SUBJECT:

UC San Diego’s Earth Month Celebration and Cool Campus Challenge

Are you up to the challenge? To celebrate Earth Month, we encourage all UC San Diego staff, faculty and students to participate in the UC system-wide Cool Campus Challenge April 1-26. This fun, collegial competition aims to engage the whole University of California community in the effort to make UC carbon neutral by 2025. It will take individual and collective action to achieve our goal.

We invite you to join the challenge by pledging to take simple steps at work and at home to lower your energy and water use, and reduce waste. When you join the Cool Campus Challenge, you will receive weekly emails with actions that you can take to lower your carbon emissions in classrooms, labs, offices, dining halls and dorms, homes, and when traveling. With each action that you take, you will earn points for our campus. When the four-week challenge ends, the campus with the most points will earn the “Coolest UC Campus” title. The top UC campus, team and individual will win prizes as well as the top UC San Diego point earners. Please take a moment to learn more and join the Cool Campus Challenge by registering at www.coolcampuschallenge.org.

Join UC San Diego Sustainability on Monday, April 1 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in Price Center Plaza to kick-off UC San Diego’s Earth Month and the Cool Campus Challenge. The event will feature games, prizes for signing up for the challenge, painting for the Annual Green Talks Art Contest and snacks.

Additional UC San Diego Earth Month events include:
- Green Labs Fair, April 4, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
- Earth Plaza Palooza, the annual Sustainability Fair, April 25, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
- Annual Arbor Day tree planting, April 26
- Fourth Annual Green Talks Symposium, April 30, 4 – 6:30 p.m.

All events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. You can view the full events calendar at sustain.ucsd.edu/news/earth-month.html.

In order to allow employees the opportunity to participate in a UC San Diego Earth Month activity, one hour of administrative leave with pay has been approved. We encourage all managers and supervisors to allow employees to attend, as long as the absence does not infringe upon the performance of required job duties or patient care.

Sustainability plays an integral part in UC San Diego’s education, research and campus operations. To learn more about our ongoing efforts, visit sustain.ucsd.edu.

Pradeep K. Khosla Chancellor Gary C. Matthews Vice Chancellor – Resource Management and Planning