INSIDE ON CAMPUS

Campus sustainability coordinator finds local solutions for global issues

By Jennifer Coté

Corinna Kester
Photo by Christina Murrey

Campus sustainability coordinator Corinna Kester has saved sea turtles in Malaysia, negotiated environmental issues with the United Nations and won an internationally coveted scholarship to study in England, but she says her greatest success took place right here in Austin. In 2002, when Kester was an undergraduate student in the College of Engineering, she founded the Campus Environmental Center (CEC).

The CEC is responsible for recycling most of the plastic, aluminum and ink cartridges on The University of Texas at Austin campus, and Kester explains, “Establishing the center has definitely been my proudest accomplishment because it’s about supporting long-term student environmental initiatives while collaborating with administrators and staff.”

The success of the CEC led Kester to realize how important collaboration is when working on environmental issues.

“I mean, you can be a proponent of the environment and just care about saving spotted owls when you’re young,” she says, “but when you realize how it actually has to be done, it’s all about finding win-win solutions.”

These win-win solutions are the goal of sustainability. According to Kester, “While environmentalism focuses solely on protecting the environment, sustainability is more about how we can look at social, environmental and economic issues and try to figure out a solution that works for all sides.”

Kester was named a Truman Scholar in 2003, and was named by Pat Clubb, vice president for employee and campus services, to serve as the university’s first sustainability coordinator in 2004.

Clubb created Kester’s position as a way to start exploring campus-wide sustainability issues, and says, “Corinna has been part of a pivotal movement in environmental awareness and energy management at the university. As our first sustainability coordinator, she has helped steer university departments toward practices that incorporate conservation of natural resources and waste reduction into all of their daily operations.”

Since becoming a staff member, Kester has worked on institutionalizing the recycling program, promoting the Trash to Treasure end-of-year donation drive and establishing Green ‘Horns. Green ‘Horns has more than 650 members and provides opportunities for university employees to come together and discover ways they can make their work practices greener, such as carpooling or taking the bus, turning off the lights in offices and public spaces, and buying recycled office products.

If each of the more than 70,000 people on campus adopt just one of these green practices, Kester says, this will translate into a big difference for the environment.

“UT has a huge impact—we’re one of the largest universities in the country, so simple environmental actions that staff and students take here can make a concrete difference in other parts in the world,” she says.

In this way, the phrase “think globally act locally” rings true in Kester’s line of work.

“It sounds cliché,” she says, “but you have to pick a place where you can make a difference and you have to pick a scale at which you can make a difference.”

Over the past seven years, Kester picked the university as her place to make a difference, and her time here opened many doors for her to see the world she is so passionate about preserving.

As a student, she traveled to Panama, Kenya and Malaysia, and says, “UT provides a global education and has given me huge learning and leadership opportunities, both in my time as a student and as a staff member.”

Kester was honored for her work as a global citizen and sustainability advocate in February, when she became one of 100 scholars from around the world to receive a Gates Cambridge 2007 Scholarship. She plans to use the scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in engineering for sustainable development at the University of Cambridge, and will leave the university to move to the United Kingdom at the end of May.

Throughout her studies in England and wherever else her career takes her, Kester says she will continue the work she began in Austin by collaborating with people and businesses on local efforts that lead to global changes.

“Corinna embodies the values of innovation and service for the benefit of humanity,” says Clubb. “Although we will miss her passion and activism, her contributions to the university will have a lasting impact on our environmental programs and the way the university continues to change the world for the better.”