New Resources

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

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 more. With advanced search filtering, this key member benefit is designed to facilitate information sharing between campuses and organizations. Recently added resources to the Hub include a paper describing methodological strategies used in the training of future teachers to develop competences in sustainability and social responsibility and an examination of sustainable food practices at three North American Pacific Coast universities.
  • Posted Sep 12, 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: Campus Environmental Resource Center, Campus Diversity and Inclusion resources website and Raising Environmental Awareness Through Education.
  • Posted Sep 6, 2016

InTeGrate: Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth For a Sustainable Future

This curriculum-based project has two goals: to develop curricula that will dramatically increase Earth literacy of all undergraduate students, and to increase the number of majors in the geosciences and related fields who are able to work with other scientists, social scientists, business people and policy makers to develop viable solutions to current and future environmental and resource challenges. The website offers a host of curriculum resources, workshops, implementation projects and other strategies to increase Earth awareness.
  • Posted Sep 6, 2016

Education for Sustainable Development in Further Education: Embedding Sustainability into Teaching, Learning and the Curriculum

This new book aims to empower teachers to critically analyze Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through their own subjects, engage in the debate and learn with their students. It encourages teachers to co-construct a curriculum that embeds ESD through taking democratic and participative approaches.

Coalesce: The Campus Sustainability Accelerator

Coalesce, The Campus Sustainability Accelerator, partners with schools to build cohesive and enduring sustainability initiatives by equipping and empowering stakeholders in four interrelated core competency areas: assessment and benchmarking, governance and leadership, planning and measurement, capacity and execution. Coalesce’s Accelerator provides sustained facilitation and coaching to co-create work plans and implement solutions.
  • Posted Aug 29, 2016

Sustainable Solutions: Let Knowledge Serve the City

This new book from Greenleaf Publishing examines approaches that Portland State University has used to work collaboratively within the university and with community partners. It introduces the themes of the engaged university, social justice, climate change and sustainable economic development.
  • Posted Aug 22, 2016

Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: A Review of Approaches and Experiences

This article presents a literature review on the approaches and experiences of subscription journals in converting to open access and distinguishes different pathways, method and scenarios for converting to open access.
  • Posted Aug 22, 2016

Energy Dept. Implementation Model: Emory University's WaterHub

Emory University’s WaterHub uses on-site, adaptive ecological technology to reclaim up to 400,000 gallons of campus wastewater daily. The system has cut potable water consumption by as much as 35 percent, saving millions of dollars over a 20-year period while improving campus operations and opening new opportunities for education and research. This Implementation Model from the U.S. Department of Energy shows how Emory implemented this technology and provides a variety of supporting materials, including a flow diagram, technical overview and water quality measurements.

Energy Dept. Implementation Model: Tying Energy Costs to Building Occupants

University of California Berkeley's Energy Management Initiative (EMI) targets building occupants through building surveys and energy dashboards, and allocates energy cost responsibility to individual campus operating units to achieve savings of $6.5 million, 58.7 million kilowatt-hours and 893,000 therms in just three years. This case study from the U.S. Department of Energy shows how UC Berkeley accomplished this program and provides a variety of supporting materials.

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 more. With advanced search filtering, this key member benefit is designed to facilitate information sharing between campuses and organizations. Recently added resources to the Hub include a new book, Sustainability Science: Field Methods and Exercises, and a dissertation, Smart Partnerships: How Higher Education Institutions Can Enhance the Capacity of the UN to Govern the Global Commons.

Residence on Earth Advocacy Resources

Devoted to how to participate in and teach advocacy, the list of resources is not designed to help an individual reduce their environmental impact so much as how to engage in collective political action to address environmental problems.
  • Posted Aug 3, 2016