Sustainability Calendar

The National Sustainability Society is thrilled to announce the full call for contributions to participate in the 3rd Annual Conference, co-hosted by Colorado State University's School for Global Environmental Sustainability and the CSU Climate Hub at Spur (Denver, CO), August 17-19th. The theme of this year's conference is Courage, Credibility, and Collective Action in Sustainability.  They encourage speakers to thoughtfully integrate these ideas into their submissions. They're looking for: · individual oral presentations, ignite talks, and posters · individual presentations to pre-accepted symposia · session contributions (symposia and roundtables) · workshop proposals. Who should submit? Industry and public sector professionals, community leaders, researchers, students, and anyone doing sustainability research and application are welcome to submit. When is the deadline? March 31st Check out the detailed guidelines, and The National Sustainability Society with any questions: https://www.thenss.org/2026conferencehome/2026guidelines

Earth Month will begin on April 1. In honor of the month of celebration, the Word of Life Mural will be illuminated green. If you're planning an event that coincides with Earth Month, let us know! We can share and help promote your event. Submit your event here

This event is currently waitlisted. You may continue to register in the event a space becomes available. Have you ever wondered what is inside the East Power Plant on campus? You’re in luck! The Utilities team will be providing a tour of the facility to learn about how campus is powered, the history of the plant, and some of the renewable energy projects that Notre Dame has committed to. Be prepared to wear comfortable clothes and closed-toed shoes to walk in. A helmet, eye, and ear protection will be provided to you upon arrival. Space is limited to 10 participants, don't wait to sign up! Those who are waitlisted will be notified via email. Register today

The 2026 Notre Dame Student Peace Conference, sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs, is taking place April 10-11, 2026.  All events will take place in person at the University of Notre Dame. This year’s conference will be free, but we do require pre-registration. Information about the call for submissions, keynote speaker, and session schedule will be announced very soon. Please check back frequently at the Kroc Institute's website for more details. The Notre Dame Student Peace Conference is an annual academic conference organized by peace studies undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame to make space for meaningful academic and professional dialogue on peacebuilding, justice, and conflict transformation.

Kathleen Segerson, University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, will join the Notre Dame community for a lecture examining a central paradox of environmental policy. Despite growing recognition that human well-being depends fundamentally on the services provided by nature, ineffective government policies often leave individuals and firms with little incentive to protect or restore the environment. This is especially true when environmental degradation or resource exploitation offers short-term economic gains. Professor Segerson's  research focuses on the incentive effects of alternative environmental and conservation policies, with applications to groundwater contamination, hazardous waste management, land use regulation, climate change, agricultural pollution, and protection of marine species. Dr. Segerson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, and a fellow at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in Stockholm. Notre Dame Seminars on Sustainability Series is a signature lecture series organized by the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative that brings global sustainability leaders and world-class scholars to campus for knowledge sharing and engagement with the Notre Dame community. About Just Transformations to Sustainability As sustainability challenges intensify, their cascading effects on food, energy, water, and infrastructure increasingly threaten the well-being and dignity of people worldwide. Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative is the University’s far-reaching response to these urgent threats. Inspired by Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), the Initiative brings together interdisciplinary scholars, dedicated students, and action partners from around the world to advance transformative solutions for a more just and sustainable future. Originally published at strategicframework.nd.edu.

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

James Balog (American, b. 1952), Greenland Ice Sheet, 14 July 2008, Bubbles of Ancient Air, Possibly 15,000 Years Old, Are Released as the Ice Sheet Melts from ICE: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers, 2008, Digital pigment print. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame. Humana Foundation Endowment, 2017.055What does art tell us about the future of our water alongside climate change? This Earth Month, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is opening their private storage to share a curated selection of water-centric artworks that aren't currently on display. After an up-close look at these specially selected works, Museum staff will guide us in a discussion to share our perspectives, questions, and ideas. Come for the art, stay for the dialogue, and leave with a deeper connection to the element that sustains us all. Space is limited. Register today to save your spot! RSVP Here

Come hear from Prof. William Viestenz explore the hidden social, political, and environmental ramifications of the ongoing "infrastructural turn" in recent cultural productions! Following his presentation there will be an open discussion. So come with questions! This paper argues that recent Catalan and Galician cultural production has made ‘visible’ the infrastructural turn that has emerged of late in literary studies following two decades of focused attention in the social sciences. Indeed, infrastructure is a particularly profitable vehicle for discussing what normally fades into the landscape to such an extent that it practically becomes unseen: though highways, canals, reservoirs, and railways surround everyday life and indeed make socialization, commerce, and global modernity possible, they are banal to the point of merging with the natural landscape, only garnering attention when they cease functioning. Such hiddenness in plain sight attends etymologically to the term itself: these are structures that “lie below”, at an infra-level, atop of which “real” life courses and unfurls. This paper proposes that Maica Rafecas’s El setembre i la nit (2021), Rodrigo Sorgoyen’s As bestas (2022), and Carla Simón’s Alcarràs (2022) each confirm Britton-Purdy’s assertion that human beings are an “infrastructure species”: anthropotechnic creatures who fashion the world through networked structures, which in turn condition the horizons of possibility for politics, the social, and humanity’s orientation towards non-human life and objects. In short, infrastructure produces the material and political worlds that determine what type of species the human being constitutes. In the works listed above, competing ecological, economic, and cultural demands over the technosphere bring to light how the infrastructure turn in Iberian Studies has the potential to suture together a host of other emerging themes in the field: tourism, environmental studies, object-oriented analysis, and returns to the rural.  Originally published at environmentalhumanities.nd.edu.

The 2026 Notre Dame Student Peace Conference, sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs, is taking place April 10-11, 2026.  All events will take place in person at the University of Notre Dame. This year’s conference will be free, but we do require pre-registration. Information about the call for submissions, keynote speaker, and session schedule will be announced very soon. Please check back frequently at the Kroc Institute's website for more details. The Notre Dame Student Peace Conference is an annual academic conference organized by peace studies undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame to make space for meaningful academic and professional dialogue on peacebuilding, justice, and conflict transformation.

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

On April 16, join the Notre Dame Sustainability team for a walk around Saint Mary's Lake to pick up trash and help keep our campus ecosystem litter-free! In previous litter pick-ups, we've found interesting items like TVs and bowling balls! Trash grabbers, gloves, bags, and snacks will be provided. Together, we can care for our common home! There is no limit on the number of participants. The more folks in attendance, the better! Registration is not required, but encouraged, so that we may prepare materials.  Register today

Jianguo "Jack" Liu, the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University, and founding director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, will join the Notre Dame community to discuss how global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, deterioration of ecosystem services, environmental injustice, are increasingly shaped by human–nature interactions among places. This seminar introduces the metacoupling framework, which integrates human–nature interactions within and across adjacent and distant places. It also presents the framework’s applications to address sustainability challenges worldwide.  Professor Liu is a pioneer in systems integration for global sustainability. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Notre Dame Seminars on Sustainability Series is a signature lecture series organized by the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative that brings global sustainability leaders and world-class scholars to campus for knowledge sharing and engagement with the Notre Dame community. About Just Transformations to Sustainability As sustainability challenges intensify, their cascading effects on food, energy, water, and infrastructure increasingly threaten the well-being and dignity of people worldwide. Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative is the University’s far-reaching response to these urgent threats. Inspired by Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), the Initiative brings together interdisciplinary scholars, dedicated students, and action partners from around the world to advance transformative solutions for a more just and sustainable future. Originally published at strategicframework.nd.edu.

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

Join us for an evening to celebrate sustainability at Notre Dame, highlighting a decade of progress since our 2016 Sustainability Strategy! The formal portion of the event will begin at 4:30 pm, honoring internal and external campus partners, followed by remarks from University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., who served on the Sustainability Strategy Standing Committee until his presidential appointment began in June 2024. Food and drinks will be provided. Anyone over the age of 21 should be ready to present photo ID to consume alcohol. Reception: 4:00PM - 7:00PMRemarks: 4:30PM - 5:00PM**If you downloaded this event to your Google Calendar, check back to confirm the most up-to-date information by visiting green.nd.edu/events.

At 68,900 square feet, the Joyce Center is home to the largest green roof in Indiana. This green roof provides environmental benefits such as increasing the building's energy efficiency, reducing noise pollution, improving air quality, and managing stormwater. On September 12, we're taking a birds-eye view of the green roof above the Joyce! Note: Stairs are required to access the roof, and there is no elevator. Because of this, participants with mobility limitations may not be able to attend. Registration is required. Space is limited to 10 people per session. Register today

Katharine Suding, a University of Colorado Boulder distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will present April 24 on ecology evolution behavior. Check back closer to the event for more information on this seminar. Notre Dame Seminars on Sustainability Series is a signature lecture series organized by the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative that brings global sustainability leaders and world-class scholars to campus for knowledge sharing and engagement with the Notre Dame community. About Just Transformations to Sustainability As sustainability challenges intensify, their cascading effects on food, energy, water, and infrastructure increasingly threaten the well-being and dignity of people worldwide. Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative is the University’s far-reaching response to these urgent threats. Inspired by Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), the Initiative brings together interdisciplinary scholars, dedicated students, and action partners from around the world to advance transformative solutions for a more just and sustainable future. Originally published at strategicframework.nd.edu.

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today

Join Notre Dame Sustainability for a walk around campus to experience the beauty of Notre Dame. Participants will learn about some of the sustainability initiatives and investments happening at the University that may otherwise go unseen! Only 20 spots are available, so don't wait to sign up! This event is open to the public and will be weather permitting. Please be prepared to wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather. Register today