Abstract
While higher education institutions play a role in regional sustainability transitions, community–university partnerships for sustainability may be underdeveloped and fraught. Moreover, the specific role of students in building and strengthening those partnerships remains little explored. This research occurred in Laramie, Wyoming—the first community to resolve to pursue carbon neutrality in the top coal-producing state in the U.S.—amidst declining state revenue and absent any formal community–university sustainability partnership. Drawing on a community resilience framework and the social-theoretical construct of agency, we examined an informal, multi-year partnership developed through a project-based, community-engaged Campus Sustainability course at the University of Wyoming. Through a chronological sequence case study, we synthesized autoethnography, document analysis, and semi-structured interview methods involving community and university stakeholder and student participants. We found that students, rather than other university actors, played a vital bridging role in absence of a formal community–university sustainability partnership. They also served in a catalyzing role as change agents alongside community stakeholders, providing the potential to develop stronger community–university partnerships and advance sustainability transitions across other Wyoming communities. Findings suggest a need to keenly attend to power dynamics and whose agency is driving higher education institutions’ roles in regional sustainability transitions in specific contexts.
Highlights
Natural resource-dependent communities in the Mountain West region of the UnitedStates (U.S.) are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of the global climate crisis
We find that our investigation of the multi-year partnership that emerged through the Campus Sustainability course over time is a dynamic, processual contribution to sustainability transition research, for which other scholars have urged [7]
We found that students played a vital and catalyzing role in building and strengthening informal community–university partnerships in support of a local climate action planning process
Summary
States (U.S.) are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of the global climate crisis These communities are experiencing, for example, increased drought and wildfire and interrelated impacts to their resource-based economies. U.S state of Wyoming, which is the top national producer of coal and a major producer of other fossil fuel resources, the recent economic crisis and downturn of these resources has amplified economic challenges. In response to those challenges, individual Wyoming communities are beginning to pursue greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon neutrality efforts. These efforts aim to mitigate climate change and to pursue energy efficiency, save money, and reduce reliance on diminishing state revenue [3]
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