With a commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050, the University has taken a holistic approach to reach its sustainability goals. The Experience Notre Dame team sat down with Geory Kurtzhals, executive director of sustainability, to learn more about how her team partners across the institution to advance strategic operational sustainability initiatives.

Can you tell us about your background and how you got involved in sustainability? What inspired you to pursue this career?

I was raised on a beef cattle farm with a father who was an engineer and a mother who is a biologist. We were surrounded by the Hoosier National Forest, with an abundance of wildlife. This set a foundation for me to both witness and learn how, as human beings, we rely deeply on the land for survival and sustenance; beauty and enjoyment. I could directly see the impact of human actions on our food systems and our environment.

University and my early career set the stage to understand more deeply the social and economic aspects of sustainability. I have a vivid recollection of being coached by study abroad professionals to respect the culture of others, especially when you are guests in their community. During a semester in Australia, I was awe-struck by the difference in place, but the similarities in humanity.

I understand that you’ve lived in several different states.

My adventurous spirit later took me West (Nevada, California) and a corporate career took me to Seattle, Washington and then to South Carolina. After that, I pursued a life long dream of joining the Peace Corps, volunteering in Central America.

Spiritually, both Franciscan and Benedictine principles influenced my early life due to family and faith community influences. My time in the Peace Corps offered a moment to pause amid life in a different culture and think deeply about my role in the world. This allowed for an ideal transition to graduate school (Massachusetts). These experiences acclimating to new people and cultures helped me to listen and respond to individual stories, motivations while appreciating people and creation.

In theory, sustainability sits where social, economic, and environmental factors overlap with a healthy balance. Practical experience tells us that finding this balance is not easy. Today, I work alongside talented, dedicated professionals toward that balance.

As a sustainability professional, what role do you think universities play in shaping a more sustainable future?

Universities play numerous roles, I’ll highlight a few.

1. Our educational mission gives us the opportunity to shape the leaders of tomorrow. To equip them with knowledge that not only helps them to understand, but also experiences that help them to respond to the challenges we face both now and after they graduate.

2. Also, we are citizens of our local and global community. Here at Notre Dame, we are working to care for our common home. Key examples include our work in the areas of energy and food. Notre Dame has invested in energy efficient technologies, and renewable energy systems like geothermal and hydroelectric. Additionally, we know that food also has a notable impact on climate change. Behind the scenes, we work with Cultivate to help delicious, nutritious, uneaten food to make it to those in our community who can benefit from it. Also, our dining halls and the Center for Culinary Excellence have been utilizing grind to energy technology to not only keep food waste out of the landfill (where it would create a potent greenhouse gas, methane), but it is being redirected to a farm in the region that mixes it with other farm by products to create energy. While we have stories to tell, there is also still more work to be done.

3. Because Notre Dame is a destination for many - we have an opportunity to elevate some of these stories. Ideally, when our students and guests leave our campus, they can take with them the knowledge of some of our practices here to serve as examples or solution ideas to consider in the communities where they live or will move to.

You haven’t mentioned anything about recycling yet. Why is that?

Recycling is an important topic because it is the gateway to sustainability for many people. It is one action that the everyday person feels they can take to make a difference. Additionally, it is a metric by which residents and guests of our campus measure our sustainability progress.

Since recycling is a gateway topic, it serves as a stepping off point to educate about the many diverse ways each of us can impact sustainability on an everyday basis. You can look more broadly at waste diversion as a topic and realize there are many additional opportunities to make an impact, like keeping food out of the landfill. Once you start thinking about food, though, you realize you can support sustainability before food goes to waste, by learning about the impacts of the different foods you choose to eat. There are so many delicious foods to enjoy that meet our dietary needs and have a lower negative impact. This could include choosing locally sourced foods that will support our regional economy (and have less of a transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions) and local farmers. Additionally, it could include choosing more plant-based proteins which can have a positive impact on both your personal health and the health of the ecosystem around us.

So you see, recycling can be the entryway to deeper understanding and more empowered action. The more we understand, the more we can make educated choices on a daily basis. We can do this not just as individuals, but also within our roles at Notre Dame.

What are some of the biggest sustainability challenges universities face today, and what strategies are you implementing to address them here at Notre Dame?

Helping to bridge theory to practice is an exciting opportunity in the higher education sustainability arena. Our university is filled with gifted student and faculty scholars, brilliant operators, and talented strategists. Our operational sustainability team is focused on partnerships that move sustainability forward. Our job is about recognizing and influencing systems and that type of work doesn’t happen overnight.

We often get questions that start like, “Why can’t you just …?” You can fill in the blank with any statement that - on the surface - seems simple. I appreciate these questions, as they help to bridge a gap between theory and practice. I get to spend time alongside students who ask these questions and help them to peel back the layers to see a larger picture - the challenges associated with adopting the solution they’ve suggested. Then, though, the fun part is working through each challenge and figuring out how to overcome them - in that particular setting.

This opportunity to dissect and problem-solve real-life sustainability challenges in real time is something that students appreciate. We have student interns, who we treat as extensions of our professional team. Additionally, we work with student sustainability leaders. Time and again, when we ask for feedback, they tell us that they appreciate seeing ‘behind the scenes’ of how we work alongside our colleagues doing real-world sustainability work. Our real-world work doesn’t always fit the pace of the classroom setting, so it is not easy to marry the two together. Our mission as a university, though, is to prepare students. Based on this feedback from our students, then, I think a key challenge is offering our students more opportunities for applying the knowledge they learn in the classroom to real-world practice.

What initiatives or projects are currently underway to promote sustainability, and how have students, faculty, and staff been involved in these efforts?

There’s always a lot happening across campus related to sustainability. Examples include the work Transportation Services has done strategically to adopt electric vehicles and how we prioritize LEED buildings, pollinator spaces, and green roofs on campus. Earth Month is happening now and this is a great way to become connected with the wide variety of initiatives happening. When available, our Green Tours can be offered to internal student or employee groups, upon request.

Recently, we’ve been doing Climate Action Planning work alongside our food and dining collaborators. Our student interns have helped with benchmarking, our network of student leaders have engaged with us on the topic, helping us to stay grounded with our key constituents, and we have offered open engagement and received insight from additional students, faculty, and staff.

Sustainability often requires collaboration across departments. How do you encourage collaboration at the university to tackle sustainability challenges?

Everything we do is about partnership. Our sustainability team’s role is to work alongside operational partners to move an initiative forward. In order to do this, we identify a common goal, then work together to identify the steps we can take together to reach that goal, while also identifying challenges. We identify opportunities to overcome those challenges together. We are guided by a mutual mission to care for our common home.

The partnership we’ve started with our food and dining operators has already allowed us to test composting at scale at Fr. Bob’s inauguration last year. The foundation we built by thinking and working alongside our operations teams allowed us to implement this idea on an abbreviated timeline. Additionally, we called out for help when we needed it and 56 volunteer students and staff stepped up to the plate to serve as sustainability station volunteers, guiding our guests to know what to do with the serving materials after their meals were completed.

What advice would you give to students and community members who are passionate about sustainability and want to make a positive impact on their campus or in their future careers?

First, take the time to learn more about the issue in general. Second, learn about what others are doing locally and globally to take action in that area. Third, identify what you can do either in your role as a member of the Notre Dame community and/or as an individual in your own home/life. We’ve modeled this thinking on some of our resource pages, like the one on greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, Project Drawdown is a great resource that balances scientific knowledge and ways of taking action - in any career. Every job can be a sustainability job and every sector has sustainability considerations. Students and employees can examine the impacts of a desired sector or field of work and consider how they can apply sustainability principles to make a difference.

Also, stay up to speed with what is happening on campus. The gateway to doing this is via the Green Ambassador newsletter, which highlights current happenings and opportunities. We also use this newsletter to highlight partners on campus moving sustainability forward. John Zimmerman, from Landscape Services, is a great example!

Originally published by Molly Di Carlo at experience.nd.edu on April 01, 2025.