Among the many issues that the University has to face, one of them must be leading public debate about reducing our environmental footprint.

The University actually has a very strong reputation as a leader in Canada outside the institute: we are known for the innovative approach to educating the community about energy conservation and our environmental studies program is heralded as one of the most important in the country.

Recently we have engaged in retrofit of an entire building and over the last few years have engaged in coordinated programs to replace light bulbs with energy efficient bulbs, promote programs to reduce energy consumption and recycle and taken a systematic approach to reduce hydro and gas consumption through conservation, improvement of control systems across the campus and replacement of inefficient systems where possible.

But we can always do more and should do so.

The challenge of course is money. The University is so poorly funded by the provincial government that we continue to have significant budget challenges that have to be addressed.

The only way that we can move forward on this is together - but that, of course, is what Guelph can do so well. We have an extraordinary campus and work together to solve many problems - reducing our energy consumption should be one of these issues.

During the winter 2007 semester, I would like to engage the whole community in a discussion about how we can work together to implement change. Can we, for example, be even more coordinated in our efforts to "turn off" and "use less", can we focus our efforts on buildings where we can make a difference, and can we all think of ways of contributing to the reduction program?

I hope that many people will want to participate in the discussions and in action on this issue.