Guest Speech – Davis Bookhart

Aligning student learning with a sustainability mindset

The past several years have demonstrated that adopting certain sustainability principles into decision-making can produce better long-term results when it comes to optimizing resources and managing risks. Within the university, we are still trying to find the best ways to incorporate these principles into student learning so that their understanding of sustainability knowledge (or “competency”) will serve as a foundation for them to succeed in the future. Fortunately, university campuses themselves can help support this knowledge foundation if they are utilized in ways that turn them into “learning laboratories” for the understanding of key ideas and concepts.

Davis Bookhart

Senior Manager and Head, Sustainability Unit, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Davis Bookhart joined HKUST in August, 2013 as senior manager and Head of the university’s Sustainability Unit, and was appointed in 2014 as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Division of the Environment. Bookhart’s charge is to facilitate the creation and implementation of a comprehensive sustainability master plan, focusing on reducing or eliminating the University’s environmental impacts, addressing and managing risks that arise from climate change and resource scarcities, and preparing students for careers that will be shaped by an increasingly stressed planet. Bookhart comes to HKUST after eight years as the head of the Office of Sustainability at Johns Hopkins University. Bookhart holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a master’s of American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is Chair of the Task Force on Sustainability Progress within the HK Sustainable Campus Consortium, serves as an Editorial Board member of Sustainability: The Journal of Record, and is an Advisory Board member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).