Sylvia Gale
This month's Sustainability Champion is Dr. Sylvia Gale, Interim Executive Director at the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement. Through her role at the CCE, Sylvia helps incorporate sustainability into the Center's work, operations, and mindset. Read our full interview with her to learn about how civic engagement and sustainability change the way she views and interacts with the world.
What brought you to UR?
I had no intentions of getting a PhD or continuing in higher education at the end of college. I worked at the margins of educational institutions, mostly doing outdoor education. For a while I ran a community center at a charter school in New Haven, Connecticut. There, I was in the position of a community partner seeking support from higher education. Eventually, I moved to Santa Cruz, California with my partner and got a job as an undergraduate advisor in the history department at UC Santa Cruz. While I was there, I realized I thought of myself as an “educator-administrator.” I wanted a position where I could care about learning and also work to change the institution in order to create more access to learning.
After that, I completed a PhD in English at UT Austin. As a graduate student there, I ran community-engaged programming for the public-facing UT Humanities Institute. A mentor of mine sent me the notice about the job in the CCE at University of Richmond and told me he had already reached out to Amy Howard about me. I remember reading the job description and feeling like they were perfectly describing what I was interested in. I didn't know anything about Richmond at the time, but we packed up and moved once I got the job.
What does your role at UR involve right now?
I'm the Interim Executive Director in the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement and that role is like steering a ship. I scan the horizon to see where we're headed and I help unify the different kinds of work done by our staff, like building community relationships, developing courses with faculty, or working with students to build up community engagement skills. The other part of my role is representing back to the University ways that community engagement is central to the institution's identity. Community engagement isn't just about the number of community-based learning classes taught, although there are a lot (194 just this year!), but it's also about the way that units across campus cultivate local connections. A good example is Dining Services and CARITAS. They have a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship so that in a recent time of crisis due to COVID-19, Dining Services was able to donate food the campus didn't need that CARITAS could use. That reflects a community engaged identity. It shows that we ask ourselves how we can be the best neighbors in this city with what we have.
What does sustainability mean to you?
In its broadest sense, sustainability is a commitment to the big picture. It's thinking about others, thinking about long-term impacts, and thinking about ourselves in a much smaller way. When I think in a geologic time frame, I see that my time on Earth is small. My goal is to pass through it leaving as little harm as possible and promoting as much good as possible. I try to walk lightly so others can see that it is possible to walk lightly, too.
From your perspective, what is the overlap between community engagement issues and sustainability issues?
Both fundamentally involve a commitment to paying attention to inequities. You can't think meaningfully about climate change if you don't recognize that it will mean devastating consequences for the most vulnerable, for those already impacted by poverty and other inequities. That kind of awareness is at the heart of community engagement. Community engagement is not just showing up to volunteer. That's important, but equally important is what happens before and after you show up. Your motivations and the way you pay attention to the context in which things are happening matters. For both sustainability and community engagement, it's important to understand the intersection of different issues. Sustainability isn't a series of actions, it's an awareness of the world we live in. Having a sustainable mindset means constantly thinking about the impacts of our actions and the ways we're all interdependent.
How have you seen environmental concerns intersect with other issues at the CCE?
The CCE sustains partnerships with many organizations in Richmond and our ongoing programs often intersect with or focus on environmental concerns. One I can highlight is our new Community Partner-in-Residence program. We host two community partners and give them space and time to do their own thinking supported by University resources and partners. One of our partners this year was Queen Zakia Shabazz, current Coordinator of the Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative, and the founder of United Parents Against Lead. Her work speaks directly to the intersection of equity, health, and environmental justice. During her time as a Community Partner-in-Residence, she wrote a handbook for parents about the toxic effects of lead on children and how to advocate around the issue. She also co-led a faculty excursion focused on lead toxicity in Richmond Public Schools. This was an important moment for some faculty. They could see that the inequities were not theoretical, they were visible in parts of a school building that were shut down. Whenever we talk about environmental issues in Richmond, we're also talking about equity issues. Those issues show up most starkly in vulnerable communities and Queen's work demonstrated that really well.
How does sustainability influence the CCE's approach to learning and operations?
A lot of what we're doing with students involves orienting them. For example, when a first year student comes here and doesn't know anything about Richmond, like me when I first moved here, we invite them into a relationship with the city. You have to know a place to love it. Sustainability doesn’t mean you went on a great hike, but that’s part of it. My first introduction to sustainability was my personal introduction to the outdoors. You care about something because you experience it and build empathy, and that connection makes you inclined to think about your impact. So, we get students downtown, we get them to the river. At the same time, we introduce important legacies of inequity. Then, we give students the tools to wrestle with hard questions, like what it means to be here with a specific identity and bear witness to a city where there are still stark equity issues. In my role, I help the Center live out its values so we can do that work. We have weekly TIDE (Thriving, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) Huddles that anyone on our staff can attend. During that time, we ask ourselves how we can be more equitable in our work and how we can advance equity on our campus more broadly. Those conversations lead to real decisions and actions.
We also think about sustainability very practically. This spring, we received a Silver Green Office Certification and our team immediately started talking about how to get to the next level. There are other things, too. We don't have a water cooler anymore and the way we handle coffee is intentional. We want to choose reusable items and make sure we're all on the same page when thinking about sustainability in event planning and arranging transportation. Beyond all of that, we are also aware that there’s a tendency in higher education to prioritize transnational communities and relationships. Sometimes we think we should travel to any conference, no matter where it is. At the CCE, we prioritize local knowledge. Sometimes we send people to places that require air travel, but we are thoughtful and careful about it. For example, this year I passed on a “must attend” conference trip to California because I didn't think the benefits to me outweighed the cost to others.
How does sustainability affect your life outside of work?
Biking is my biggest sustainability commitment. Back when I lived in California, I biked to work. UC Santa Cruz is famous for being at the top of a very steep hill and I took great pride biking up there every day. The ride home was exhilarating. The bike path went through a meadow facing the ocean and sometimes I would see whales spouting in the distance.
Here in Richmond, I still bike to work regularly and my family owns one car. Commuting by bike has always made me happy and I love how visible it is. Biking as much as possible has been a serious commitment to figure out as a family of five, though. I got an electric assist bike with a cargo rack to carry the kids and drop them off at school, which was a game changer. Beyond biking, I try to eat locally and I have a big garden. We're fortunate to live in Virginia where so many things grow and there's a bounty of farms. I am adamant about avoiding disposable cups and I've tried to raise the bar for myself. If I think about whether getting that drink I want in the moment and generating waste is really necessary, the answer is usually no. I also talk to my kids about why we make the choices we do, and try to avoid righteousness around all of this. No one wants their friends to be the plastic cup police!
What advice would you give to someone on campus who wants their actions to make a difference for sustainability?
I've been really inspired by the plastic bag recycling campaign on campus started by Nancy Propst. It's a great example of civic engagement. She was concerned, had an idea, and made a commitment. She was willing to collect bags and it grew because she put it out there and others shared an interest. We all need to pay attention to inclinations we feel. If you see something being done and think it isn't quite right or if you think the way we're producing something is too wasteful, we don't have to accept that. Change happens when people stop and say, "Wait a second, we can do that differently." We should hold ourselves accountable to our highest values and shouldn't be afraid to voice the need for change. That's the only way change happens.
Thank you Sylvia for all you do to contribute to sustainability on campus. Do you know someone who should be featured as a Sustainability Champion? Let us know at sustainability@richmond.edu.