Collective Commitment Toward a Sustainable Future

The 13th annual Iowa State University Symposium on Sustainability will be held Feb. 21-22, 2022 at Iowa State University's Memorial Union.

Iowa State University's Live Green! Initiative provides a call to action to all students, faculty, and staff to be fully committed and engaged in ensuring our next sustainable decade. Through our actions and decisions regarding our campus, its operations and initiatives we can make efforts to support our next sustainable decade.

Symposium Overview

The 2022 Symposium on Sustainability celebrates the diversity of sustainability efforts and initiatives taking place within our campus community focusing on supporting and nurturing enablement and empowerment toward a sustainable future that extends into the Ames community, as well as communities across the state and throughout the world. Features of this year’s event include a keynote speaker, sustainability tabling and art exhibits and the accompanying multi-faceted, interactive event, Sustainapalooza.

• Schedule of Events (details)

Keynote Speaker

Chris Jordan | February 21, 2022 @ 6 p.m. via WebEx

Facing the Realities of Our World -- And Surviving to Tell About It

Artist Chris Jordan is known for his hard-hitting photographs that confront with shocking directness the dark side of our mass culture. Having explored this territory for more than 20 years, Jordan emerges now with a powerful new message that turns environmentalism upside down. 

Chris Jordan is a photographic artist, filmmaker, cultural activist, and art educator whose work explores the collective shadow of contemporary mass culture from a variety of photographic and conceptual perspectives. Edge-walking the lines between beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, Jordan’s images confront the enormous power of humanity’s collective will. His works are exhibited and published worldwide.

See examples of Chris' work on the Artworks for Change website as well as his photographic arts on the Beauty Emerging website.

Listen to the keynote lecture recording provided by Iowa State University Lectures.

Sustainability Tabling and Artworks Exhibit

Sustainability-connected tabling displays and sustainability-inspired artworks are encouraged from all campus activities and projects including research, administration, operations, student/student organizations, community and personal initiatives that support and further sustainability and the Live Green! Initiative. 

• Read the full listing of all artworks being displayed, as well as tabling organizations, at this year's event

Symposium Archives