The Midwest Regional Collaborative for Sustainability Education (MRCSE) is a project hosted by Northland College.  The creation of MRCSe was orginally made possible with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Education.  The goal of  MRCSE  is to use education as the catalyst for community-based sustainability initiatives in order to maximize the knowledge, interest and engagement of all community members.  Using a transformative learning model, the MRCSE aims to create a collaboration platform that integrates innovative approaches to learning, values participant expertise, promotes long-term community stewardship, builds on-going feedback loops, establishes a lasting learning community and is place-based – all tenets of what we see as transformative education.    

• Jennifer Cirillo, Director of Professional Development, Shelburne Farms, Shelburne, VT                                                       
• Marian Farrior, Earth Partnership Field Manager, University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, Madison, WI              
• Grant Herman, Director, Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, Northland College, Ashland, WI
• Clare Hintz,Campus Sustainability Coordinator, Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, Northland College and MRCSE Principal Investigator,  Ashland, WI
• Christine Kelly, Sustainability Educational Design Consultant and the MRCSE Project Coordinator, West Bend, WI           
• Ted May, Academic Dean, General Studies and Renewable Energy and Sustainability Program Developer, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, Ashland, WI 
• Steve Sandstrom, Chairman, Board of Directors, Alliance for Sustainability, Bayfield, WI            
• Jeremy Solin, Director, LEAF K-12 Forestry Education Program, Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education, College of Natural Resources, UW-Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI 
• Matt Groshek, Public Scholar, Exhibition Planning and Design, Herron School of Art and Design | School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN     

Each summer the MRCSE hosts a 5-day conference designed for those seeking a space to discover and experience new ways of learning and collaboration that can catalyze a sustainable future for all.  The conference format is open, the agenda co-created, and the dialog transformative.  All conference participants are eligible to seek seed grant funds to support innovative strategies birthed at the event.  Currently, MRCSE is supporting 16 community-based sustainability education projects across the upper Midwest with small seed grants.  These projects include the creation of a Renewsical (a renewable energy musical), the development of a graduate level sustainability certificate programs, the installation of a rain garden at a local church, social artistry trainings and the development of a local food economy.

The MRCSE has also supports this online social network for sustainability education as a repository of the MRCSE community stories.  Each member of the MRCSE creates an online personal profile and can add content to the website.  This online community is also supported by MRCSE invited wise elders and story tellers such as John Ikerd, David Oates, Linda Booth Sweeney, Steven Sterling, Bill McKibben, and Kathleen Deane Moore. These wise elders (elders as measured by the depth of understanding not the age of the body) and story tellers have been invited to join our MRCSE community and our conversations about a transformative vision of sustainability and sustainability education in such as way as to help us broaden our thinking and imagination in ways we might not otherwise be able to do on our own.  Since the launch of MRCSE, over a 140 people from five states and representing many sectors have joined this regional collaborative on sustainability education.