President Alison Byerly selected for campus sustainability (Re)cognition Award

Carleton President Alison Byerly has been selected to receive a 2025 Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (Re)cognition Award in the administrator category.

Created to honor the late St. Olaf professor Jim Farrell, these awards are meant to “recognize individuals who help us re-think and re-imagine what is possible as we seek to catalyze solutions to everyday issues,” according to the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (UMACS). Recipients display Farrell’s passion for enriching their campus and/or community sustainability efforts, inspiring others to consider the impact of their daily actions, and leading ongoing change.

Under President Byerly’s tenure, in just three years Carleton College has divested from fossil fuels, named sustainability an institutional strategic priority, and approved a Sustainable Futures Framework that advances widespread education transformation, student climate and environmental justice leadership, and continued leadership in emissions reductions on campus and into the community. This year that included completing new student housing that attained PHIUS (Passive House Institute US, Inc.) certification, coupled with rooftop photovoltaic panels, and completing decadal facilities planning that will embed sustainability across all future projects and include a new interdisciplinary Center for Sustainability that will unite curricular and co-curricular learning on campus and into the community. While in the past sustainability happened in offices and departments across campus, a formal home will support the cross pollination needed for new collective action models in sustainability education and collaboration.”

— Award nomination from Sarah Fortner, director of sustainability at Carleton

The award was announced publicly at the UMACS Annual Conference on September 26, 2025, at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.