There are three areas with tremendous opportunities for Ball State faculty to effect change in moving toward a sustainable future: course content, class operations, and research.  Every course has some relationship to sustainability.  Faculty can exploit these relationships through the inclusion of sustainability-related topics in their syllabus, by encouraging their students to do projects and papers linking sustainability to the course material, and by inviting speakers on sustainability topics to the classroom. 
Class operations can be made congruent with sustainable practices by using Blackboard or email to reduce the use of paper in communicating with students and distributing syllabi and other materials. Submission and return of student assignments may also be made electronically.  Whenever paper is used, students can be encouraged to print single-spaced on both sides (or on the back of previously used paper) to reduce consumption. Some Ball State computer labs have duplex printers.  Students can ask the lab personnel about choosing these printers for their work. 

There are also expanding opportunities for conducting and publishing research linking one's discipline to sustainability.  This research may be presented at one of the many sustainability conferences or in one of the emergent national and international discipline-specific and interdisciplinary sustainability journals.  In fact, Ball State will host Greening of the Campus V: Connecting to Place September 18 - 20, 2003.  The Proceedings of this conference are published. The deadline for abstract submissions for presentations is February 14.  See the call for papers at http://www.bsu.edu/provost/ceres/greening/.

All of these efforts are consistent with Ball State's commitment to the Talloires Declaration, The Ball State University Strategic Plan, and the Ball State University Sustainability Statement.