Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 48.20
Liaison Lauren Poole
Submission Date Dec. 10, 2021

STARS v2.2

Colorado School of Mines
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.25 / 1.00
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution conduct an assessment of sustainability culture?:
Yes

Which of the following best describes the cultural assessment? The assessment is administered to::
A subset of the campus community or a sample that may not be representative of the entire community

Which of the following best describes the structure of the cultural assessment? The assessment is administered::
Without a follow-up assessment of the same cohort or representative samples of the same population

A brief description of how and when the cultural assessment(s) were developed and/or adopted:

The cultural assessment was adopted specifically to meet the requirements of EN-6, and it is anticipated that this assessment will be repeated annually on Earth Day. Currently, the assessment has only been conducted once, however. This cultural assessment was developed specifically based on the NSSE Sustainability Education Consortium survey from 2019.


A copy or sample of the questions related to sustainability culture:
A sample of the questions related to sustainability culture or the website URL where the assessment tool is available:
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A brief description of how representative samples were reached (if applicable) and how the cultural assessment is administered:

Representative samples were not reached. Rather, this assessment was given during the annual Mines Earth Day event. During this event, interested students were asked to take a survey regarding the sustainability culture on campus. A sample size of 94 students was reached. This survey disproportionately includes responses from PhD candidates. Otherwise, however, the survey responses are relatively proportional to the student body based on year of schooling.


A brief summary of results from the cultural assessment:

Section 1 of the assessment shows that, while students do rely on interdisciplinary skills in their coursework and complete group projects often, these projects only sometimes focus on sustainability.

Section 2 of the assessment shows that coursework generally incorporates just some consideration of environmental considerations. Assessing the relationship between economic, social, and environmental systems occurs more often than evaluating the moral dimensions or carrying capacity limits of environmental problems.

Section 3 of the assessment shows that, while many people have manipulated their behavior to be more sustainable, those individuals have not generally participated in campus/community sustainability projects or field trips.

Section 4 of the assessment shows that there is only some emphasis on community welfare, sustainability, and local economies and ecosystems in institutional teaching. Community welfare was emphasized the most of any learning outcome covered in this section, however.

Section 5 of the assessment shows that, while the institution does prepare students to understand the consequences of their choices and gain the skills to achieve long-term goals, it does not articulate a vision of a just and sustainable society or the economic dimensions of sustainability quite as effectively.

Overall, these results show that while there is some consideration for sustainability at Mines, there is still a lot of work to be done in developing a sustainability culture on campus.


Website URL where information about the assessment of sustainability culture is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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