Kampus Sejahtera is not an office

Had an almost 2 hour chit chat with Norizan, the Acting Director of the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies (CGSS) this morning.

The decision was made at the top. I know of course some people want anything and everything to do with sustainability to be move out to CGSS ... as in move out of the Corporate and Sustainable Development Division. I personally have no problems moving to CGSS (actually, I wanted not to be reappointed to head Kampus Sejahtera). Nobody has ever bothered me when I was at Korporat. I did whatever I wanted. When I decided to drive sustainability issues on campus ... I just took it by the horns and did it. No one gave me a letter which said "here, do sustainability".

But I was also troubled because Kampus Sejahtera did not really have a mandate for sustainability. I pushed for the Sustainability Office. It was received with little warmth, mainly because they didn't want another bureaucracy. But then someone else (bigger) suggested something similar, and it got the go ahead.

Now, what should Kampus Sejahtera do then? For a fact, I said that I would not be pursuing sustainability on campus anymore. Not my job. Not my responsibility anymore. Someone else's got that job now.

So, beginning of last year (2010), I said I would try going back to one of the core values of Kampus Sejahtera. That's volunteerism. I will "speak" more about this another time. So I got some student volunteers and suggested we have a sort of convention to get students together. I think less than 20 showed up. So, that died, not still born but in infancy. Now AIESEC is starting a project to gather volunteers. Again I will talk about students and volunteerism another time.

Back to this morning. We had a good chat. I'm not very good with bosses. I hate being directed to do things. But I think Norizan and I understand each other better, maybe a little more.

I asked him how he saw CGSS. He outlined three major areas : Sustainability (through the SO); research; and teaching (learning).

I told him that working under Kampus Sejahtera, I am not interested in the research agenda. I see that I fit in probably more under SO. However, Kampus Sejahtera is probably wider in it's reach and context than the SO agenda. Perhaps not. Perhaps Kampus Sejahtera is the brandname for USM when it comes to sustainable campus ... this was where I started some years back when I tried to do an initial campus sustainability assessment (Kampus Sejahtera Kampus Lestari, 2007). So, are we going back full circle?

I also have a little interest in the learning agenda. Supposedly, by the next intake, every student will have to take a university-level course on sustainability. We talked about transformative learning and how most of the university-level courses like SHE (ethnic relations) and entrepreneurship have not been very successful (apparently some form of assessment has been made).

So that's sort of our initial agreement. But how do we place Kampus Sejahtera? Is it a unit within CGSS? I thought not. I said that I don't see Kampus Sejahtera as an "office". I see it as a concept or a philosophy (and I have said many times before). Yes, if you want to see someone about Kampus Sejahtera, you can go to CGSS but don't expect to see Kampus Sejahtera as unit in the organisation chart. Kampus Sejahtera should permeate the entire campus - in it's thinking, it how it operates.

Is the new CGSS office big enough for me? We have to see. I said that if there's no space in the new office, I can still sit at my "old" office at Korporat. Unless of course they want to reclaim the office space. In which case I will just float around. We should walk the talk right?