had the particular groups of folks involved that we did. So the next week. So the next question that we want to ask each other is so well, you know, we've at this point, talked about why we created the program, and what informed our choices about who was involved in his creation. We really haven't said what we created yet. So like for folks who might not have, why he didn't even know how, how accurate, how detailed or abstracted, so folks might have no idea what we actually created, or what ISLE is, so maybe I will invite you to say a little bit about what is ISLE. What have you been up to for the past couple years?

Troy Goodnough  09:34
You bet. So yeah, so the nuts and bolts of it. Right. So, so there's kind of what we wanted to do and then and then what we ended up doing and so the-the way the program has really played out is we wanted because-because we received a grant, you know, a significant grant from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. You know, one of the nice things about that is we-we knew from the beginning we wanted to be able to provide some stipends for students to be able to participate in the program. And so that was an important piece to us. And so we were able to to obtain funding for paying students to be a part of the program. We also received some funding for travel and some funding for visiting with elders. Obviously, the the we really with with we've had two kind of pilot years, the first year, we did at least get one travel trip in although we had planned several really fun travel, some trips that we didn't get to make, but we did make it to the Upper Midwest Association of Campus Sustainability, the UMACS conference at Carleton. And that was, that was like a really important bonding experience that a lot of our ISLE team members got to, to be a part of. But-but then the as, and then we did have a couple in person elders visit. So like the key component, I think, what we found the key component of this program was really centered on bringing elders into a shared space. So we had like a living room-ish area where we all met, right, and we got together, six, seven of us in a in a, in a smaller, more intimate living room type space. And then either pre-COVID, we had an elder come visit with us, or post-COVID, we would, you know, zoom in an elder from afar, and it was pretty. It was I think we were really intentional from the beginning about being kind of low key about not over defining sustainability, but really focusing on storytelling. And so we did, we did do some prep with, we did do some prep with, throughout this whole process, we had a student coordinator, who was amazing. And so she was, she was always working with us to generate the agenda and think about the agenda, and then plan out a little bit of some questions we, we used. Somewhere in the middle of our process, we started using discord as well, you know, an online technology tool to, to continue some dialogue in between our conversations with elders, but-but-but a really big focus was on listening to elders, listening to elders share their stories about their sustainability journey, but also their professional and life journey. And, and then, and then, again, our goal was really to launch a successful pilot year or two. And so we did a lot of recruitment by identifying already kind of already diversity, equity leaders across our campus landscape. And so, so we did a little bit of self-selecting ourselves, especially, it was really helpful Clement, your background with your vantage, both as a professor but also as, as a DEI Success Coach, you had you and then and then obviously, our student coordinator, kind of had some understanding of some of the various diversity, equity groups on campus and who who might be interested in participating. And then of course, we did reach out to them and find out if they would be interested in making this commitment, which was, you know, a meeting at least every two weeks throughout the semester, and guaranteeing their time for that, for that space. And so, more to say about that, but let's, let's let me turn it over, back to you again.

Clement Loo  13:23
I want to ask you a clarifying question. 

Troy Goodnough  13:24
Okay. 

Clement Loo  13:25
So you talked about elders? Could you say a little bit about who the elders are, and how we pick them?

Troy Goodnough  13:32
Yeah, well, right. So, and again, we're-we did use that word, elder, you know, through this, this whole dialogue, and so obviously, it there is some, you know, some communities use that that word very specifically. But I think, you know, we, we were trying, I feel like we did, we kind of used that word throughout the program to say, you know, to really honor and say there are people we can learn from, from really diverse backgrounds. And so some -our elders included, people who are we're very focused on well being and health and even like, we had a martial arts practitioner, we had, I don't know if we can impact some of the various people but but we had, you know, we had leaders from some of our top nonprofit sustainability organizations in Minnesota, including, you know, energy organizations, we had a sustainability director from one of our one of the schools in Minnesota, we have had, so we had a wide range of diverse leaders who are actively in the academy or their own private situation or, or education. And so, so, so, and we also discussed we also had some sense but we also discussed with our ISLE team, who might be some of the people they would want to visit with. So obviously, there was a bit of trying to give them some confidence and work together to try to say, are there some cool people out there in Minnesota, who you would like to visit with? And so that also helped inform some of the, the, the elders, we reached, we reached out to? Yeah. And so, so we're, we're, you know, we're two years in to this. And I think, you know, feeling good, but obviously could still improve. And so, you know, after two years of running this program, Clement, maybe you could just touch on a little bit of, you know, what are some of the highlights? For you? And for the students in the program, do you think?

Clement Loo  15:48
Yeah, so one of the things I think, that we accomplish with the program that makes me very happy is we build a strong community of students, right, so like, how many students have gone through the program, the first two years, I think it's something like 11, or 12, which doesn't sound like a ton for some folks. But we consider that our campus has like, between 1300 to 1400 students, right, that's a full 1% of our campus, like, student population, right, formed a kind of a really strong sense of community and cohort and develop friendships. And that sense of community is a community that's built around a common interest and desire to make progress when it comes to working on the intersection of sustainability and equity on our campus. And so, right. I think, often when it comes to issues like sustainability, and equity, it's about building solidarity, building partnerships, building coalitions. And I think we did that, right. For our little spot of the world where we have the most impact, we helped build a coalition of students that expanded sort of the circle of folks who are working on these projects. And so I think that that's deeply important. And I think that's a benefit that comes from our program. And I think we've also inviting students who historically haven't seen themselves as part of the sustainability efforts on campus, even though they were interested in sustainability, but saw themselves more as student leaders working towards equity and inclusion. We've brought a broader range of perspectives, or at least amplified, perhaps underrepresented perspectives into the sustainability discourse on campus, right. So like, there are students who can speak from perspectives that I don't think I've been heard as much about sustainability and who are now kind of confident and see themselves as having a role participant in those discourses, and then I think they can also take back some of the sustainability discourse, to the students to their right colleagues, and peers, who are working with them on more equity oriented issues, right, because everyone we picked for the program, was a student leader in some organization that is working towards equity on campus, or, you know, in somehow was involved in equity efforts on campus. And so, it, I think this builds sort of a lot of communication from those two different groups of students who, I think in the past, have some overlap, but not as much as they should have. And so now, I think that that sort of bridge exists from having those students. I think, less than, you know, definitely at least those was a lot of fun. Right? Like, yeah, you know? 

Troy Goodnough  17:21
It was. 

Clement Loo  18:45
Yeah, so people often say, you know, like, if it was fun, people wouldn't call it work. But in this case, this work really was fun, right? That it was terrific, be able to build relationships with this group of students, because right, they are really, like, awesome students who are doing really cool work. And they're, like, great, like, are the folks that are like, get that mix of like, you know, great minds, great hearts, and like, create, like, you know, you get, they're going to make a positive difference. So being able to help, like, you know, them develop those skills is awesome. And also the way we have ran the program with having meetings with various sort of, you know, with the elders who are, I think, for the most part, just our various sort of equity and sustainability heroes that are, you know, would be willing to come here and talk to us. That was cool, right? Like, you know, it's rare that you get to invite someone that you really respect or like look up to, and then get to, like, grill them for an hour about, you know, what makes them tick, how do they function, how they get to where they are like, what are the strategies they they use, you know, what are the outcomes they're trying to work for it, right, just to get like, a masterclass on how to like, integrate equity and sustainability. That's an opportunity that I don't think is often available, and then we got to do that. For the last few years, and hopefully continue get to do that for you know, many more years. So, yeah, fun. It was a lot of fun. Um, you know, I guess it's all going well to talk about fun. But perhaps we should talk about some of the practical outcomes. So maybe we should take a moment and think about what we we believe that students learn from ISLE. So I'll let you go first. What do you think the students have learned?

Troy Goodnough  20:26
Yeah, I mean, I think through their own reflection on this, I think I think they're, they're, they're more comfortable answering what sustainability means to them, which was a goal, I think they're more likely to see, there are a lot of ways for people to do sustainability work. And so I think they see more points of entry for themselves. By having met with others, I think they're more likely to see themselves as having a place in the work professionally, or personally, which I think they reflected on. I think they're more confident and engaging with elders and knowing that, like, it's okay to ask questions, and just have a conversation, and it would be really cool. And, and then I think the last thing I say is that I think storytelling is really powerful, and an impactful practice that they can employ and use to learn. What do you think?

Clement Loo  21:19
Yeah, um, so when I think about what the students will learn, it makes me think back to what one of the students said to us about how a lot of the friends think about sustainability, that is one of them reported that their friends, one of the best friends didn't understand why they were involved sustainability, because they thought that sustainability was about buildings and managers. Right. And, you know, the fun thing is the student who said that, actually, the student said that if sustainability wasn't for them, actually, we participate in the program. And, you know, I think learned that sustainability isn't just about infrastructure. Nor is it about like, that it doesn't in turn just focus on like, the values concerns from like, more affluent folks. And I think, right, I think the student was also thinking about, like, affluent white folks. Right, it was thinking that because you know, that they were black, that, like, sustainability wasn't something that would appeal to their values, their perspectives, and their concerns. And so I think that was one thing that all the students learned, right, that, that sustainability shouldn't just focus on a particular set of values, shouldn't, and perspective and should be informed- 

Troy Goodnough  22:42
Right.

Clement Loo  22:43
By the views of everybody in society. And then they also learned that they can combine their interests regarding empowering the communities, with the interests about the environment, and all of them had, right had done a ton of work about, you know, community development, or like, you had had very clear commitments about like, empowering the communities they came from. But they didn't see how that tied with doing environmental work. And now they do where they see that the environmental work involves, or I mean, doing the equity work involves also doing environmental work and doing environmental work, when done best done right, involves equity work. And so yeah, I think those are sort of the the big lessons. Right.

Troy Goodnough  23:32
That's. Sorry, that's great. Let's keep rolling here a second here. So, so given given that, you know, based on this past couple years, Could you could you also make a couple comments on what do you think we'll keep, and what do you think we'll change if we're able to go forward? And what sort of tips would you have for other people trying to start a program like this?

Clement Loo  23:55
Yeah. So I think it's clear that the students had a positive experience, and learn a lot. So definitely should keep going with the program. So that's not something we should change. Right. I think we should maintain the program and the stuff that we've been doing. I think we should keep doing. I do think, I mean, I think the the meetings with the various elders were really educational for the students and also inspirational and motivational. And the students responded really well to our trip to UMACS. May, they clearly found that it was a strong bonding experience. And then they also enjoyed going to the various talks and learning about different ways that people were approaching sustainability. And I think the got something we didn't expect, right. I think they didn't expect folks to be talking about equity as much as folks were. And then seeing that there weren't more traditional sustainability folks. Talking about equity inclusion made them realize there really was a place for them in that but one thing I think we should change is, we should think about broadening recruitment. So the way we recruited was really sort of estrus identifying who we thought we'd be the ringers, right? Who were the high impact students on campus working towards equity, who we thought or, you know, had experience with them such that, you know, we suspected that they were involved or knew that they were also involved and interested in environment. So like, these were the students who were kind of clearly the ones that who would gain the most and be able to contribute the most to like, these sorts of conversations. But, you know, I think if we're wanting to think about sustainability, and inclusion and thinking about, like, how everyone's voice should be involved in those conversations, and like, every sort of way of understanding, you know, wellness and flourishing, and values should be involved, we should move away from the just sort of the handpick ringers and have a more kind of open and accessible program where a broader range of students can be involved. And so I think we need to think about recruitment so that we can involve, not just maybe we didn't really involve the usual suspects. But what we did was we involve the suspects who were like, you know, most likely to get away with the crime perhaps, right? We should think about how we can, yeah, have students who might not be obvious choices involved. And then I think one of the important parts of the program that we haven't talked about yet is we gave all the students stipends, right, and I think it's important to continue providing that sort of, or some sort of compensation, at least, right. So like, we provide, like monetary stipends, because of the grant from the I on E. So like, Thank you, I on E, for making this possible. We mentioned you, but we haven't thanked you yet, so thank you, I on E, if you're listening. But you know, with this kind of work, students have to put in the time, right, so like, the students put in at least, you know, an hour for the meetings every two weeks, throughout the time they're involved. But right, they probably put in a lot of labor, thinking about it. Like, we often had various sorts of homework. I mean, they weren't like we're giving assignments, but we were asking folks to like, have online conversations and think about these things. And like, you know, when even when they went home during various breaks, we asked them to like, think about what sustainability and equity means in the communities that they were going to when they were, you know, on break. And there's an opportunity to answer that, right. So like, one thing about trying to broaden perspectives means trying to bring a perspective of folks who are marginalized folks who are marginalized. Right, one of the ways that folks get marginalized is through, you know, economic disadvantage and financial disadvantage. So, the students are giving up opportunities to work opportunities to do other things that will help them graduate more quickly, and, you know, accrue less debt or, you know, have to pay less cost. And we need to remember that and think about how we can make it less difficult for students who already find harder a challenge, particularly in terms of very, like, time and economics to keep participating. Right. So we don't, we don't want to make it a program that's just accessible to the folks who have the free time to do it. Right. We want to, I think, is the most important population students. And we've talked to it, since we would find it very difficult to participate in the conversation, and then thinking about how to make the conversation easier for them to participate in. I'm- Troy, what do you think?

Troy Goodnough  28:57
Yeah, so I guess, maybe, maybe, maybe to wrap up? I guess I would just say that, that, I think we highlighted some key elements that you know, that it was really important that if other people are thinking about some of this at their school, it was awesome that that some leadership was displayed right from the top or to bring in some funding that was encouraging multi group collaboration, we were able to benefit from that. Right. Sometimes there's a pilot project brewing and it just needs a little catalyzing to get going. I think you did a good job of explaining the importance of wanting to compensate students to participate in a program and knowing that that's an important thing, but that's something we're gonna have to address in future years and see how we can do that. And then I think the just just those basics, parts about just bringing in cool people and having cool conversations, and and we weren't we I don't think we ever went through, "This is the Brundtland definition for sustainability," or things like even though like like maybe it was I wanted to do that or, you know, and you're a philosopher, and you know, I'm a philosopher want to be, and you know, but I think we I think we kept it really conversational relational. And, and let some of those those learn the learning emerge, right. And that's something else we can think about in future years to about the more some of how we do some of that grounding. But, but But hopefully, this presentation has provided some thoughts for people to chew on. And, and we'll keep experimenting on our campus. And so again, you know, we appreciate everybody taking the time to hear a little bit more about our experiments. And of course, we're excited if anyone wants to reach out to discuss more about our pilot project.

Clement Loo  30:44
So this brings us the end of season one of Just Stainability. I've had a lot of fun chatting with folks and creating this podcast, and I hope that you've enjoyed it as well. I'll be taking a short hiatus over the summer. But please join me again after the fall equinox. That's towards the end of September for season two. I've recorded a bunch of really terrific conversations that I'm excited to share with you all. And if all goes to plan, there might be some new features for the podcast. See you in September.  Thank you for listening to just sustainability. If you've enjoyed what you heard, please support this podcast by subscribing and leaving a review. Just sustainability is recorded with the support of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. In particular, I want to thank Peter Levin and Beth Mercer Taylor for all their help with this show. All the music on Just Sustainability is composed and recorded by Clifton Nesseth, and all the art work was created by Crysten Nesseth. Thank you again for listening. 


Transcribed by https://otter.ai