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The second Earth Summit renewed attention to sustainable development and environmental concerns worldwide; in our university, however, attention has been minimal. In response, several campus organizations collaborated to raise awareness on campus and in the local community by hosting a year‐long, nine‐event series of speakers and panels, each related to a chapter of Agenda 21. In addition to raising awareness among our constituency, we sought to increase our initiative's sustainability. Towards these ends, we developed 11 objectives, monitoring our success at achieving these objectives throughout the year by using surveys of participants, panelists, and collaborators. Here we reflect on the series’ impact based on evaluation analyses, and an assessment of how well we reached our goals. We close this paper with a discussion of our case study as a means to evolve sustainability interests at institutions of higher education into functional sustainability networks, initiatives and educational programs.

Double-cropping provides a method of diversifying the rotation, maximizing production, and increasing the profit potential of a cropping system. We assessed agronomic and economic performance of five alternative crops in comparison to the no-till wheat-soybean double-cropping system prevalent in the southern Corn Belt. Canola has shown potential as a profitable winter crop, but its effects on the subsequent crop in a no-till double-crop system required further study. Amaranth, buckwheat, sunflower, and pearl millet were planted after the harvest of canola or wheat, or after fallow. Alternative double-crop grain yield, production costs, and net returns were compared with those of double-crop soybean.Wheat yielded more than canola. Sunflower grain yields did not differ significantly after winter-crop treatments at any site. Yields of amaranth, buckwheat, soybean, and pearl millet differed after winter crops at some sites. At three study yield levels, net returns were positive and greatest for double-crop wheat-amaranth, canola-amaranth, wheat-sunflower, and canola-sunflower systems. All double-crop systems except canolapearl millet had positive net returns at median study yield levels. Low or negative net returns resulted from the combination of low yield and low price for some double crops. Canola was shown to be an economically feasible alternative to wheat in a doublecropping system for central and southern Missouri. Buckwheat and sunflower were shown to be agronomically and economically competitive alternatives to soybean following either canola or winter wheat, with buckwheat most valuable in late-season planting conditions.