Most Likely to Succeed

When I traded New York City for Tempe, Arizona, in August 2001, I thought I was moving to a quiet desert town for graduate school. But Arizona State University, sitting in this suburb of Phoenix, was exploding in a maze of shimmering, freshly paved highways, heavily watered lawns struggling to stay green under the hot sun, and new buildings annexing desert land at a pace and on a scale I couldn't have imagined.

So five years after I graduated with a master's in fine arts and returned to Brooklyn, I was surprised to learn that my alma mater -- a university whose enrollment is expected to double over the next 15 years, in one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the United States -- was suddenly home to the country's first school of sustainability studies and was the only university to offer a Ph.D. in the subject. The ASU School of Sustainability opened its doors to students in January 2007, aiming to cultivate a new generation of scholars, researchers, and professionals versed in "the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, and social systems" and trained to "reconcile the planet's environmental needs with development needs over the long term, and avoid irreversible commitments that constrain future generations," in the words of the school's Web site.

During my two years in Tempe, both the school and the city seemed largely apolitical, absent of activism, and far more concerned with sports than sustainability. What possible role, I wondered, could such a place play in giving birth to Generation Green? I went back to find out.

At lunchtime on a bright March day, 16 graduate students and one faculty member gathered around a table in a newly renovated green building (which is awaiting official certification by the U.S. Green Building Council). Bill McKibben had been at the Phoenix public library the day before to speak on a panel devoted to the development of a green economy in Arizona, and the students were wondering what an old-school, hard-core environmentalist like McKibben would think about the subject in which they were earning degrees.

"He doesn't really care so much for the term ‘sustainability,' " said Benjamin Funke, the school's literal poster child, whose shaggy hair and sweet face appear on its pamphlets and other promotional materials. McKibben supports a shift from global to local economies to enrich communities and preserve the environment. Funke surmised that someone who questions big business and traditional capitalism would find "sustainable just kind of boring."

McKibben is very committed to the environment, Chuck Redman, the director of the program, responded. But, he added, "he's not as committed to economic success." The students nodded emphatically.

This first generation of students to concentrate on sustainability as its own discipline earn bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctorates and focus on what is commonly referred to around here as the triple bottom line, in which economic, social, and environmental concerns are weighed equally. Or as one student put it: "development today that actually makes it better for tomorrow."

The program's systematic approach to inculcating the ideology of sustainability is one that hasn't really been seen before. The Global Institute of Sustainability, which consists of the sustainability school and a research center, has assembled a board of trustees who could just as easily be on the board of the university's own well-connected and heavily endowed business school. The institute's board includes Curtis Frasier, an executive vice president at Royal Dutch Shell; Rob Walton, chairman of the board of Wal-Mart; Gary Dirks, president of BP China; and Julie Wrigley, the chewing gum heiress. The green architect William McDonough and David Butterfield, president of the Trust for Sustainable Development (a green development corporation that is currently building an 8,000-acre resort community in Baja, Mexico), sit on the board too. Notably missing: members of environmental advocacy groups.

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