Edinburg resident and legacy institution University of Texas-Pan American alumnus Paola Encina (left) and her daughter Salma Kliampel plant broccoli last Wednesday at the Agroecology Research Community Garden on the Edinburg campus. Encina is homeschooling Kliampel this year and wanted her to learn hands-on about how plants work for her biology class. Omar E. Zapata /The Rider Photo
The Office for Sustainability aims to become a model for the community in integrating the objectives of a healthy and sustainable ecological system, developing viability and searching for social justice.
It seeks to involve all corners of the university to create an environment in which all members of the campus community promote sustainability in their personal and professional lives.
“We have been here for 12 years now and in those 12 years, we have been trying to help the institution integrate sustainability into all its products and services,” said Marianella Franklin, chief sustainability officer at UTRGV. “In other words, we are not here to do sustainability for the university, we are here to help the university integrate sustainability into academics, operations, engagement, and into planning and governance for the university.”
The Office for Sustainability works with every department on campus to help integrate sustainability, Franklin said.
Jeremy San Miguel, Office for Sustainability program coordinator, explained the purpose of the office.
“Our office is more than just an office; we represent sustainability on all campuses,” San Miguel said. “It’s larger than just Edinburg, Harlingen and Brownsville. The videos that we record we try to be as equitable as possible to the locations.”
Christian Garcia, Office for Sustainability data analyst, spoke about the report that the office is currently working on.
“Currently, we are working on a report that we are going to get published at the end of the year,” Garcia said. “With support, [it] is going to oversee the entire university’s operations, academics and the entirety of the whole university itself.”
Franklin said the report is important for the university.
“We report to an organization called Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education,” she said. “They have a reporting tool which is the sustainability tracking assessment rating system, that particular report is done every three years in order to get a rating.”
She said UTRGV received a gold rating in 2018 and is now working on submitting the next report.
The report takes about two years to complete, Franklin said.
“I think the report is going to significantly transform the Rio Grande Valley in terms of opportunities that are available to our students,” Garcia said. “There are a lot of resources that we do not have at the moment and that gold standard will bring more fundings for our institution and provide our students with more and better resources.”
Franklin explained UTRGV was among one of the first three universities to receive the gold rating.
“We received our first gold rating in 2018 and we were the first in the UT System to receive that rating,” she said. “By now most of the UT System institutions have a gold rating as well, but we were the first to receive the gold rating along with Texas A&M and Rice [universities].”
Franklin said the Office for Sustainability aims to move up in ratings.
“We hope to get to platinum at some point, but we have to start behaving more sustainably and we have to start upgrading our campus in a sustainable way,” she said. “We are doing really well in our academics, research and engagement. Those are where we got our highest points.”
Garcia explained the importance of joining the university community and how one does not only attend university for the education but also its resources.
“I had a meeting with Marianella Franklin, and she says that the Rio Grande Valley is really underappreciated in its resources and she believes that the people from the RGV are very intelligent,” he said.
Garcia said the office has several ideas but lacks resources.
“We try to create impacts through education,” Franklin said.
She said it launched a new series this year, which includes a podcast series titled “Sustainability…Adelante!,” as well as a TikTok and film series to target different audiences.
“We are really here to create student success, that is our goal,” Franklin said. “We find sustainability to be that tool for student success, because it helps our students understand the interconnection of the world we live in, the interconnection of the social, environmental and economic system.”
