Dear Friends:

Our campuses already lead the world in so many ways. Now, we are tackling another ambitious challenge: striving to become the first university system in the country to eliminate our carbon footprint.

Given the urgency to act on climate change, it’s a daring but worthy goal. But we will only succeed by working together.

That's why I'm asking you to join me in the Cool Campus Challenge that starts October 6. It's a fun, collegial competition lasting 10 weeks, aimed at getting the whole UC community involved in the effort to make the university carbon neutral by 2025.

When you join the Challenge, you’ll be asked to take a variety of simple actions to reduce your carbon footprint in classrooms, offices, cafeterias, dorms, and labs.

With each action you take, you’ll score points for your campus or department. At the end of the 10 weeks, the campus with the most points will be crowned the “Coolest UC Campus.”

If you are in a room right now with a computer, refrigerator, phone charger, heater, bicycle or light bulb, you have the power to help UC get closer to being carbon free. So please join me in this friendly competition, and encourage everyone on your campus — staff, students and faculty alike — to get on board.

Take a minute now to sign up at www.coolcampuschallenge.org and then help spread the world about the Cool Campus Challenge as widely as possible (the hashtag for sharing on social media is #UCool). Together, we can achieve carbon neutrality and show the world how it can be done.

Thank you and have a cool school year!

Yours very truly,

Janet Napolitano
President