The Concept of Sustainability in the Evolutionary Guidance of an Educational Institution

Sustainability has been introduced at Ithaca College as a potential guiding theme for a wide range of development efforts. How these efforts will shape the institution's future is unclear, particularly when one places them in the context of recent changes in the College's approach to governance and planning. Countering rather primitive applications of systems thinking in the popular literature on sustainability, a case is made that sustainability principles can be reframed within Banathy's Banathy, B. H. (1989). Syst. Res. 6(4), 289–296.] notion of an evolutionary guidance system, and this could lead to the next evolutionary stage of the institution.