Ball State is entering its third generation of sustainability leadership, i.e., helping lead all the communities it serves to a sustainable future. This includes helping lead these communities to greater perception and understanding of P3 relationships, and to changes in behavior that accrue to these changes perceptions.
To attain this next level of leadership, the university needs to provideimmersive learning experiences and research experiences that increase understanding of regenerative systems and life cycles, and how to make decisions that integrate with these systems and life cycles in ways that achieve a positive eco-balance (system health and productivity as high, or higher, after intervention than before). Ball State needs to use its capabilities as the nations most “wired” campus to link these immersive experiences with local, regional, and global in formation-flow. We need to establish its proposed LandLab as regional clearinghouse of information of how to live sustainable in the Midwest. We need to translate the national desire for sustainability into Midwest regional P3 and sustainability agenda.
We also need to establish our LandLab as an ecobalance designTM education, research, and demonstration laboratory and to implement the Cooper-Skinner Field site’s proposed resource balance site management system and to integrate this system and its immersive learning and research experiences into its academic and degree programs. The University needs to implement a program of immersive life cycle design experiences that help students learn about systems, life cycles and ecobalance decision-making. The university needs to use these experiences to educate BSU students and others to envision the future, model performance of that future, implement that future, and monitor real-world performance and impacts to site indicators. The University also needs to implement education programs that empower students and faculty to promote healthy P3 perceptions and behaviors.