GSA Fan Engagement Playbook
The Green Sports Alliance Fan Engagement Playbook is a guide for sustainability and sports professionals describing how to ideate, design and manage fan engagement programs that develop effective, behavior-changing fan engagement programs around environmental sustainability.
New Ashoka U Publication: Changemaker Institutions
Changemaker Institutions: How Higher Education Can Use Social Innovation to Better Prepare Students, Transform Campus Culture, and Lead Society toward a Better Future makes the case that social innovation can be used for institutions to meet the demands of the 21st century. It claims that social innovation can be used both as an educational framework and as an approach for institutional innovation.
Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education
Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education is a book for higher education sustainability change makers that brings together the core constructs of leadership theory and sustainability, perspectives through which to view and value sustainability, successful activities and actions undertaken by sustainability leaders, and models and methods to successfully implement sustainability that are new to the sector. It also examines influencers on the sustainability agenda, and barriers to and enablers of success for leaders at individual, institutional and sector levels.
New Book: Academic Social Responsibility: Sine Qua Non for Corporate Social Performance
The book makes the case that responsible management education is essential not only for academic stakeholders, but for the whole of society. Divided into three parts – “Towards the Socially Responsible University”, “Socially Responsible Education for Enterprise Development” and “Human Voice in Responsible Management Education” – it is a combination of theories, studies and experiences gained by authors from different countries and institutions who function in various institutional and cultural conditions.
How to Start and Run a Student-Managed Socially-Responsible Investment Fund
This toolkit from Intentional Endowments Network is designed to aid in the creation of new student-managed funds, expand current student-managed funds, and increase the number of funds that include socially-responsible investment (SRI) strategies in the investment process. It highlights the different ways student-managed funds can be designed, as well as the growing interest in how new and existing funds address sustainability factors in the investment process.
Climate Atlas of Canada
The Climate Atlas of Canada is an interactive tool for citizens, researchers, businesses, and community and political leaders to learn about climate change in Canada. It combines climate science, mapping and storytelling to inspire action at all levels that will move the needle from risk to resilience.
Reframing the Curriculum: Design for Social Justice and Sustainability
A new practical and hands-on guide will be released in August that seeks to integrate the concepts of healthy communities, democratic societies and social justice into academic disciplines. The book presents a method for designing units that give educators the tools to bring sustainability and social justice into experiential, project-based instructional approaches, and comes with a free facilitator's guide.
Still Hungry and Homeless in College: Results From an Annual National Basic Needs Insecurity in Higher Education Survey
A new report out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin HOPE Lab summarizes survey results from a survey of 43,000 students at 66 institutions in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The report finds that 36 percent of university students and 42 percent of community college students were food insecure in the last 30 days. In the past year, 36 percent of university students and 46 percent of community college students were housing insecure, and 9 percent of university students and 12 percent of community college students were homeless. It also shows that basic needs insecurities disproportionately affect marginalized students. The report provides recommendations for what students, campuses and policymakers can do to ensure basic needs insecurities are addressed.
Beyond Doom and Gloom: Engage in Climate Solutions
Created by the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), this resource offers teachers and students simple steps to participate in American democracy and encourages energy policies to reduce climate instability. It can be used as a supplement to finish any course or activity on climate change.
Earth Day 2018 MobilizeU Toolkit
The Earth Day 2018 toolkit from Earth Day Network's higher education campaign, MobilizeU, is a teach-in guide that aims to support institutions and individuals in taking personal responsibility for plastic pollution by choosing to reject, reduce, reuse and recycle plastics. The resources also includes a plastic pollution primer and action toolkit.
New Issue: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
The latest issue contains articles about implementing sustainable development at the university level, measuring student performance on learning outcomes, a case study on mainstreaming sustainability into campus life, and three separate articles related to engineering students and sustainability.
Case Study on the Benefits of Shared Equipment in Collaborative Research Space
Using the Biochemistry Cell Culture Facility (BCCF), a shared scientific resource utilized by 16 labs from three departments at the University of Colorado Boulder, researchers studied the comparative costs to build and operate a BCCF shared-space versus a hypothetical scenario where 16 labs are built to conduct cell culture in individualized spaces. This case study demonstrates that a shared cell culture facility can provide qualitative benefits and significant avoided costs to scientists and their academic institutions, as well as a reduction in the environmental footprint.
Narratives of Educating for Sustainability in Unsustainable Environments
Narratives of Educating for Sustainability in Unsustainable Environments is a book that seeks to confront the contexts that make environmental pedagogies difficult, the challenges to the well-being of the teacher-scholar, and the corrosive academic structures that compartmentalize knowledge and people. The collection simultaneously offers models for working through and within these challenges to advance understandings and ways of being on local, global and personal levels.
Report and Action Plan for Affordable Textbooks
Open 101: An Action Plan for Affordable Textbooks is a report that investigates high textbook prices for common courses at U.S. higher education institutions. It contains recommendations that could save students a lot of money on the materials they buy for general education classes.
University Sustainable Development Best Practice Report
At the World Economic Forum in January 2018, the International Sustainable Campus Network in collaboration with the Global University Leaders Forum released Sustainable Development: Educating with Purpose, a report that includes 42 campus sustainability case studies provided by universities across the globe focused on sustainable development. The report is separated by the following chapters: Living Lab Approach, Equality and Wellbeing for All, Sustainability on Campus, Education as a Catalyst.
New Issue: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
The new issue includes several articles covering assessment and reporting of sustainability in higher education. Other articles cover participation of students as authors of sustainability reports, analysis of innovations in campus sustainability, and an investigation into bolstering sustainability in food on a campus.
New Issue: Sustainability: The Journal of Record
The most recent issue of Sustainability: Journal of Record includes a special feature on the 2017 AASHE Sustainability Award Winners, and the articles “Giving Up Hope Won’t Save the Planet - Ending Poverty Might” by Jane Goodall and “Shines! University Engineering Students Advancing Duluth's Sustainable Development”, which articulates project‐based learning and subsequent collaborations between the University of Minnesota Duluth and a nonprofit, local utilities, and area businesses.
2018 Edition: Choices for Sustainable Living Course Book
The Northwest Earth Institute's 2018 edition of Choices for Sustainable Living course book includes a new session on water and has also been designed to complement the EcoChallenge, an online friendly challenge that helps participants discover new ways to make sustainable change more possible.
AASHE STARS Review Template
As part of AASHE's efforts to continuously improve STARS data quality and the reporting process, AASHE has released a STARS Review Template. The template highlights common issues that AASHE staff have identified during standard post-submission reviews. Conducting an independent or internal review using the review template can earn the institution bonus points.
New Issue: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
This issue of the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education includes articles about the extent to which campus efforts address regional sustainability needs, nutrition students’ self-reported learning about and understanding of sustainable food systems and dietary practices, an examination of the diverse definitions of sustainability in higher education, and an assessment of the effectiveness of higher education institutions as a sustainability communication channel.
AASHE 2017 Sustainable Campus Index
The 2017 Sustainable Campus Index recognizes top-performing colleges and universities in 17 sustainability impact areas and overall by institution type, as measured by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). The report also highlights innovative and high-impact initiatives from institutions that submitted STARS reports in the 12 months prior to July 1, 2017.
Guide to Making Claims About Your Solar Power Use
The Guide to Making Claims About Your Solar Power Use, released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, describes best practices for appropriately explaining and characterizing solar power activities and the fundamental importance of renewable energy certificates for solar power use claims. This guidance is primarily focused on claims associated with on-site projects but is also relevant for off-site owned projects.
Carbon Markets & Offsets Guidance
The document was developed by Second Nature as a resource for higher education institutions implementing one of the Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitments. It outlines the concept of carbon offsets, how offsetting can be used, and what constitutes a quality carbon offset project. It is meant to provide guidance to help signatories understand the best practices for incorporating carbon offsets into their greenhouse gas mitigation plans while aligning with institution-specific goals.
Higher Education’s Anchor Mission: Measuring Place-Based Engagement
This new report from the Democracy Collaborative examines how an ongoing effort to track the impact of colleges and universities on the financial and social well-being of their surrounding neighborhoods is helping these anchor institutions align their resources to build stronger community partnerships and create more inclusive local economies. The institutions in the report are part of a cohort of six universities working to address the economic realities and needs of their communities by directing more of their resources locally. They are: Buffalo State College; Cleveland State University; Drexel University; Rutgers University at Newark; University of Missouri at St. Louis; and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Handbook of Sustainability Science and Research
This multidisciplinary handbook includes case studies that illustrate how sustainability science and research can contribute to the realization of the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It provides examples from different countries that highlight sustainable development research.
Handbook of Sustainability and Social Science Research
This handbook presents the work of researchers from across the spectrum of the social sciences. The book offers a basis for the dissemination of information, ideas and experiences acquired in the execution of research projects, including initiatives that have influenced behavior, decision-making or policy.
Handbook of Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Development
This handbook focuses on lifelong learning for sustainable development to foster the exchange of information, ideas and experiences. It also presents methodological approaches and experiences from case studies and projects, which demonstrate how lifelong learning for sustainable development can be implemented in practice.
Renewable Energy 101: Ten Tools for Moving Your Campus to 100% Clean Energy
Environment America Research and Policy Center has released a series of fact sheets highlighting 10 key tools to help colleges and universities build a 100 percent clean, renewable energy system. Each fact sheet includes two case studies of effective action on college campuses, as well as a list of resources.
