The mission of the Auburn University Gulf Scholars Program, or GSP, is to prepare undergraduate students to become change agents for inclusive Gulf sustainability and resiliency. As change agents, our students will learn to work across disciplines and engage diverse communities with cultural competence to solve the complex and multi-faceted problems impacting sustainability in the Gulf region.
The Auburn Gulf Scholars Program is a partnership with the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Students in the Auburn Gulf Scholars program will receive prestigious national recognition from the National Academies.
The Sustainability Compass is the guiding framework for the Auburn Gulf Scholars Program. The Sustainability Compass—which lines up with the four directions of a compass, N (nature), S (society), E (economy) and W (wellbeing)—provides a whole-systems framework for addressing sustainability.
The GSP is guided by the following core values:
- Resiliency: The Auburn GSP uses a resiliency framework to address Gulf issues, aiming toward long-term sustainability. We will frame Gulf issues in terms of both the processes and outcomes of adaptation to change, including community, environmental and social stresses.
- Environmental Justice: The Auburn GSP uses a reparative justice, community-centered approach to frame the sustainability challenges of the Gulf region. We will orient students toward community-driven sustainability processes and solutions, including repairing past harms, stopping present harm, preventing the reproduction of harm and redressing systematic harms to marginalized communities and others along the Gulf.
- Change Agentry: The Auburn GSP will provide the tools and knowledge for students, community members and faculty to become change agents for Gulf sustainability. A change agent is an activist and entrepreneur who takes creative action to solve pressing societal challenges, work across disciplines and engage diverse communities to understand and develop proactive, locally-driven, resilient and community-oriented solutions to problems.
Through the Auburn GSP, we will contemplate the following four enduring and wicked problems:
- How can we achieve a sustainable and equitable Gulf region that meets the needs of living things and the planet across resilient communities and across generations, addressing present and future environmental challenges?
- How can we make the most of the diversity, cultures and traditions of the Gulf region to build sustainability and resiliency and repair past and present harms to marginalized communities and people?
- How can we understand the Gulf region as part of a system of complex and interdependent local and global communities with natural, social, political and economic environments that interact with and affect each other to create a sustainable future?
- How can our current understanding of socio-environmental issues and stressors better inform visions, decisions, plans and action to better position communities to deal with future issues proactively?