Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) Version 2.2
The latest version of the Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), version 2.2, features greater international relevance; allows institutions to highlight notable sustainability initiatives, called Points of Distinction; simplifies criteria for many credits; and awards points for engaging in a review-and-revision process before submitting a report. New participants will join under v2.2, while existing participants can upgrade to v2.2 right away or choose to report under v2.1 until Aug. 31, 2020.
Sustainable Development Goals and Institutions of Higher Education
This book discusses the integration of the SDGs into higher education curricula. It presents implementations of the SDGs in university teaching, learning, research and development and offers applications and examples of how SDG studies promote technological innovations on campuses and in communities in which they exist.
A Guide for Developing an Action Plan to Increase Civic Learning, Political Engagement, and Voter Participation Among College Students
Strengthening American Democracy: A Guide for Developing an Action Plan to Increase Civic Learning, Political Engagement, and Voter Participation Among College Students, published by Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, is an improved and expanded guide designed to help faculty, staff and students write strong campus action plans to increase nonpartisan civic learning, political engagement, and voter participation among college students. It provides a framework for developing and documenting institutional goals and strategies. It is not meant to be prescriptive but adapted to institutional context.
Diversity in Higher Education Information Technology Report
The report by College and University Professional Association for Human Resources highlights the need for higher education information technology (IT) to address the improvement of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Findings from the report show that diversity among professionals working in higher education IT does not reflect the diversity of today’s college students. The field remains largely White (81 percent) and male (74 percent). Only 3 percent of professionals in the field are women of color. The report also includes demographic data disaggregated by age and region, as well as data around pay equity, length of service, and the pipeline into higher education IT.
Guide to Interactions Between Carbon Accounting, Institutional Goal Setting & Energy Procurement
This report provides a practical guide to institutional emissions and energy planning for administrators, managers and decision-makers. A key finding of this report is that institutions require an awareness and knowledge of three interlinked components: carbon accounting, institutional goal setting and energy procurement. Moreover, it identifies that setting institutional principles that reflect fundamental values and motivations is essential for developing a clear and consistent emissions and energy plan. Included in the report are useful links to outside resources and case studies of prior institutions that created energy and emission plans.
New Issue of Sustainability: Journal of Record
The most recent issue of Sustainability: Journal of Record includes an interview with Shana Weber about Princeton's new sustainability action plan; and articles about LEED version 4.1 and global university rankings.
Sustainable Development Goals Online Platform
The curated library, introduced by Taylor & Francis, has over 12,000 articles and chapters corresponding to the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as a selection of materials to help lecturers teach sustainability and enhance students’ satisfaction with their institutions.
Circular Economy Learning Hub
Launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the immersive Learning Hub allows users to learn more about the circular economy through different learning paths using real-world case studies. Content begins at an introductory level by asking, what is the circular economy? Then it dives specifically into fashion, cities, artificial intelligence and food. There are dedicated sections for business engagement in the circular economy and communicating the circular economy.
United We Dream: Higher Education Educators & Schools Toolkit
This toolkit was designed to help undocumented students and educator allies work with their institutions to increase the resources and support systems available to undocumented students at their school. Presented by United We Dream, this toolkit was created to provide examples for institutions to create sanctuary spaces for their students, parents and educators.
Free UN Sustainable Development Courses
Seventeen universities have developed an initiative to educate learners about the SDGs. Coursera is the primary platform where online courses are offered for the general public to learn about one or more of the goals. Some of the courses provide a hands-on experience with an NGO or international organization who is working to achieve the SDGs through their work.
Climate Champions Podcast
Launched in summer 2019 by the Sport Ecology Group, the first season of the Climate Champions Podcast is an 11-episode limited series featuring conversations about climate change, zero waste, carbon neutrality, energy conservation, climate adaptation, disaster recovery, ocean plastics and more. Dave Newport, director of the Environmental Center at CU Boulder and Monica Rowand, sustainability manager at University of Louisiana at Lafayette both provide an interview on the podcast.
Internal Carbon Pricing in Higher Education Toolkit
This toolkit provides recommendations, examples and tools to guide schools through the process of exploring, designing and implementing a carbon price on campus. The toolkit is a product of the Carbon Pricing in Higher Education Working Group, a group founded by Yale University, Swarthmore College, the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and Second Nature.
Energize Colleges Free Curriculum Resources
A program of Strategic Energy Innovations, Energize Colleges is an energy education program that offers free curricula that advance energy and sustainability education and workforce development through experiential learning.
Anchor Collaboratives: Building Bridges With Place-Based Partnerships and Anchor Institutions
Released by the Democracy Collaborative, this report discusses the role of anchor institutions and collaboratives in leveraging the power of their economic assets to address social and economic disparities and to revitalize local communities. The report focuses on the work of anchor institutions and partner organizations that have joined to form place-based networks, also called anchor collaboratives, to develop, implement and support shared goals and initiatives that advance equitable and inclusive economic development strategies.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education: New Issue
The latest issue includes articles on embedding ecological objectives in university planning, sustainability in engineering curricula, university-led educational travel impacts, promoting sustainability literacy through laboratories, and assessing pre-existing conditions for sustainability curriculum.
Democracy and Climate Solutions Engagement Resources
Organized by the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC) and the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS), Beyond Doom and Gloom: Climate Solutions is an initiative to empower students, educators and the public to advocate for climate solutions through resources and policy engagement opportunities.
Diversifying Graduate Schools and the Faculty Report
Released by Inside Higher Ed, the report provides models for building diverse pipelines from graduate school to faculty. Topics include diversity in doctoral programs that create blockages in the diversity faculty pipeline, graduate school admissions processes that encourage a more holistic review of prospective students, bridge programs and HBCUs' role in increasing diversity in graduate school programs, and the importance of putting diversity and inclusivity into strategic plans and messages from university leaders.
New Issue of Sustainability: Journal of Record
This issue is themed The Learning Foundations and Practice of The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and currently offers free access to all articles. The issue includes commentaries from Akpezi Ogbuigwe writing from the year 2030, the conclusion of the current SDGs; David Orr about the politics of environmental education; Julian Keniry on biodiversity; Mitchell Thomashow regarding migration and displacement; and more. Case reports in the issue cover integrating the SDGs in higher education and the impact on teaching, research and engagement.
APPA Facilities Manager Magazine: Sustainability Excellence and Collaboration
The March/April issue of APPA's Facilities Manager magazine focuses on Sustainability Excellence and Collaboration. It includes articles about renewable energy aggregation in higher education, sustainability as an institutional priority, optimizing building sustainability, and APPA's student internship program.
Field Guide for Urban University-Community Partnerships
This field guide is intended to advance the growing field and practice of university-community partnerships. It seeks to provide the first survey of the field through a scan of 100 urban universities and colleges. It also seeks to offer a framework and methods by which individual universities and colleges can track the progress of the field, compare learning across institutions, and distill best practices for their own work in university-community partnerships. In this way, it seeks to complement a range of capacity-building resources that already exist by offering a stepwise opportunity for practitioners to locate themselves within the field of their peers, discern a best next step for their institutions and communities, and connect with the resources they need to be successful.
Free Guide: Policies to Protect Against Donor Interference
The aim of this report is to provide models for university policies that will protect against interference from all private donors. The guide contains templates for faculty senate motions, improving gift acceptance procedures, approving and overseeing donor-sponsored centers and institutes, and disaffiliation from the Charles Koch Foundation. The report also includes background on Koch’s strategy for higher education, examples of donors violating academic freedom and faculty governance, and stories of faculty taking a stance against undue donor influence.
Gender Lens Investing: A Primer For College And University Endowments
This primer explores the link between value creation and gender diverse companies; highlights the rising trend of colleges and universities moving towards mission-aligned investing; and outlines a diverse range of tools and investment strategies available to decision makers as they consider the integration of gender lens products in endowments.
STARS Online Community
The STARS Community in AASHE Connect is an online platform for those working in higher education sustainability to connect, communicate and collaborate with peers regarding STARS. The platform can be used to ask questions, brainstorm ideas and share resources. To use the platform, log in with your aashe.org user ID and password. Then navigate to Communities > All Communities, and click the blue “Join Community” button.
New Report: Diversifying Graduate Schools and the Faculty
The new report released by Inside Higher Ed features recommendations and practical ideas from nearly 30 experts across higher education on how to hire and promote faculty members, as well as how to recruit diverse groups of graduate students.
New Issue: Sustainability: Journal of Record
The latest issue includes an article about making the connection between environmental justice and sustainable development, and a review of books, reports, films, websites and applications.
Metropolitan Universities Journal: Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions
The new issue of Metropolitan Universities Journal focuses on the role of urban and metropolitan universities as anchor institutions in their community to address long standing inequities. Anchor institutions are nonprofit or public institutions that are rooted in place. These institutions have a mission to serve and are the largest employers and purchaser of goods and services in many communities. Also, they have other assets and capacities that can be leveraged to support reciprocal community development, including local hiring, procurement, and investment practices.
Incorporating Sustainability in Management Education
Responding to the need of business schools to incorporate sustainability thinking into their curricula, this book is structured on a typical MBA program. Each chapter explores how sustainability thinking can be integrated into existing subject areas. Rather than being prescriptive, the chapters provide opportunities to reflect on successes as well as challenges associated with embedding sustainability into MBA courses. Contributors explore the employability implications of sustainability and how these are reflected in course designs, pedagogy and assessments.
AASHE STARS Benchmarking Tool & Website
AASHE’s new STARS website, which features the new Benchmarking Tool, was redesigned to make it easier for institutions to learn about and participate in STARS and get support during the reporting process. Facilitating advanced data analysis, the STARS Benchmarking Tool allows AASHE members to compare colleges and universities based on scores and metrics reported through STARS.
Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators
Communicating Climate Change provides environmental educators with an understanding of how their audiences engage with climate change information as well as with concrete, empirically tested communication tools they can use to enhance their climate change program. An open access version of this book is available through Cornell Open.
New Report: Business School Rankings for the 21st Century
This new report gives an overview of the current state of business school rankings and suggests possible changes to help align business school education with the needs of the 21st century. The report suggests 20 actions to improve evaluation and ranking, including incorporating criteria that measure environmental, social and/or SDG-linked factors within core curricula, research output, hiring and special research clusters, and awarding credit to schools that train students who work for low-paying but societally valuable organizations after graduation.
Docademia: Documentaries for Academia
Docademia's mission is to bring marginalized voices into the classroom by using documentaries and live interviews with the documentaries' filmmakers to open a discussion about pressing issues of the world. The platform matches curriculums and syllabi with documentaries.
SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee Meeting Report
The new report summarizes the Feb. 28 through March 2, 2018, meeting in Paris on the Sustainable Development Goal 4: Education. It defines positions and recommendations by the SDG-Education 2030 steering committee on key strategic areas, discusses the critical role of regional engagement, provides broad strategic policy guidance, and proposes a global advocacy, communication and outreach strategy.
The Impact of Real Food: 8 Ways Institutional Procurement is Building a Real Food Economy
The Impact of Real Food: 8 Ways Institutional Procurement is Building a Real Food Economy is a report from Real Food Challenge that is based on research focused on vendors who sell to colleges and universities that have signed the Real Food Campus Commitment. The report identifies patterns in farm/vendor-to-institutional relationships that have a positive effect on the food supply chain.
Green Guy Podcast: Auburn University's Awards Program
Mike Kensler, director of the Office of Sustainability at Auburn University, joined the College Sustainability Summit Series to talk about the university's Spirit of Sustainability Awards that recognize individual students, groups, faculty, staff and/or alumni that exemplify the Auburn spirit by making significant contributions towards sustainability on campus.
IEN Case Study: Sustainable Investing at Arizona State University
This case study, produced and published by Intentional Endowments Network, discusses the university's move toward sustainable investing, specifically how analysis of sustainable investing strategies allow the foundation to fulfill its fiduciary duty while aligning with the university’s values and sustainability leadership.
New Issue: Sustainability: The Journal of Record
Reporting on the implementation of sustainability programs, initiatives and practices in higher education and industry, the most recent issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record focuses on China and includes a Michigan Sustainability Case. Michigan Sustainability Cases is an initiative of the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability that produces case studies for sustainability education. This case explores the largest hydroelectric power station in the world, the Three Gorges Dam in China.
