Thank you to everyone who joined us last year for the 7th Annual Commonwealth Campuses Sustainability Forums at Penn State Shenango and Penn State Schuylkill. For 2025, we are pausing our usual format and instead offering a CWC Sustainability Retreat and Working Session at Penn State Shaver’s Creek on May 22, 2025. This retreat will offer an opportunity to recharge and to rebuild community across our campuses. At the same time, it will be a working session focused on the goal of launching four regional CWC sustainability councils that provide support to individual campuses and help coordinate efforts across the system.

This will be our eighth year gathering from across the entire Penn State system for inspiration, community-building, and helping each other toward our sustainability strategic goals and visions. This year’s theme, “Taking a New Path Forward” recognizes that we all are motivated by shared visions of a more sustainable future, but the uncertainties of the present demand new structures to help support our future work at Penn State.

The tentative agenda for this year’s retreat is:

• 8:00-8:30 a.m.   Continental Breakfast and Registration
• 8:30-9:15 a.m.    Welcome from Shaver’s Creek and Group-Building Exercise
• 9:15-11:30 a.m.   Visioning for What Regional Sustainability Councils Could Do
• 11:30 a.m.-noon  State of Sustainability at Penn State
• 12:00-1:15 p.m.   Lunch and exploring Shaver’s Creek
• 1:15-3:00 p.m.     Setting up the Structure of the Regional Sustainability Councils
• 3:00 p.m.             Adjournment with snacks for the road

Registration is now open until Friday, April 25, at 5 p.m. Registration is initially limited to two representatives per campus, although additional alternates can apply and we’ll open up space if available after hearing from all the campuses. Registration is by campus, so contact your CWC sustainability council, committee, or Green Team to coordinate registrants.

To date, our spring forums have been graciously hosted by:

• 2024 — Penn State Shenango and Penn State Schuylkill
• 2023 — Penn State DuBois and Penn State Hazleton
• 2022 — Penn State Greater Allegheny and Penn State Harrisburg
• 2021 — Penn State Behrend and Penn State Wilkes-Barre (virtually)
• 2020 — Penn State New Kensington and Penn State Berks (virtually)
• 2019 — Penn State Beaver, Penn State York, and Penn State Scranton
• 2018 — Penn State Greater Allegheny, Penn State Great Valley, and Penn State Hazleton

Our 2023 fall working sessions were hosted by Penn State Wilkes-Barre, Penn State Great Valley, Penn State York, and Penn State New Kensington.