In my last post I announced the great news that the Higher Education Sustainability Act (HESA) was reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Congressmen Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rick Boucher (D-PA), and David Wu (D-OR). In this post I’ll let you know how you can help. But first a brief review:

HESA (HR 3637) amends the Higher Education Act to authorize a new $50 million grant program at the Department of Education that will annually support between 25 and 200 sustainability projects by individual higher education institutions and higher education consortia/associations. Funds can be used to establish multidisciplinary sustainability education, research, and outreach programs; and to conduct energy management, green building and purchasing, waste and toxics management, transportation, and related sustainability initiatives.

This is the first federal grant-making program specifically for sustainability in higher education; and if fully funded, HESA is strategically designed to provide the needed funds to tip the higher education system towards sustainability.

HESA has a very good chance of passing - if higher education institutions and associations clearly voice their support for the bill to Congress. The Campaign for Environmental Literacy is coordinating a new campaign to help with this – check their web site for updates on the campaign, or click here to download a full briefing on HESA. They would greatly appreciate your help with passing this important new higher education bill.

While support from all members of Congress will be helpful in passing HESA, it is particularly critical to enlist the support of these key Representatives:

• George Miller (D-CA-7^th District)
• Dale Kildee (D-MI-5)
• John F. Tierney (D-MA-6)
• Timothy H. Bishop (D-NY-1)
• “Buck” McKeon (R-CA-25)
• Thomas E. Petri (R-WI-6)
• Michael N. Castle (R-DE-At Large)
• Judy Biggert (R-IL-13)
• Ric Keller (R-FL-8)
• Todd Russell Platts (R-PA-19)
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-5)
• John R. “Randy” Kuhl, Jr. (R-NY-29)

And these key Senators:

• Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
• Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
• Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
• Patty Murray (D-WA)
• Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
• Barack Obama (D-IL)
• Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
• Michael B. Enzi (R-WY)
• Judd Gregg (R-NH)
• Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
• Wayne Allard (R-CO)

Your help is vital (especially if you are in one of the above states/districts). You can:

1. Convince your institution to co-sign a letter of support (click for a copy) for HESA from the higher education community. Then, send Jim Elder (below) an email stating that your institution wishes to endorse HESA and to co-sign the HESA support letter. CEL currently plans to submit this letter by October 19.

2. If you are part of a higher education institution or corporation, persuade your leadership to send letters to your Members of Congress asking them to co-sponsor HESA (click for a sample letter) as soon as possible. Please insure a copy is sent to CEL so they can follow up.

3. If your organization is an association of member institutions, please broadly circulate an action alert to your members to ask them to enlist their own institutions in these three actions. (Feel free to use this email text as a model.)

4. Contact CEL to join an email list to be kept updated on progress and other ways to help.

If you need help with any of the above, please contact James L. Elder, Director, The Campaign for Environmental Literacy, Manchester, MA, Elder@FundEE.org, 978-526-7768(office), 978-526-9968(fax), 978-609-2892(cell)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Government & Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.