How the environmental planning of the Universidade Federal de Lavras impacts higher education

¹ Office of Rector Universidade Federal de Lavras, Campus da UFLA, Lavras, MG, Brazil, 37.200.000
² International Office of Universidade Federal de Lavras, Campus da UFLA, Lavras, MG, Brazil, 37.200.000
³ Department of the Environment, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Campus da UFLA, Lavras, MG, Brazil, 37.200.000

^* Corresponding author: mladeira@dzo.ufla.br

Abstract

UFLA was founded in 1908 as an Agriculture School and since that time there was a large concern with environmental issues. During last decade, UFLA has started a huge expansion in different areas of knowledge, becoming a more comprehensive university rather than being focused only in Agriculture Sciences. Due to that, UFLA has faced a need to build many buildings, avenues, improve water and energy supply and deal with different residues produced by their population on campus (including at the laboratories). For this reason, in 2009, UFLA started the idea to implement an Environmental and Structural Planning (ESP), to solve current structural problems and prevent future ones, creating, by that, conditions for keeping expanding and still placing UFLA as an environmentally sustainable University. Moreover, once the Planning was implemented and, even during its implementation, UFLA started to be an excellent example and laboratory for their students. In other words, we could start teaching how to expand keeping been sustainable. For instance, almost 70% of UFLA undergraduate and graduate programs have direct or indirect relation with environment and sustainability, and part of them use facilities and activities created with the ESP implementation. As recognition for the described actions, in 2017, UFLA was ranked in 35th position in UI Green Metric overall world ranking and 1st in Education. In conclusion, the ESP is a great opportunity to improve education and research quality of UFLA.