Shrivastava to step down as director of Sustainability Institute

Paul Shrivastava, Penn State’s first chief sustainability officer (CSO) and director of the Sustainability Institute (SI), will step out of his current position starting July 1, and return to research and teaching on the faculty of the Department of Management and Organization, in the Smeal College of Business.  Shrivastava assumed the role of CSO at Penn State in July 2017, after serving as the executive director of Future Earth, an international consortium launched by the United Nations and International Science Council in 2014. 

After administratively leading sustainability efforts at Penn State for five years, Shrivastava is looking forward to continuing his research on transdisciplinary sustainability sciences with colleagues at Penn State, and the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan. He will also engage in sustainability policy action work with the Club of Rome. He will continue to advance sustainability education through courses at the Smeal College of Business and with the UNESCO Chair on Arts and Science for Implementing the SDGs at Institut Commercial de Nancy in Nancy, France. 

Shrivastava’s support for Penn State’s strategic planning process helped to refresh the “Ensuring a Sustainable Future” foundation of the University.  It guided University strategic planning into incorporating over 500 sustainability action items in its current strategic plan.  During his tenure as the CSO/director of the Sustainability Institute, the University improved its rating from silver to gold in the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) program. In 2021, the Times Higher Educations Impact Rankings listed Penn State among the top four United States’ universities and the top 34 in the world.    

Over the past five years, Penn State adopted a number of sustainability innovations including: 

• Introduced the U.N. Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for sustainability that allows faculty, staff and students to make connections between their individual interests and the work of making the university, their communities and lives more sustainable. 
• Launched the Sustainability Spotlight, an annual event highlighting progress and raising the visibility of sustainability at Penn State.
• Decarbonized 25% of all energy use at the University, by signing a power purchase agreement with LightSource BP for a 70-megawatt solar power plant in 2019.  
• Initiated the formation of Sustainability Councils within colleges, campuses and administrative units as a comprehensive approach to institutionalizing sustainability within Penn State’s policies, procedures and practices across the University.  
• Strengthened the sustainability community across the Commonwealth Campuses by creating opportunities for campus leaders to share solutions and success stories via webinars and the annual Commonwealth Campus Sustainability Forums.  
• Gift of $2 million to the Keiko Miwa Ross Student Farm at Penn State and expansion of the farm to triple its size in a permanent location. 

“Under Paul’s leadership, Penn State has moved sustainability into the mainstream, advancing our mission, transforming our campuses and building partnerships across the commonwealth and around the globe. We are grateful for his service and will benefit from his impact for decades to come,” said Tom Richard, professor of agricultural and biological engineering and director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment.

Shrivastava served on the President’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Task Force, an outgrowth of the Penn State Carbon Neutral group that was formed under his leadership to explore pathways to achieve carbon neutrality. The University has created a climate consortium to explore its role in combatting climate change, led by Erica Smithwick. The work of the task force continues and positions Penn State to be a climate leader with its extensive assets in climate research and a history of carbon emissions reductions that goes back two decades.  

Shrivastava worked closely with several college leadership teams to embed sustainability into their respective programs. He plans to support efforts in the Smeal College of Business' Center for the Business of Sustainability, directed by Erik Foley-Defiore.  

“We are thankful to Paul for his passion for sustainability and all that he has done to support our students, faculty and staff. The work he and his team have done to support sustainability in the F&B units is appreciated,” said Sara Thorndike, senior vice president for Finance & Business/treasurer.

The University will launch a search for a new chief sustainability officer and director of the Sustainability Institute. Lara B. Fowler, assistant director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment and a senior lecturer at Penn State Law at University Park campus, has been named the interim director of the Sustainability Institute and University chief sustainability officer, effective July 1.