New Resources

Hungry and Homeless in College: Results From a National Study of Basic Needs Insecurity in Higher Education

A new report by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab provides insight into food insecurity, homelessness and housing insecurity among today’s college students. The report is based on the results of a survey distributed by Wisconsin HOPE Lab and the Association of Community College Trustees to 70 community colleges in 24 states. It also provides policy recommendations for community colleges, state and federal policymakers, and researchers on ways in which each can support these students and help provide the services they need.

The Glocal Curriculum: A Practical Guide to Teaching and Learning in an Interconnected World

The book covers three different stages, from envisioning the "glocal" curriculum and its design to implementing and evaluating the "glocal" curriculum and program, to designing the "glocal" teaching-learning environment. It provides guidance for curriculum and program developers, quality managers, as well as teachers and instructors. "Glocal" is defined in this book as integrating both local and global considerations when addressing the pressing real-world sustainability problems.
  • Posted Mar 20, 2017

Large-Scale Renewables: The Next Chapter in Higher Education Sustainability Leadership

This white paper, created by Second Nature in partnership with CustomerFirst Renewables, walks through the opportunities and challenges of large-scale renewable energy projects, how to set them up and first steps.

Higher Education in the World: Towards a Socially Responsible University: Balancing the Global with the Local

The report deals with the dual responsibilities of universities at local and global scale, exploring the potential conflict, or intrinsic difficulties, in addressing both local demands of society based on the race for global competitiveness and local and global demands to contribute to a more equitable and sustainable society, at local and global scales.
  • Posted Mar 13, 2017

Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives

This publication is designed as a guide for education professionals on the use of education for sustainable development in learning for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The guide identifies indicative learning objectives and suggests topics and learning activities for each SDG. It also presents implementation methods at different levels, from course design to national strategies.
  • Posted Mar 13, 2017

New Report: Renewable Energy 100: The Course to a Carbon-Free Campus

A report released by Environment America Research & Policy Center indicates a shift to clean, renewable energy is the best way for colleges and universities to achieve their carbon reduction goals. The report highlights schools across the country that are taking measures to make the transition to renewable energy.
  • Posted Mar 13, 2017

A Guide for Applied Sustainability Learning Projects

The guide is a step-by-step framework for how a new or existing applied learning for sustainability program can be systematically designed, built and scaled to provide students with exceptional learning experiences and contribute to tangible sustainability solutions. Bringing together lessons from on-the-ground management of applied learning for sustainability programs across the U.S. and Canada, the publication includes literature related to sustainability science, sustainability pedagogy, change management and partnership development. The guide was a joint collaboration between AASHE, Arizona State University and Portland State University.
  • Posted Mar 6, 2017

Environmental & Climate Literacy Teach-In Toolkit

With this toolkit, students will be able to organize an environmental teach-in on campus. The teach-in toolkit is designed bring students together to discuss local environmental issues and promote civic engagement techniques necessary to take action. The goal of an Earth Day 2017 teach-in is to educate community members about global environmental issues, how these issues impact the local area, and empower and mobilize the community to take informed civic action to protect the environment.
  • Posted Mar 6, 2017

Race & Ethnicity as a Barrier to Opportunity: A Blueprint for Higher Education Equity

Young Invincibles released Race & Ethnicity as a Barrier to Opportunity: A Blueprint for Higher Education Equity, a report that takes an in-depth look at the disproportionate challenges students of color face to achieving higher education attainment. The findings show that while overall attainment has increased for Black and Latino students, the attainment gaps between these groups and their white peers have actually widened in the last thirty years.
  • Posted Mar 6, 2017

New Campus Sustainability Hub Resources

Two recent additions to the Campus Sustainability Hub include a paper that describes a role-playing, negotiation game used as an education tool to understand sustainability-based decision-making and a paper discussing opportunities to integrate sustainability into social work practice settings. With new items added daily, the Campus Sustainability Hub, a new AASHE member benefit, is a simple, intuitive and centralized platform that houses best practices, course materials and comprehensive lists including research centers and institutes, publications, outreach materials and more.
  • Posted Feb 27, 2017

New Report: USGBC LEED in Colleges & Universities

Released by the Leonardo Academy, the report includes survey data regarding the level of LEED participation compared to other available programs, driving factors for pursuing LEED and its specific applications, such as LEED for New Construction, and level of importance to key stakeholders.

Tips to Improve AASHE STARS Report Quality

Since STARS 2.1 was launched in spring 2015, each submission now undergoes a collaborative review and revision process, where AASHE staff work with STARS liaisons to address any identified issues prior to report publication. This helps to identify common issues in reporting and increases report quality. To help reduce the revision burden on liaisons and expedite the report review process, AASHE staff have put together this list of tips that institutions can follow before submitting a STARS report.
  • Posted Feb 20, 2017

New Book: Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education

This edited collection explores what educational methods and practices might exist on the horizon of sustainability education. Authors imagine alternative futures for the field and attempt to rethink environmental and sustainability education institutionally, intellectually and pedagogically. Authors chart how emerging modes of critical speculation might function as a means to remap and redesign the future of environmental and sustainability education today.
  • Posted Feb 17, 2017

New Issue: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

The most recent issue includes content that covers waste management initiatives, gaps in sustainability education, embedding sustainability into an undergraduate accounting course, and a study to identify the content in introductory business sustainability courses in the U.S.
  • Posted Feb 13, 2017

Center for Food Loss and Waste Solutions Resource Center

The Further With Food website provides comprehensive information about food loss and waste in the U.S. and about solutions dedicated to reducing it. This virtual resource center is a platform to find and share information about proven solutions and innovative new approaches to reduce the volume of surplus food generated, feed hungry people, and divert food and scraps to the highest beneficial use.
  • Posted Feb 13, 2017

New Issue: Environmental Education Research

The latest issue includes articles on environmental education preparation for teacher candidates, how the university fosters a global perspective in students, community-level environmental projects as learning tools, and pre-service teachers and their relationship to education for sustainable development.
  • Posted Feb 13, 2017

Ethics in Higher Education: Values-Driven Leaders for the Future

This new book offers diverse insights from 19 different authors, writing from eight countries in five continents, providing explanations and recommendations for the ethical crisis present around the world that can be mitigated by suitable education in ethics, particularly in higher education institutions. The resource has been released by Globethics Publications on behalf of its Education Ethics Series.
  • Posted Feb 13, 2017

The State of Sustainability in Higher Education 2016: The Life Cycle of Higher Education Facilities

The annual State of Sustainability in Higher Education report, produced by Sightlines and the University of New Hampshire, aims to quantify and celebrate the sector’s progress, and outline specific and actionable opportunities for continuous improvement.

New Resources: Campus Sustainability Hub

Recently added items to AASHE's Campus Sustainability Hub include challenges, barriers and recommendations for interdisciplinary energy research and a webinar archive from Jan. 31, 2017 about implementing the Sustainability Literacy Test on campus. The Campus Sustainability Hub, a new AASHE member benefit, is a simple, intuitive and centralized platform that houses best practices, course materials and comprehensive lists including research centers and institutes, publications, outreach materials and more. With advanced search filtering, this key member benefit is designed to facilitate information sharing between campuses and organizations.
  • Posted Feb 13, 2017

Engaging Investment Managers on Proxy Voting & Other Forms of Shareholder Engagement

Released by Intentional Endowments Network, the document outlines potential questions for investment managers on their proxy voting and other shareholder engagement activities around environmental, social and governance criteria.
  • Posted Feb 6, 2017

New Campus Sustainability Hub Resources

The Campus Sustainability Hub is a one-stop shop for AASHE members to access toolkits and resource collections in all aspects of sustainability in higher education, from academics to operations to governance. New Hub entries include Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canadian Higher Education and a journal article about teaching sustainability in an engineering course.
  • Posted Feb 6, 2017

Educating for Sustainability: 2017 Best Practices from ISCN and GULF Universities

This report, released in conjunction with the 2017 World Economic Forum, contains case studies on educating for sustainability provided by 30 members of the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) and/or the Global University Leader Forum (GULF). The report also summarizes the results of a corporate-university dialogue on sustainable development in education.
  • Posted Jan 30, 2017

Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility

The new report analyzing intergenerational income mobility at each college in the U.S. using administrative data for over 30 million college students from 1999-2013 highlights colleges' potential for being engines of upward mobility. The UpShot, a section of the The New York Times, recently covered the report and offers a graphic display of where the top 1 percent of the income scale versus the entire bottom 60 percent go to college.
  • Posted Jan 30, 2017

New Campus Sustainability Hub Resources

The Campus Sustainability Hub, a new AASHE-member benefit, is a simple, intuitive and centralized platform that houses best practices, course materials and comprehensive lists including research centers and institutes, publications, outreach materials and tools. With advanced filtering, this key member benefit is designed to facilitate information sharing between campuses and organizations. Recently added resources to the Hub include a journal article on communicating sustainability to students and a new book about scholarly activism.
  • Posted Jan 17, 2017

Better Buildings Financing Navigator

The Better Buildings Financing Navigator, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Initiative, is an online tool that helps energy managers explore a wide array of financing choices and identify relevant financing options for their energy efficiency projects.

New Issue: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

The newest issue contains articles about communicating sustainability to students, sustainable parking and transportation, public-private partnerships and assessment tools that measure sustainability in higher education.
  • Posted Jan 10, 2017

New Book: Sustainable Development Research at Universities in the United Kingdom

This new book from Springer gathers inputs from a variety of researchers in the field of sustainable development in the widest sense across the U.K., from business and economics, to arts and fashion, administration, environment and media studies. The book also describes research, curriculum innovation and campus greening in a comprehensive way.
  • Posted Jan 10, 2017

Colorado State University: A Midscale Market Solar Customer Case Study

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) case study provides details about Colorado State University's solar energy deployment, which began in 2009 with the installation of an 18.9-kilowatt rooftop installation at its Fort Collins campus. CSU’s efforts to integrate solar energy into its campus illustrate some of the key considerations for universities growing their renewable energy portfolios within the context of a continuously evolving solar electricity landscape. This case study highlights CSU’s decision-making process, campus engagement strategies, and relationships with state, local and utility partners.

New Book: Systemic Structural Constellations and Sustainability in Academia

This new book from Routledge argues that to create truly sustainable universities, new methods are required of visualizing and interpreting them holistically as institutions built on complex relationships and systems, rather than as individual departments and people operating independently. The book is targeted towards students and researchers of education for sustainable development, organizational learning and sustainable management, and those tasked with transforming the higher education system for the future.
  • Posted Dec 19, 2016

Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education

The handbook offers an overview of what universities around the world are doing to implement sustainable development via curriculum innovation, research, activities and practical projects, and how their efforts relate to education for sustainable development at the university level. The handbook gathers information, ideas, best practices and lessons learned in the context of executing concrete projects. It also assesses methodological approaches to integrating the topic of sustainable development in university curricula.
  • Posted Dec 12, 2016

GSA Greener Cleaning Playbook

The Green Sports Alliance released a guide designed to help sports facilities reduce the health and environmental threats associated with cleaning sports venues. The aim of the playbook is to help venues save money, generate new revenue, build a more sustainable brand, provide valuable marketing opportunities and improve health and environmental performance.
  • Posted Dec 5, 2016

Toolbox for Renewable Energy Project Development

Offered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the toolbox examines six topic areas, including policies and regulations, economic assessments, and financing and funding opportunities, that have important implications for developing on-site solar projects on college and university campuses. Each topic area offers a brief summary of the issue, identifies key resources and addresses major questions and hurdles campus sustainability experts have identified as information gaps or obstacles in the development of new on-site solar projects.

AASHE 2016 Conference Presentations Now Available

Over 550 AASHE 2016 conference presentations were recently added to the Campus Sustainability Hub, an online resource library that allows AASHE members to connect, share and learn about sustainability in higher education. Using advanced filtering, the conference presentations can be searched by sustainability topic, tags, organization and more.
  • Posted Nov 22, 2016

White Paper: Investing in Clean Energy: Campuses and Endowments

The Intentional Endowments Network's report was designed to encourage conversation about the financial and societal benefits of clean energy investments higher education can make both as a customer and an institutional investor through endowments. The paper also explores the current opportunities and barriers to such investments.
  • Posted Nov 14, 2016

New Campus Sustainability Hub Resources

The Campus Sustainability Hub is a one-stop shop for AASHE members to access toolkits and resource collections in all aspects of sustainability in higher education, from academics to operations to governance. The following resources were recently added to the Hub: EcoPaper Toolkit for Purchasers and Sustainability Behaviors Among College Students.
  • Posted Nov 7, 2016

New Issue: Environmental Education Research

New articles in the most recent issue of Environmental Education Research include exploration of academic development and sustainability education and student views on sustainable development.
  • Posted Oct 31, 2016

Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education

This new book presents a rationale and theoretical framework for incorporating reflective and contemplative pedagogies to help students pause, deepen their awareness, think more carefully and work with complexity in sustainability-focused courses. It offers a variety of relevant, timely resources for faculty to use in their classrooms.

Special Issue: International Journal of Art & Design Education: Sustainability in Arts Education

Released in October 2016, this special edition of the International Journal of Art & Design features 10 original articles that discuss various intersections of art and design with sustainability education.
  • Posted Oct 31, 2016

A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference Model White Paper & Practical Guide

The guide was created to help stage nearly carbon-neutral conferences based on a model first implemented at the University of California Santa Barbara, where roughly one-third of its carbon footprint comes from air travel. Compared to traditional conferences, the proposed model can reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly by taking an online approach, where talks are pre-recorded and the question and answer session is interactive. This document both explores the rationale behind this approach and provides a step-by-step guide for staging nearly carbon-neutral events.
  • Posted Oct 31, 2016

AASHE 2016 Sustainable Campus Index

The 2016 Sustainable Campus Index produced by AASHE using data from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) recognizes top-performing colleges and universities in 17 distinct aspects of sustainability and overall by institution type. The report uses STARS data from institutions that submitted a report within the year prior to July 2016.
  • Posted Oct 31, 2016

New Resources: Campus Sustainability Hub

The Campus Sustainability Hub, a new AASHE-member benefit, is a simple, intuitive and centralized platform that houses best practices, course materials and comprehensive lists including research centers and institutes, publications, outreach materials and tools. With advanced filtering, this key member benefit is designed to facilitate information sharing between campuses and organizations. Recently added resources to the Hub include a paper that examines the relationship of social justice beliefs and environmental attitudes among college students at a private university and a report about food insecurity among college students.
  • Posted Oct 24, 2016

Sulitest Version 2

The new version of the Sustainability Literacy Test, Sulitest.org, allows users to build in customized modules for improving alignment with institutional priorities. The Sulitest is a tool designed to measure and improve sustainability literacy for all students in higher education regardless of the area of study, level of study or country of origin.
  • Posted Oct 17, 2016

Preview Version: A Guide for Applied Sustainability Learning Projects

Currently under review and seeking feedback, this guide provides a step-by-step framework for how a new or existing applied learning for sustainability program can be systematically designed, built and scaled. The guide brings together lessons from on-the-ground management of applied learning for sustainability programs with literature related to sustainability science, sustainability pedagogy, change management and partnership development. The final version is projected to be released in spring 2017. Feedback is being accepted through Nov. 29.
  • Posted Oct 17, 2016

Sustainable Business Courseware

AASHE has partnered with Sustainable Business Consulting to provide plug-and-play, online sustainable business courseware to help members accelerate the integration of sustainability into the curriculum. The content is consistent with AACSB accreditation standards and is designed to supplement existing classes by enabling instructors to drop content right into their existing syllabi. The content is divided into a series of modules that can be used individually or as a package.
  • Posted Oct 17, 2016

Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities

This book highlights how humanities disciplines can mobilize the creative and critical power of students, teachers and communities to confront climate change. The book is divided into four sections to help teachers integrate climate change into the classes and topics they are already teaching as well as engage with interdisciplinary methods and techniques.

Energy Efficient Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Report

During fall 2015 and winter 2016, staff and students from the University of California, Riverside Office of Sustainability evaluated three energy-efficient, ultra low-temperature freezers. This study tested the freezers on criteria that included energy consumption, temperature uniformity, noise and heat production.

Offset Network Website

The Offset Network is a web-based resource, sharing platform and educational tool to share best practices and help expand the option for developing carbon offset projects to better integrate curriculum development, academic research, student involvement and community engagement. The Offset Network is a collaboration between Duke University, Oberlin College, the University of Florida and Second Nature.
  • Posted Oct 8, 2016

AASHE Campus Sustainability Hub Case Studies

New case studies have been added to the Campus Sustainability Hub, a simple, intuitive and centralized platform that houses best practices, course materials and comprehensive lists. The Big Ten Prospectus case study analyzes mission-level priorities and sustainability’s contribution to these priorities across the Big Ten cohort along with the University of Texas. The Icebox Detox Challenge from Arizona State University captures the university's attempt to reduce the public health risk associated with storing old, orphaned and potentially dangerous laboratory samples.
  • Posted Sep 26, 2016

Preparing for Campus Sustainability Month 2016 Archived Webinar

This AASHE webinar held in September 2016 explores ideas and inspiration to engage and inspire incoming students and other campus stakeholders to become sustainability leaders. Speakers from University of Massachusetts, ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, University of Washington, University of Washington and University of North Florida share examples for how campuses can participate, lessons learned and suggestions to leverage this international event to promote sustainability on campus and beyond.
  • Posted Sep 19, 2016

PLAN Resource Center

The Post Landfill Action Network's new Resource Center is a collaborative platform to discuss projects, upload documents and share ideas geared toward the zero waste movement.
  • Posted Sep 19, 2016