Overall Rating Platinum - expired
Overall Score 87.10
Liaison Alex Davis
Submission Date March 5, 2020

STARS v2.2

Arizona State University
EN-7: Employee Educators Program

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.00 / 3.00 Alex Davis
Asst. Director
University Sustainability Practices
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total number of employees:
12,039

Total number of employees served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program:
12,013

Percentage of employees served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program:
99.78

Name of the employee educators program (1st program):
Green Devil Network

A brief description of the employee educators program (1st program):
ASU's Green Devil program is a network of trained "Green Devils" who advocate for sustainability in everyday departmental decisions. Green Devils meet regularly for training and to share best practices they have found in their respective departments.

To ensure meaningful, ongoing engagement, all Green Devil Network members are required to accomplish the following, prior to becoming a Green Devil:
1) Provide office info (name, # of employees, location, etc)
2) Have their manager sign off on a document that indicates a time requirement and level of commitment, 3) Complete Seeds of Sustainability training, ASU's internal online sustainability literacy platform
4) Attend at least 4 meetings per year. Meetings provide members with updates/training on new campus sustainability opportunities they can share with their colleagues. For example, members were trained in one meeting on how to use DocuSign (a paper reduction tool). These members then trained their respective departments.
5) Commit to supporting sustainability within their office - typically via Sustainable Office Certification.

All of these combined signify that they are sustainability champions in their departments and are support at least one of ASU's sustainability initiatives through their office and peers. Green Devil Network members further support peer to peer education via participation in ASU's Staff Council, by promoting the sustainability certifications, and by participating as speakers in lunch n' learns, etc.

The program has 151 members. The "educators" reported below represent a subset of extremely involved employees that regularly participate in our training and outreach efforts. These leaders stay in close contact with the University Sustainability Practices staff to ensure frequent and timely outreach to their departments. Emphasis for employee action is placed on waste reduction and reuse in the workplace.

The Green Devil Network is advertised to all employees as part of the new hire orientation as well as through the ASU Now newsletter that all employees receive on a regular basis.

Internal link available on this page (managed on a Canvas site):
https://cfo.asu.edu/personal-action

A brief description of the employee educators program’s target audience (1st program):
All employees - including academic and non-academic staff

Number of trained employee educators (1st program):
16

Number of weeks the employee educators program is active annually (1st program):
48

Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (1st program):
1

Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (1st program):
768

Website URL where information about the employee educators program is available (1st program) :
Name of the employee educators program (2nd program):
Sustainability Certification Programs

A brief description of the employee educators program (2nd program):
ASU’s Sustainability Certification program offers ways for the university community to contribute to ASU’s sustainability goals. Participants are guided through a variety of sustainability tasks centered around energy, waste and water, a culture of sustainability, health & wellbeing, transportation, and procurement. You, your team or your department can receive a certification. The Lab, Office, and Shop programs all include designated leaders for their group.

Office Sustainability Certifications are administered via Canvas, where toolkits and tutorials educate staff on how to become certified. Within a certification (such as Office and Lab) there is a requirement to designate a sustainability champion from within the group being certified. This champion is responsible for ongoing education of the group throughout the year. To ensure engagement and learning continue, each certification expires after one year. Expired certifications must be renewed by completing a re-certification re-evaluation process by University Sustainability Practices.

Champions conduct outreach to the lab and office colleagues by providing information about upcoming sustainability events and opportunities. Champions select which behaviors they want to commit to and work throughout their office to designate responsible parties to support those commitments. Over the course of the certification period, Champions work to ensure that commitments by their office and lab are being completed. It should be noted that this program is designed to ensure that individual champions cannot feasibly complete the certification without broad based participation from their departments.

Our certification program is managed by a dedicated program manager and two student workers. As part of their work, they regularly update the program with new ideas and best practices. This program provides a two-way street of information flow, with University Sustainability practices providing training and coaching of Champions as well as Champions providing feedback and novel solutions.

This program is available to all employees at ASU and is promoted at all of our in-person departmental outreach. We have over 1,000 active certifications (again, note that this program requires annual renewal to stay active) and average over 100 new certifications every month.

While this program has a broad reach in several areas of campus, the data below only reflects our Lab and Office programs. The employee educators listed are the designated champions from the 625 certified offices and labs.

A brief description of the employee educators program’s target audience (2nd program):
All employees - including academic and non-academic staff.

Staff are served by the Office and Shop programs.

Faculty are served by the Lab and Office programs.

Certifications have been completed by groups on all ASU campuses.

Number of trained employee educators (2nd program):
725

Number of weeks the employee educators program is active annually (2nd program):
48

Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (2nd program):
1

Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (2nd program):
17,400

Website URL where information about the employee educators program is available (2nd program):
A brief description of all other employee peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education programs:
---

Number of trained employee educators (all other programs):
---

Number of weeks, on average, the employee educators programs are active annually (all other programs):
---

Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (all other programs):
---

Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (all other programs):
---

Grand total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (all programs):
18,168

Hours worked annually by trained employee sustainability educators per employee served by a peer-to-peer program:
1.51

Website URL where information about the employee sustainability educators programs is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The 26 employees at ASU's Lake Havasu City campus are not included as employees served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program. Programs such as the Sustainability Certification Programs are available to these staff but none have participated to-date.

ASU Staff Council's Sustainability Committee is a group of ASU staff that is responsible for understanding issues impacting environmental sustainability and identifying programs and services available, and recommending changes, enhancements, or establishments of programs to address these issues. ASU's Staff Council is open to all staff but not to faculty. Most recently, this group developed sustainable purchasing guide in collaboration with University Sustainability Practices, Purchasing and Business Services, and the Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative. However, while this group performs much of its work on a peer to peer basis, members are not formally designated as educators and have not received direct training on sustainability as a group.

To support its Sustainable Event Certification program (recognized under IN-18), ASU developed and regularly offers a training for Staff Event Planners. This training covers both sustainability communications and sustainability at ASU, procurement, giveaways, waste reduction, catering, digital tools, and transportation. Participants are expected to share this training with their departments. Over 150 employees have taken this training and they implement their training at the events they host - ranging from 1 to 50 events per year. This program is open to all employees, though it is intended for event planners. Feedback about this program has indicated that participation in this training is driven primarily by word of mouth. Events that might be organized by these trained green event planners range in size from campus-wide events to small departmental meetings. As such, this program has a significant peer to peer element.

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.