Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 52.59
Liaison Delicia Nahman
Submission Date March 3, 2020

STARS v2.2

Lafayette College
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.25 / 1.00 Kendall Roberson
Sustainability Fellow
Office of Sustainability
"---" 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 developed by the EVST 215 class of Spring 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:

- How important to you are the topics listed below regarding the Lafayette College campus?
- How much do you support or oppose these current Lafayette College environmental policies?
- How much would you support or oppose these policies if used at Lafayette College?


A brief description of how representative samples were reached (if applicable) and how the cultural assessment is administered:

As a class, students constructed a survey instrument. The first question of the survey measured their sense of importance regarding the eight initiative areas. The second section asked students if they support or oppose current Lafayette College environmental policies, while the third section measured support or opposition regarding possible environmental policies that Lafayette could explore in the future. Finally, demographic information was collected at the end of the survey that included the students’ class year, political party, involvement in environmental groups on campus, and if they believe sustainability is part of Lafayette’s culture.
Students surveyed the student body by using the intercept method. They used this method over a two days span in different locations across campus to involve representative sample of our diverse student body in the fastest amount of time. The data collection locations were the following: Skillman Library, Farinon Atrium, Marquis Dining, Simons Café, Upper Farinon. To distribute the survey to Lafayette College students, each initiative area group was assigned to two different locations around campus for a thirty-minute shift where iPads or paper surveys were utilized to distribute the survey to students. In total, the students collected data for 8 hours. They gathered a total of 419 responses, which is roughly 16% of the current student body.


A brief summary of results from the cultural assessment:

The Lafayette community values water conservation and management and LaFarm is an important part of our campus sustainability efforts, one that students
support. Lafayette students believe that most environmental initiative areas
are ‘very important’. Other than two initiative areas (biodiversity and ecology, transportation), more than 50% of respondents indicated that the environmental topic was “very important.”Lafayette students overwhelmingly support current policies that reduce the college’s greenhouse gas emissions (93.8% agree or strongly agree), meet building energy standards (93.2% agree or strongly agree), or encourage less energy use (90.9% agree or strongly agree). 66.7% of students said that they feel that sustainability is a part of Lafayette's campus culture and 33.3% responded no.


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