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AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, hosted its 2015 conference in Minneapolis, MN, and we had the pleasure of being one of their exhibitors! Beginning on October 25 and running through to October 28th, this conference was all about different sustainability-minded organizations coming together to share their ideas, network, and have fun while doing it. Held in the prestigious Minneapolis Convention Center, it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event, with its largest turnout ever of 2,200+ attendees!

IMG_20151027_103450Set up in booth #213, we had a great time interacting with very passionate students, teachers and sustainability advocates. Offering information about our stand-out BA in Sustainable Living program and being able to share just how special our university and town are was both gratifying to us, and a pleasant surprise to many of our guests.

For those that don’t know, our Sustainable Living department is unique in that the entire curriculum revolves around a concept called deep sustainability. This concept refers to sustainability as not only a means for fixing inefficient systems, but as a way to completely rebuild them from the ground up. It means coming to a place of deep communion with oneself and with nature so that communities and societies can be built to be resilient and self-sufficient.

People are seemingly becoming more and more aware of how crucial “inner sustainability” is to outer (or traditional) sustainability. Luckily, here at MIU we have amazing tools for cultivating inner sustainability, such as Transcendental Meditation and Maharishi AyurVeda (an ancient system of health for treating and preventing illness). They were also pleasantly surprised to hear that Maharishi International University is an AASHE STARS school, currently ranked as Silver!

While representing the Sustainable Living department at our own booth, our team was able to mingle with our booth neighbors: JavaCity & ecoGrounds, Freight Farms, and Carbonless Community, a group of great people that were offering wonderful sustainable products and services to university campuses. We were able to attend many of the talks and workshops that were being held too, where we madIMG_20151025_181400e plenty of new friends and reconnected with old ones.

With attendees like David Orr, Shalini Gupta, and many others, AASHE 2015 turned out to be a beautiful and educational experience. Thanks to AASHE for having us, thanks to our various guests for visiting us, and thank you to our Sustainable Living team for making the trip all the more special!

*This will be my last blog article for the Sustainable Living department as I am heading on over to write for our Physiology and Health department now. My successor is an awesome, talented guy though so I’m sure you’ll all love what he has to share with you all! So long and thanks for all the fish!