Campus Resilience Game

The Campus Resilience Game helps players to quickly understand the benefits of an integrated approach to planning in meeting multiple demands that campuses face while being resilient to unknown events. It is conducted as a workshop on campuses, and our team has presented at national conferences including the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

This collaborative campus-building game fosters knowledge and empathy by giving each player the role of campus stakeholder with unique perspectives and responsibilities. The team works together to plan campus development that supports the academic experience while balancing funding of sustainability projects with operations and deferred maintenance, mimicking the real competition for priorities (and dollars) that campuses face. Teams work toward the goal of carbon neutrality, a metric commonly used to demonstrate sustainability leadership that is impacted across most sustainable facilities strategies.

“The power of this game as a tool is that it facilitates a productive dialogue between game participants about campus resiliency. Participants are asked to step out of their daily mindset and find common ground with one another, which enables a more productive outcome.” ~ Participant

Above: Strategy cards from the Campus Resilience Game

Want to learn more? Explore campuses that have committed to the pursuit of carbon neutrality and resilience through the Reporting section of Second Nature's website. This game was developed with support from the Perkins+Will Innovation Incubator and LHB, Inc.