Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 47.62
Liaison Delicia Nahman
Submission Date March 10, 2016
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Lafayette College
AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 4.00 Julia Nicodemus
Assistant Professor
Engineering Studies
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

The percentage of students assessed for sustainability literacy (directly or by representative sample) and for whom a follow-up assessment is conducted:
0

The percentage of students assessed for sustainability literacy (directly or by representative sample) without a follow-up assessment:
100

A copy of the questions included in the sustainability literacy assessment(s):
The questions included in the sustainability literacy assessment(s) :
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A brief description of how the assessment(s) were developed:

The assessment was developed in order to meet the goal of making Lafayette a more environmentally aware campus by developing an improved recycling program. Therefore the assessment was developed to specifically obtain information about student attitudes, knowledge and behaviors regarding recycling in general and specifically at Lafayette College.


A brief description of how the assessment(s) were administered:

In order to obtain a large sample size as well as a representative population, surveys were administered by professors during the class period. This method had several advantages. First, the students were more likely to take the survey since a period of time was designated to it. This encouraged most students to respond to the survey, whereas other methods might only receive responses from students with an interest in recycling, thus reaching an unbiased population. Secondly, this method allowed for a representative population of students to be targeted across a breadth of academic majors.
As a relatively small undergraduate liberal arts institution, we don't have separate schools that need to be equally represented to get a representative sample. However, all four divisions were well represented through a wide variety of departments, including the sciences, mathematics, foreign languages, english, engineering, economics, government/law, and anthropology/sociology. Finally, because students were more likely to take the survey during class versus during their free time, a large population of students was reached (40% of Lafayette students responded).To prevent students from being surveyed multiple times through different classes, professors were instructed to ask students to take the survey only if they had not already done so. In addition to surveys distributed in classes, a small (< 5% ) percentage of students were surveyed randomly on campus and through friends and organizations. The first question asked for student year, and the resulting surveys were well distributed across the four class years (responses from each class were within 5% of the expected 25%). Given the size of the student population (~2400) and the 967 responses obtained, these results have a confidence interval of a little over 3 at a 99% confidence level.


A brief summary of results from the assessment(s):

Overall Attitudes
About 32% of students either agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with the recycling program at Lafayette. About 28% said that they disagreed or strongly disagreed that they were satisfied with the recycling program at Lafayette.
About 41% of students said they they found it convenient to recycle, while about 30% disagreed with this statement. About 41% said that they were dissatisfied with the amount of receptacles on campus, while about 33% said that they were satisfied. About 37% were not satisfied with the amount of information available about recycling at Lafayette, while 23% were satisfied. About 48% do not believe that the student body takes recycling seriously, while 13% of students do think that the student body take it seriously. About 30% of students do not believe that the administration take responsibility seriously, while 19% of students do think that the administration takes recycling seriously.
Attitudes by Building Type:
Responses indicated that academic buildings, residence halls, and other buildings were rated relatively similarly as neither convenient or inconvenient.
Analysis of Knowledge
About 5% of students correctly identified all of the items that could/could not be recycled. About 60% of students correctly identified 6-8 of the 11 items. Batteries, ink/toner cartridges, electronics and pizza boxes were commonly mis-identified as either recyclable or non-recycable.
Analysis of Behaviors
About 85% of students said that they often or always recycle when recycling is convenient. Only 29%, however, responded that they would recycle even when recycling was inconvenient. Batteries, ink/toner and electronics had a muich lower rate of recycling, with only 13% of students saying that they recycling 75-100% of these items. Students responded that they recycled mixed paper, white paper and plastics/glass/aluminum more frequently, at about 42%, 45% amnd 58% respectively. About 84% pf students responded that they were more likely to recycle following the implementation of single-stream recycling on campus.


The website URL where information about the literacy assessment(s) is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

The URL above is a link to the full report on recycling at Lafayette. This report was written and the survey conducted as part of an academic class in the Spring of 2014.


The URL above is a link to the full report on recycling at Lafayette. This report was written and the survey conducted as part of an academic class in the Spring of 2014.

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.