Portland State’s motto, “Let Knowledge Serve the City,” speaks to the value the University places on engagement with its community and region. A recently released book by the same name describes the multi-faceted process of building sustainability programs at Portland State University—programs that rely on strong university-community relationships and a two-way pipeline of knowledge development and exchange.

Edited by PSU’s B.D. Wortham-Galvin, Jennifer Allen, and Jacob Sherman, with a foreword by President Wim Wiewel and chapter contributions by more than 25 PSU professors and staff, Let Knowledge Serve the City is the first book in Greenleaf Publishing’s Sustainable Solutions Series. It aims to share the University’s collective successes and challenges to help other colleges and universities develop programs that connect students and faculty with the needs of local communities to advance efforts around social justice, climate change, sustainable economic development, and more.

Read on for a Q&A with the book’s editors.