University of Louisville
EN-10: Community Partnerships

The Partnership for a Green City is the first of its kind in the country and represents a collaborative effort to improve sustainability internally and in the community by four of Louisville's largest public entities: Louisville Metro Government, University of Louisville, the Jefferson County Public Schools and Jefferson Community & Technical College. It began with three partners in August 2004, as a major step toward overcoming challenges to Louisville's environmental practices. JCTC joined the Partnership in 2012. Together, the partner agencies employ over 30,000 people, enroll over 135,000 students, own more than 531 buildings with 30 million square feet of space, operate and maintain 7,000 fleet vehicles, and manage 25,135 acres of land in Louisville Metro, which is one-tenth of the land in the merged city-county. Through the coordination of efforts and cooperation, the Partnership has been able to realize real results that will have long-term impact on the health, education, and well-being of our citizens while improving and institutionalizing environmental practices within the organizations themselves.

Launching in the 2021-22 academic year, UofL developed a new partnership with the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) and Jefferson Community and Technical College (JCTC) to develop a dual credit program for SUST 101 Introduction to Sustainability. After aligning the content between JCPS, JCTC and UofL programs, this course is now offered for college credit through UofL to students at JCPS and JCTC, where the courses are taught by those institutions' own teachers. This not only gives stdents at other institutions access to Sustainability course content they would not otherwise have, it also establishes a pipeline of local students interested in studying sustainability at UofL. We are currently in conversation about growing the Dual Credit Program to include Bellarmine University, local Catholic Schools, and Simmons College (a local HBCU).