Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 69.75
Liaison Josh Lasky
Submission Date Feb. 23, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

George Washington University
AC-9: Research and Scholarship

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 12.00 / 12.00 Kathleen Merrigan
Executive Director of Sustainability
Office of the Provost
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total number of the institution’s faculty and/or staff that are engaged in research (headcount):
502

Number of the institution’s faculty and/or staff that are engaged in sustainability research (headcount):
281

Percentage of the institution's faculty and staff researchers that are engaged in sustainability research :
55.98

Total number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that include at least one faculty or staff member that conducts research:
52

Number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that include at least one faculty or staff member that conducts sustainability research:
46

Percentage of research-producing departments that are engaged in sustainability research:
88.46

A copy of the institution’s inventory of its sustainability research that includes names and department affiliations of faculty and staff engaged in sustainability research:
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The institution’s inventory of its sustainability research that includes names and department affiliations of faculty and staff engaged in sustainability research:
A brief description of the methodology the institution followed to complete the research inventory (including the types of faculty and staff included as researchers):

The initial inventory was compiled by the Executive Director of the Sustainability Collaborative and the Research Director of Sustainability, both of whom are faculty members. This list was shared with the university-wide Faculty Sustainability Committee, whose members come from various schools and departments, and the Committee provided additional content. We also received input from the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR).
Once the initial list was done, it was vetted. First, Deans and the Faculty Sustainability Committee reviewed it. Second,emails went out to all individual faculty on the list, asking for their confirmation or amendments to the phrase or key words used in the inventory to capture their research effort.
The list was shared with all faculty who appear on the list so to help facilitate their interdisciplinary research efforts.
GW defines departments as those divisions with a department chair. 52 is the number of GW departments excluding the medical school (and de facto excluding nursing, which does not have departments)


The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Data source(s) and notes about the submission (public):
1) The reported number of GW faculty engaged in research is for fiscal year 2018. Not all GW faculty engage in research. To determine the number of GW faculty engaged in research, we obtained the number of principal investigators with sponsored research from a database maintained by the Office of the Vice President for Research. We believe that there are more GW faculty engaged in research, but this was the only data source available to us.
2) We did not count adjunct faculty in the total number of faculty engaged in sustainability research. This is because of the magnitude of the search, our notion that many do not undertake research, and most importantly, because of the potential for these faculty to leave. Nevertheless, we have included a short list of adjunct faculty in the research inventory list because the Faculty Sustainability Committee felt that it was important to highlight their research and to facilitate connections between researchers.
3) Unlike 1.2 STARs this 2.1 version provides a definition of sustainability research. In reviewing this definition, the pan-university GW Sustainability Faculty Committee noted that the 2.1 definition focuses on “economic prosperity” without an explicit reference to the critical dimension of social equity. This was seen as a shortcoming and our faculty advise that it be amended in future iterations.


Data source(s) and notes about the submission (public):
1) The reported number of GW faculty engaged in research is for fiscal year 2018. Not all GW faculty engage in research. To determine the number of GW faculty engaged in research, we obtained the number of principal investigators with sponsored research from a database maintained by the Office of the Vice President for Research. We believe that there are more GW faculty engaged in research, but this was the only data source available to us.
2) We did not count adjunct faculty in the total number of faculty engaged in sustainability research. This is because of the magnitude of the search, our notion that many do not undertake research, and most importantly, because of the potential for these faculty to leave. Nevertheless, we have included a short list of adjunct faculty in the research inventory list because the Faculty Sustainability Committee felt that it was important to highlight their research and to facilitate connections between researchers.
3) Unlike 1.2 STARs this 2.1 version provides a definition of sustainability research. In reviewing this definition, the pan-university GW Sustainability Faculty Committee noted that the 2.1 definition focuses on “economic prosperity” without an explicit reference to the critical dimension of social equity. This was seen as a shortcoming and our faculty advise that it be amended in future iterations.

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.