DU will host the Rocky Mountain Sustainability Summit Thursday and Friday in the Driscoll Center that aims to develop strategies to convert sustainability discourse into concrete action.
“Our goal for the summit is to bring together people from higher education institutions, businesses, and government agencies around the Rocky Mountain region to learn, share ideas and have great conversations around sustainability issues,” said summit co-chair Christy Cerrone, assistant director of Housing and Residential Education.
This is the first time DU has hosted the regional event, which was held at CU Boulder under the name “Rocky Mountain Sustainability Summit” in 2007 and 2009. Similar events have been held under various names on the CU Boulder campus since 1995.
The opportunity for DU to host the event arose after Dave Newport, director of the CU Boulder Environmental Center, offered other universities the chance to hold the summit. The DU Sustainability Council voted this time last year to host it here.
The event will have three keynote speakers.
Doug Fine, National Public Radio (NPR) sustainability contributor and author of “Farewell My Subaru,” and Hillary Mizia, former sustainability coordinator for New Belgium Brewery, will speak on Thursday.
Auden Schendler, the vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, will speak on Friday.
Also, Dave Newport, director of the CU Boulder Environmental Center, will be a featured speaker on Thursday morning.
There will be breakout sessions, a vendor fair/green expo and lunch on both days. Participants can also sign up for sustainability tours of the DU campus, as well as tours of GrowHaus, an indoor farm, marketplace and educational center in north Denver.
There are 245 students, faculty and professionals who have pre-registered for the summit online. Online registration closed on Thursday last week.
There are 75 student volunteers who will help run the event.
Admission for the two-day event was $50 for students and $120 for all other attendees.Participants are coming from around Colorado as well as from all over the Rocky Mountain region, including Utah, Montana and Wyoming.
The theme for the summit is “Inspiring Action on Regional Sustainable Priorities.” The organizers wanted to combine a focus on regional sustainability issues, while motivating participants to solve dire problems.
“We wanted to keep the focus local, so that it’s relevant to our daily lives as citizens of Colorado,” said event co-chair Jon Bortles, a sustainable business MBA student at the Daniels College of Business.
All of the keynote presenters will speak on how they really did something to solve sustainability issues. The event will “take the next step from identifying problems to taking action on them,” said Bortles.
