If You Want People to Change, the University Must Go First | Dr. Julie Newman, MIT

Thank you for asking me about my journey, because I think it is quite unique. I have been interested in the environment and sustainability since middle school, if not even before that.

Like many kids at that age, I was quite interested in marine biology. I really followed my passion through high school.

I became a certified scuba diver when I was maybe 15. I was really interested in what lived below the surface.

Then I went to the University of Michigan, very purposely, because it had a renowned school of natural resources.

And there I found a mentor. I think that is one of the keys, finding mentors or guides along the way.

He was a systems thinker. He looked at environmental issues through the lens of culture, economics, ecology and equity. He was really looking at the holistic picture.

His focus at the time was rivers, and the role rivers play in communities and watersheds. That was very formative for me.

I was still interested in what lay below in the oceans. But I became much more interested in systemic approaches to solving environmental challenges.

I went on to the Peace Corps in Guatemala. There I was directly exposed to challenges ranging from deforestation to poverty and women’s issues.

Then I came back to study sustainable development in the mid 1990s. It was still very difficult to study sustainable development, believe it or not. We were just coming out of the Rio Earth Summit era.

In grad school I ended up getting two degrees, bridging biology and a wonderful environmental policy programme at Tufts University.

I went back to my interest in oceans and studied fisheries. I embedded myself in a small Massachusetts community that depended on fishing.

It was watching the decline of its fisheries. I looked at the role of science, policy and regulation, and the impact on the community’s economy and culture.

The men went out and fished and the women stayed home. There was so much embedded in that small community.

I tried to bring this back to my own university, where it was actually challenging to work across faculties.

While I was in grad school I also worked for a group called University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. There I met my next mentor, Tom Kelly.

At that time people were just starting to ask what role universities should play in advancing sustainable development. So my timing was exquisite. I worked with Tom for two years, engaging universities.

At the end of those two years, he was hired to start the first office of sustainability in the United States, at the University of New Hampshire. I went with him.

I thought I would just help him get started, because we worked so well together. I stayed seven years and got a PhD.

In essence I was apprenticed while also studying. That was my dream, to do both, because I am an immersive person. I like to learn and do at the same time.

Now that I am saying it for the first time in real time, I think that is my approach to everything.

After finishing my PhD and giving seven years to UNH, I went on to found the Office of Sustainability at Yale. That was such a tremendous experience, still early in the sustainability days.

Then I was brought to MIT to launch our Office of Sustainability here.

In the meantime I have built networks throughout the United States, and helped launch a global network as well.

To be honest, so much of what keeps me in this field is the people. I am surrounded by people who want to solve problems and build partnerships.

I really see myself as a bridge in all of this, but with great humility, because I am learning every day.

Oh, so much. And I am still connected to my community in Guatemala.

Almost 30 years later, they are like family. In fact, I was just looking at tickets this week.

There is a part of me there. The way things work in the US is different, as we know.

Yes. We want to build bridges and connect with people. It is the same.

Maybe one piece I will add, because it leads into our discussion. I came out of my PhD programme with a burning question that I have never fully satisfied, and I am still working on it.

What organisational structure and behaviour responds to, alters, informs and influences the climate and sustainability trajectory we are on?

That is what I am constantly trying to understand. It is the intersection between the regulatory environment, the built environment, human behaviour, economics and culture.

What can we just take care of behind the scenes, because individuals do not want to change? And what do we need individuals to do?

It is navigating that tension and those opportunities. I think things do have to happen systemically.

In fact, when I run off from this today, we are holding a decarbonisation forum to frame our own work at MIT.

I am bringing in the person responsible for the energy transition for the state of Massachusetts, and the person responsible for getting to zero for the city of Cambridge. And myself, with my team nearby.

We have to work across these scales. We cannot decarbonise as an organisation, as a city and as a state independently. It is a complete intersection across them.

So I am now applying my learning and bringing it to the forefront of our work at MIT.

Well, of course. I get to be the test bed to see how those interactions work.

As I understand your journey, relationship building has been one of your strengths too. It helps you make these systemic changes. It is all about the people.

Going back to what I was just saying, one of my early lessons was this. It was hard to ask people at a university to do something differently if the university itself was not doing it.

Back in the days before laptops, people were asked to go and turn off their desktop computers.

And some people would turn around and say, I will turn off my desktop computer, but this university has got to turn all the lights off at night.

What is the value of me turning off my computer if all the lights of the institution are left on all night long?

That was a totally fair question, because the desktop was only small. That was 20 years ago, in desktop times. Now we are in data centre times, so that is going to be a different challenge.

So how do you balance it? What does the university, or the institute, or the college, have to do at the systemic level?

It has to say, this is what we are committing to. We are going to create some policies around this. We are going to make some investments in this, and our standards will reflect this.

And then, you as an individual, this is what we need you to do while you are on campus.

There are lots of examples across all of our universities. Fast forward 25 years, and many of us are trying to figure out how to decarbonise the institute.

Sorry, I use the term institute at MIT. For your audience, what I mean is university. MIT is an institute by trade, but it can apply to a college, a university or a school.

So I think it is really important that if you are asking people to do something, the university is doing it as well.

A great example at MIT is this. If we are asking people to leave their car at home, we are not saying, figure that out on your own.

Many years ago we said, listen, we do need to reduce single occupancy vehicles on campus. Congestion had increased, and it is very expensive to build parking.

And we have very good access to trains and buses. I am not going to say excellent, because Boston public transport has to improve.

This is also a great example of research and operations coming together. Uniquely at MIT, we have the Transit Lab.

They were studying this and wanted to look at behaviour. What would encourage people at a university to leave their car at home? Why were people driving?

Many people, like myself, have a kid they have to bring to and from school. That is hard to manage on public transport.

Other people were doing elderly care, or living in places with no public transport.

So the researchers said, let’s focus on the area where we have great public transport in and out of Cambridge. Then let’s look at the zip codes where the MIT community lives, particularly staff and faculty.

And lo and behold, a great majority of people live within this range. Only a handful live further out. So the strategy could focus on this area.

Then they asked, what would it cost to give free public transport to everybody who works at MIT, staff and faculty, as an incentive to use it? They did a long term investment analysis.

They piloted it, and lo and behold, people left their cars at home, because parking was expensive.

They also shifted the whole strategy. Rather than becoming a parker, because we all tend to identify that way, why not become a flexible traveller?

One day you could park, and pay for that one day, as opposed to buying a parking pass for a year, which was the old way.

Another day you could say, I have flexibility today, so I am going to take the train.

Within a couple of years, it actually reduced single occupancy vehicles coming to campus by, I think, 15 percent within two years.

Yes. And that helps us with future costs, when we project how much parking will be needed five, 10, 15 or 20 years down the line. Because of that reduction, it stayed.

It was, I want to say, 2018. It was right before COVID. I think we were two years in when COVID started.

And then of course nobody came to campus, and nobody used public transport. We had to regain trust in public transport, because there was a lot of fear from a public health standpoint.

But what is interesting now is that we have shifted to a hybrid system. In Cambridge, at least, you do not have to go to campus five days a week.

It is like an equation. Hybrid work plus free access to public transport has reduced demand tremendously.

Well, the incentive is that you have free public transport. It is all free.

In your MIT ID there is a CharlieCard chip. You can go on and off the train and the bus for free with that chip. That is your incentive.

And you are disincentivised from driving, because you have to pay for parking daily. That will not translate to every place. But Cambridge is quite expensive.

I really grapple with that. Of course we have to act quickly, but we need to act super strategically.

This transportation example is actually an example of acting pretty quickly. It took a number of years to get it up and running, but it has already been going for about six years.

Boston is investing a lot of money in the public transport system. But we did not wait for the T and the bus system to be perfect. We knew it existed.

We did a lot of surveys and had a lot of people who were willing to take it. And it demonstrated that MIT was willing to invest in our own staff and faculty, giving them access to public transport.

We also recognised that there are days when a line might be down. So you are not penalised. You just drive that day.

By providing that flexibility, we balance it with the urgency. Yes, we are urgent about reducing emissions.

That is where we are working with the city and with the state. We are working out what can happen rapidly at the grid level, and how we transform our 100 year old legacy infrastructure so we can decarbonise it.

One area where I think we have been able to act relatively quickly is building design and building design standards.

When I arrived, there were one or two LEED buildings on campus. LEED is the US standard for sustainable, energy efficient buildings.

We are up to over 25, I think 27, in a ten year period.

It is not the only solution. But in the scheme of climate change, that is a pretty rapid shift. Any future renovations and buildings must now respond to these standards.

That is also a matter of internal capacity building. I think our internal planning and capital construction team pivoted gracefully, and we have some wonderful buildings on campus.

On the energy front, a lot of people are looking for dual strategies. I will speak for MIT, but I hear the same from colleagues.

We all know it is going to take time to shift from fossil fuels to renewable, zero carbon options. And we have to stay resilient, to make sure we have electricity, heat and water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I say that from a US point of view, and I am very aware of it. My friends in Guatemala only have water a couple of hours a day.

But a US research institute is looking for a resilient strategy that runs around the clock. So there is no switch we can just flip.

We have a lot of underground systems that need to be shifted from steam to hot water. That is going to take from now through 2050.

On the urgent front, MIT said a number of years ago, let’s work out how to leverage our financial standing. Let’s make sure we are investing in large scale renewable energy in the United States.

We have built a consortium of other universities, cities and healthcare partners throughout the Boston area.

The question was, how do we reduce a million metric tons of emissions together in the short term, by 2026?

Everybody hopped on board. It is a short term way to come together and leverage investment in large scale wind and solar in the US.

At the same time, we are working on the ground in a dense urban environment to reduce emissions at each of our organisations, in Cambridge, Boston and the Commonwealth.

Exactly. There are expectations, but there are also things that you cannot just change overnight. That brings a lot of complexity.

It is a great question. I am going to answer it in three ways.

First, from the campus perspective. The unique platform we launched our work on looks at the scales of impact.

From the very start we asked, how do you consider sustainability and climate impact across the role of the individual, the organisation and the campus? That is where we started.

Then to the city, the state, the nation and the globe. On a daily basis we move through those scales in our dialogue. That is part one.

Part two is building a global network of universities, so there is ongoing exchange.

We work with universities throughout the world, sharing best practices and realising how much we have in common. We encourage universities to build offices and create commitments.

Just this week I was on a call with representatives of 32 universities from Japan.

And I have worked globally with the International Sustainable Campus Network for, I think, 17 years. We just met again to renew those commitments, and we are all focused on decarbonisation.

So one major way is to share, lead and demonstrate as a campus, as a test bed, what is possible. Share our wins, but share our failures too. Be very honest about what is working and what is not.

We also teach classes, and MIT has a very global student body.

And starting next week, I am launching a platform called Scaling Sustainability in Higher Education. I will host international scholars in my office to learn from what we are doing, and to teach us what they are doing. Then they go back and share it.

Third, MIT has always worked globally. That is its platform. It thinks about its impact on the world, as did Yale.

Most recently, MIT launched the Climate Project, with, I believe, six missions.

They range from a policy mission to empowering marginalised communities, to cities, food, and air and atmosphere. There is also a wild card mission looking at cutting edge technologies.

Underlying it all is building frontier projects that will have an impact, and thinking about global implications with global partners.

I guess there is a fourth one. In a meeting yesterday, people were talking about spinoffs coming out of MIT that have global implications too.

So there is not one answer to your question. It is across these four strategies. It is all hands on deck, and all engines are going.

Oh, cool.

You know, something I am very curious about, and I sense you are too, with your podcast and the way you work, is replication.

I went to Climate Week NYC. I spent a day with an industry group called Climate Group, doing amazing work with industry.

Then I went to an event for the Earthshot Prize, doing work with innovators and philanthropists.

The great news is that there is a lot of crossover. There is zero bad news. I was totally inspired by the work.

But so many things happening are the same. My curiosity, and my hope for my own contribution, is how we might do a better job of optimising.

All egos at the door, all hands on deck. Where are we replicating, and where can we learn from each other? I do not know how to solve that yet.

That is part of my interest in the university system, embedded in the city and the state, like we are demonstrating today. There is not one global answer. You have to bring it down to the regulatory context.

I spent some time at Oxford back in March. They are talking about infrastructure that is 700 years old. Here we are asking what to do with 100 year old infrastructure.

They have buildings that are 700 years old that they want to keep, because of the cultural heritage.

That shows we can all ask the same questions. They are talking about geothermal just like we are. They are looking at building materials just like we are. But they need to deal with heritage, so their answers will be different.

She is amazing. You tell her I said hello. They are doing remarkable work there, with a different set of challenges, and yet so much in common.

That is the connector example again. Many of us in this role around the world have got to know each other. And if we do not know each other, it takes one call to feel like we have known each other for a long time.

I felt that with you right away as well. It is so important to figure out how to build trust. I think that is at the heart of these solutions.

There is technology, and then there is trust building and a willingness to find the best ways of communicating and sharing. Technology is not going to do it alone.

We need amazing innovations, and I rely on my colleagues who know how to design new engineering strategies and models. But we have to show that we have complementary skill sets, between the innovative climate tech and the rest.

To me, it is all about inquiry and design. It is all about asking questions.

It is not coming in and saying, this is what we are doing at MIT, so this is what you should do. That is so far from the way I work.

It is all about relationship building and finding common ground. There are things we can all have in common, even when we are culturally different.

Over the years I have developed a strategic sustainability leadership model that I think relates to wherever you are.

It starts with the driving questions. My driving question, which I shared with you earlier, might be different from the one in Mumbai.

So I would ask, what is your underlying driving question? Then I can understand your lens on how to solve for it in your own culture. That is inquiry and design. You go into it with curiosity, in order to frame the challenges.

I can quickly run through it as an example. I think about the scientific models that inform our thinking. The implications for Mumbai are going to be different from Cambridge, so we would look at that together.

Then, what goals might you set? How do you plan across the scales I shared earlier, from your vantage point?

What are the city and university partnerships you have in Mumbai? What are the opportunities for collaboration?

And how do you hold yourselves accountable? You never want to set goals that you cannot hold yourself to.

There is a lot of focus right now in the US on centring climate equity and justice. This may be different in India, and I would love to learn about that in a future discussion.

It means looking at who has been left out or harmed along the way.

And then of course we have to implement, and make sure it is brought into decision making throughout.

Those are the seven steps. They are not linear, as such. I check myself against them throughout.

I love that question, because that is how I came into this myself.

I have seen a proliferation of programmes. In fact, a friend just sent me something, because they knew my frustration at trying to study this when I did my master’s degree.

The place I went now has a master’s that is among the top ten for sustainability. So keep in mind, universities can evolve.

There are a variety of ways. I think it means making sure sustainability is integrated into coursework throughout the university, regardless of your major.

There are many examples of that. We are taking stock at MIT right now, for a national rating system, to understand how courses across the institute integrate sustainability and climate skills and knowledge.

So coursework, obviously, and degrees. There are more and more universities throughout the world where you can get degrees in this.

But it does not mean you need to go and become a sustainability major. That is not it.

It is understanding that if you are going to become an architect, sustainable design is part of it.

If you are going into finance, you are understanding the implications of ESG, environmental and social investment.

If you are going into engineering, you have sustainability and climate integrated into your learning.

And the humanities. Think about the state of the world right now. The humanities have to be embedded too, in art, in how we think about literature, and in how we look back at history and project forward.

I could go on. But I think it is going to be that combination of classes and intersection with degrees, because this is a multidisciplinary challenge.

There will be people who go into the field directly, like myself. But it is going to have to be an all hands on deck approach, where all majors are exposed to these challenges.

Think about the political and regulatory environment, about people in parliament and people on town councils. They are making decisions that affect our lives on a daily basis.

Then think about the people managing Amazon and Microsoft. They are actively engaged in sustainability. But they are leaving us with big challenges around consumption and the circular economy.

So we have some challenges on our hands, and universities have to continue to step up. We have to think about how to educate, and we have to demonstrate.

We have to create student mentorships, student research and student opportunities to travel, so they can see how this is playing out in the world.

I feel proud to be in higher education. I have purposely chosen it as my career path, because we can also intersect with the regulatory and the industry environment alike.

Well, I am indebted to the work your team is doing on a daily basis.

Continue to be connectors and bridge builders. Assume good.

Really try to demonstrate, and continue to inspire the people you are surrounded by. Help people build knowledge into action.

Help people really understand the data you are collecting and the implications it has for their own lives. And invite them in to join you.