The momentum for such an approach to sustainability at Georgia Tech began almost a decade ago. By 1990, consciousness of this issue had grown to the point where a faculty survey found that 200 researchers placed their work under the heading of "the environment." About the same time this survey was taken, the Georgia Research Alliance was formed. The Alliance is a partnership of six Georgia research universities, including Georgia Tech, plus state government and private industry. Its goal is to promote and coordinate research that drives development in several critical fields, one of which is environmental technology. So, just at the point where the institution was beginning to think of sustainability as a cohesive research field, along came a research organization to coordinate and promote it. The Research Alliance created the Georgia Environmental Technology Consortium specifically to deal with environmental research, and tens of millions of dollars have flowed to it from state, federal and private sources. Georgia Tech's formal, systematic approach to sustainability began in 1992, when it received a $1 million grant from the General Electric Foundation to create the Center for Sustainable Technology.

The next opportunity came in 1995, when Wayne Clough, a civil engineer and alumnus of Georgia Tech, returned as president. Under his leadership, Georgia Tech developed a vision statement that says, "Georgia Tech seeks to create an enriched, more prosperous and sustainable society for the citizens of Georgia, the nation and the world." Those are lofty words, and the next challenge was to translate them into practice. In 1996, 50 faculty spent a two-day retreat to understand what was already being done in sustainability and begin to formulate a strategy for next steps.

From that retreat came the Sustainability Task Force, which recommended that sustainability needed to become an integral part of Georgia Tech's education, research and economic development programs, as well as the operation of the campus itself. The goal is that every student and every faculty and staff member understands basic sustainability issues and is aware of how their personal and professional activities can help to promote a sustainable society. Although there are electives in sustainability, the institution also incorporates sustainability into the core curriculum. Students' basic education comes through the prism of sustainability, and sustainability is emphasized in their earliest experience with defining and understanding their chosen discipline.

Georgia Tech is taking the same kind of comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to research as to curriculum, hoping that people with different skills and perspectives will challenge and encourage each other to think outside the box and help create interdisciplinary communities or neighborhoods on campus.

In addition to our curriculum and research activities, current sustainability initiatives at Georgia Tech include:

• Beginning construction on an Environmental Science and Technology Building, which will gather faculty and labs from across the disciplines who work on sustainability issues.
• Hosting an annual conference for manufacturers. Over 300 manufacturers will come to campus looking for practical ways to improve their operations, and the importance of sustainability will be a prominent part of the conference agenda.
• Working with the City of Atlanta and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce in stimulating the revival of the neighborhoods that surround campus. The growing number of high-tech firms nearby is attracting quality housing and commercial establishments, which will give faculty and staff the opportunity to improve their quality of life by living near campus.
• Practicing sustainable behavior in campus operations and striving to make it a living laboratory for sustainability. To guide them they adopted a Campus Master Plan, which has as its goal to make the Georgia Tech campus "a sustainable environment within which the use of land, design of facilities and methods of operation are conducted within established principles of sustainability."
• Ensuring that future facility growth will not cause any increase in the level of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Trying to incorporate more renewable energy sources into the power plant portfolio.
• Creating the Sustainable Education Building as a "living laboratory" that includes classrooms, an electronic library, an exhibit hall, a multi-media theater and office space for faculty and graduate students. It even has a business incubator.
• In addition to "big" things like these, Georgia Tech is trying to incorporate sustainability into the details of daily campus life. Students are an integral part of this effort to make the campus sustainable and some are active participants in Leaders for a Sustainable Society, an organization that promotes knowledge of sustainability and encourages its practice on campus.