University of Oregon
IN-1: Innovation 1

The Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) is a cross-disciplinary effort that integrates research, education, service, and public outreach around issues of sustainable city design. SCI works at a variety of scales, from regions to individual buildings actively seeking, through multiple perspectives and disciplines, solutions to sustainable city design problems. SCI synthesizes existing faculty research work under a single theme, serves as a catalyst for expanded research and teaching, and brings this expertise to scholars, funders, project partners, and policy makers. SCI programs focus on education, outreach, and service. Current SCI programs include Sustainable City Year and Experts-In-Residence. The Sustainable City Year (SCY) is a partnership between SCI and one city in Oregon per academic year in which a number of courses from across the University focus on assisting that city with its sustainability goals and projects. The Sustainable City Year faculty and students work with the partner city through a variety of studio projects and service learning programs. In the 2009-2010 academic year, 350 students from 19 courses across five UO departments contributed over 60,000 hours of service learning to the Sustainable City Year in Gresham, Oregon. SCI is a national leader in what it does. Last August, the NY Times described SCI as “perhaps the most comprehensive effort by a U.S. university to infuse sustainability into its curricula and community outreach.”