Three authors from the previous article describe their personal connection to the field of sustainability.

CLINTON J. ANDREWS
I came to sustainability through a belief that U.S. society has lost its sense of balance. My thrifty Scottish ancestors helped shape my worldview that values efficiency and disdains ostentation. My heretical English ancestors gave me the confidence to question authority. My Irish and German ancestors helped me appreciate a good glass of beer. The 1973 oil shocks helped catalyze my interest in these topics.

As the director of an academic program in urban planning, I’ve seen sustainability enter the professional lexicon and compete for mindshare with other conceptions of good planning. From planning as applied science in the 1960s to planning as sustainable development in the new millennium, each stage in the evolution of the profession has brought new goals and mandated new skills.

My service spans from chair of the Rutgers University Sustainability Committee to chair of my town’s Green Community Working Group. These activities reflect a personal commitment to values of sustainable development that also play out in my home life. The good news is that—provided one can find enough time to eat, love and sleep—there are many synergies across research, teaching, service, and personal efforts to advance sustainability.

UTA KROGMANN, PH.D.
My upbringing and my work on waste issues contributed to my interest in sustainability. Part of the World War II generation, my parents are very careful with resources. After the war, my mother did not have enough to eat and went to bed hungry. As a result, my parents taught us to be frugal and not to throw food away. Growing up, I was outdoors at least half a day each weekend and during school vacations. I learned about the beauty and the vulnerability of our natural environment.

I took five years of ancient Greek. One of Socrates’ most important ideas taught me “the necessity of doing what one thinks is right even in the face of universal opposition, and the need to pursue knowledge even when opposed.”

My background and my academic strengths in math and science contributed to my interest in environmental science and engineering. Once working in environmental engineering, I noticed that if we just focus on one medium (e.g. water) we might just move the pollution to another. This sparked my interest in a systems view of environmental or sustainability issues.

JENNIFER SENICK
The situation in which I was raised made me conscious of certain tenets of sustainability. This includes being careful with resources and reusing them to the greatest extent possible. My mother still hangs wet paper towels to dry and my father still washes dishes like an Israeli, having spent many years there. (For those unfamiliar with this technique, the takeaway is that it conserves water.)

I had been living in a fishing village of 700 people in Portland, Maine, a small city comprised of old brick buildings with highly walkable streets on the waterfront. My impression of people there, whether indigenous or transplanted, is that they tend to live close to and feel affinity with the land. So there I was, driving from my job in Piscataway on a suburban office campus to my parents’ home in a town renowned for its strip malls. That’s when I had that “ah ha” moment—I remember thinking, “there is a better way.”

My interest in green building developed as an outgrowth of employment with an urban planning firm. Why not construct high performing buildings as a complement to good land use planning?

So, through my work with various organizations and communities from the U.S. Green Building Council to the Highland Park Redevelopment Agency, everyday is about advancing the state of green building research to better comprehend environmental, social and economic impacts of the built environment to improve upon these outcomes.