Mission

The mission of NJHEPS is to transform the higher education community to consistently practice sustainability and to more effectively contribute to the world's emerging understanding of sustainability, through teaching, research, outreach, operations, and community life .

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Vision

To engage and inspire the higher education community to become models and messengers of sustainability, NJHEPS abides by the following principles and practices:

• Institutions of higher education are responsible to lead society by example and action. To do this, higher education institutions must advance sustainability through the decisions they make in their own operations, policies and actions.
  
• Through demonstrating the connections between sustainability and the courses of study that students pursue in higher education, colleges and universities can effectively educate future workers, citizens and leaders, providing them with the skills, knowledge and "habits of heart" to advance sustainability in their future work and decisions.
  
• Only inter-disciplinary study and research can produce integrated, workable, systems-based solutions for our numerous obstacles to sustainability.
  
• Sustainability involves the just, equitable, and efficient use of all types of capital -- human, financial, manufactured and natural -- with the goal of replenishment and enhancement rather than long-term depletion for short-term gains.
  
• The consumption decisions and practices of the citizens and institutions of industrialized countries are central to the attainment of sustainability.
  
• Using new and richer assessment mechanisms -- ecological footprints, life-cycle analysis, full-cost accounting -- can enable changes in decision-making that provide broad and profound support for sustainability.
  
• Effecting widespread changes in policy through enlisting the support of high-level decision-makers in higher education is an especially effective strategy.

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Goals

NJHEPS' work is to support and guide New Jersey's higher education institutions in both individual and collective activities to advance sustainability. The organization is guided by 4 over-arching goals:

1. To advance sustainability through facilitating communication and disseminating knowledge and information from and to the various constituencies of NJHEPS.
   
2. To develop the understanding of sustainability among the wide spectrum of NJHEPS constituencies as well as other individuals and groups of similar values and goals.
   
3. To promote partnerships for advancing sustainability among the wide spectrum of NJHEPS constituencies as well as other individuals and groups of similar values and goals.
   
4. To increase capacity for the practice of sustainability on campus and among NJHEPS constituencies, through building skills, transforming attitudes, and providing resources.