THEME TWO: PURPOSEFUL AND SUSTAINABLE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

All of our learning environments enhance the College experience in purposeful and sustainable ways.

As we endeavor to meet the goals in this strategic plan, we will design learning environments that will enhance the College experience in purposeful and sustainable ways. Our newly formalized Environment Prefect role was introduced for the 2023–2024 academic year, which, along with our Green Teams, has supported us in achieving our Eco Schools Platinum status. We know that all spaces on campus are potential learning spaces and sources of creativity and inspiration. We want these spaces to be flexible, dynamic, and adaptable to student needs and promote connections, ease of movement, and accessibility across the campus. For example, the culinary arts kitchen was recently revamped using repurposed equipment from alumni donors. In addition, armour stones were installed in selected locations across the campus to provide more student gathering spaces as they explore the outdoors as an extension of the classroom. A key part of working towards our vision for purposeful and sustainable learning environments was the completion of our Campus Master Plan.

As we recognize the critical importance of our environment and the existential challenges of the global climate crisis, HSC is prioritizing environmental sustainability in our physical campus and our operations decisions, evident through our transition to electric ground equipment and work to formalize a green purchasing policy. We are working towards making HSC a leader in Canadian education for practicing, learning, and teaching environmental sustainability. HSC is one of 21 schools across Canada that have joined the Climate Action

Accelerator Program (CAAP). This is a three-year commitment in which HSC’s team of faculty and staff is developing and implementing a highimpact, whole-College climate action plan. The team has opportunities to share their learning virtually with other schools across the country and learn and collaborate with them. The College has also established a 2019 GreenHouse Gas (GHG) baseline to measure our sustainability efforts. The CAAP facilitators have decades of experience working in all aspects of schools, with experts contributing to topics ranging from GHG inventories to climate change education and risk, to governance considerations and promoting a ‘Whole College Approach’ to sustainability and regenerative practices.