The Chronicle of Higher Education - May 24, 2013

The Sustainable Cities Initiative provides
an outlet for tens of thousands of hours of
student work per year. And it rakes in money.

ROn COOpER
Nico Larco, an associate professor of architecture, tours an aging neighborhood in Salem with a community-development official. “In design schools,
there is a tendency to fetishize design,” he says. “To get work done, you have to understand policy, regulation, economics, and politics.”

MARC SCHLOSSBERG
Courtney Moore (left), a student who participates in the Sustainable Cities Initiative
through a public-works class at the U. of Oregon, elaborates on a student-led project
with Judith Johnduff, a transportation planner for Salem, Ore.
At the end of each term, they
were grading papers embedded
with intriguing, sometimes bril-
liant ideas. And where did those
papers, those ideas, and all the
money and energy used in produc-
ing them usually end up? Tossed
in the wastebasket, soon to be for-
gotten.
“We started thinking, How
many of these papers are happen-
ing on this campus, and then how
many are happening across the
country?” Mr. Schlossberg recalls.
“It just seemed like a waste—a
societal waste.” Even worse, he
says after a pause: “It seemed im-
moral.”
Mr. Schlossberg and Mr. Young
are urban-planning professors,
That griping and pondering led
to the Sustainable Cities Initiative,
now embarking on its fifth year
as one of higher education’s most
successful and comprehensive
service-learning programs. It has
paired the needs of Oregon cities—
Gresham, Salem, Springfield, and,
this fall, Medford—with classes
and research relevant to sustain-
ability. In the process, it has pro-
vided a meaningful and market-
able outlet for the energy and tal-
ents of hundreds of students in
tens of thousands of hours of work
per year. And it shows signs of go-
ing national.
It also rakes in money: The cit-
ies pay the university $200,000
to $300,000 to be part of the pro-
gram, and city officials say the
work has paid back enormously.
In Salem—where students tackled
16 projects, in work worth at least
$12-million if done by consul-
tants—the ideas for just one proj-
ect at a solid-waste plant will save
the city about $1-million every
year. A project examining the eco-
nomics of Salem’s streetlights will
save $60,000 per year.
“It might not seem exciting to
help a city save $60,000,” says
Mark Becktel, Salem’s manager of
parks and transportation services,
“but when you are in a financial
death spiral, $60,000 a year is
meaningful.”
Many municipalities are desper-
ate for such savings, but one could
argue that higher education also
needs the challenges the cities of-
fer. These days, legislators are not
shy about asking what colleges de-
liver for the state funds they get.
And students clamor for education
that offers meaningful, real-world
skills and job connections—the
very things that Oregon students
say they have been getting through
SCI.
Service learning is a growing
trend, but most of the activity still
consists of one-off projects and
activities that don’t connect back
to the classroom, says Maureen F.
Curley, president of Campus Com-
pact, an organization that pro-

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