Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 73.88
Liaison Audrey McSain
Submission Date March 20, 2023

STARS v2.2

Lehigh University
EN-7: Employee Educators Program

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.17 / 3.00 Audrey McSain
Sustainability Program Manager
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Part 1. Percentage of employees served by a peer-to-peer, sustainability educators program

Total number of employees:
1,872

Total number of employees served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program:
685

Percentage of employees served by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program:
36.59

1st program 

Name of the employee educators program (1st program):
Sustainable Office Program

A brief description of the employee educators program (1st program):
Lehigh University’s Sustainable Office Program is a voluntary, self-guided program designed for staff to take the lead on promoting environmental practices in the workplace.

The Sustainable Office Program Representative takes the lead on completing the registration form, baseline survey, and checklist of actions but through this they inform their office peers about ways in which they can be more sustainable in each of the focus areas. By taking action in a variety of topic areas, the Sustainable Office Representative, through peer to peer education, can reduce the environmental footprint of the office, be responsible stewards of university’s resources, and contribute to Lehigh’s sustainability goals and commitments.

The employees that have completed the program engage with their own colleagues within their offices to help continue to make their offices more sustainable. They also engage with colleagues outside of their office and department by helping to promote the Sustainable Office Program at events such as the Earth Day Fair. They also are asked to nominate an office that hasn't been certified to encourage other offices to join the program. We have found that these are extremely successful ways of getting new offices interested in the program. Employees like to hear from their colleagues who have already been through the program before they commit to join the program.

Additionally, in the Summer of 2017, the Sustainable Office Program began phase one of a two phase outreach, marketing, and expansion plan. Phase one included revamping the registration form, baseline survey, and checklist of actions, creating resources for offices to use, and re-doing the program website. In the Fall of 2018 and Spring of 2018, the Sustainable Office Program did phase two of the outreach, marketing, and expansion plan. This included: revising the website content, hiring an additional intern, beginning to revamp the certification process for offices/suites and departments/colleges, developing a certified office of the year award and process, and determining the percentage of offices within a STEM that are certified or not.

The Sustainable Office Program was re-evaluated in 2021 to better align with the six focus areas of Lehigh's Sustainability Strategic Plan 2030. Certifications expire every three years and offices are encouraged to re-certify.

A brief description of the employee educators program’s target audience (1st program):
The target audience of the Sustainable Office Program is full-time staff and faculty at Lehigh University.

Number of trained employee educators (1st program):
2

Number of weeks the employee educators program is active annually (1st program):
52

Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (1st program):
6

Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (1st program):
284

Website URL where information about the employee educators program is available (1st program) :

If reporting employees served by additional peer-to-peer programs, provide: 

2nd Program

Name of the employee educators program (2nd program):
N/A

A brief description of the employee educators program (2nd program):
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A brief description of the employee educators program’s target audience (2nd program):
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Number of trained employee educators (2nd program):
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Number of weeks the employee educators program is active annually (2nd program):
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Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (2nd program):
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Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (2nd program):
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Website URL where information about the employee educators program is available (2nd program):
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If reporting employees served by more than two programs, provide:

Additional Programs 

A brief description of all other employee peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education programs:
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Number of trained employee educators (all other programs):
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Number of weeks, on average, the employee educators programs are active annually (all other programs):
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Average or expected number of hours worked weekly per trained employee educator (all other programs):
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Total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (all other programs):
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Part 2. Educator hours per employee served by a peer-to-peer program

Grand total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators (all programs):
284

Hours worked annually by trained employee sustainability educators per employee served by a peer-to-peer program:
0.15

Optional Fields

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 data entered above was not impacted by COVID-19 and is therefore representative of a normal year. Given this, we used PRE-5 data from FY 21 so as to compare like data.

The total number of hours worked annually by trained employee educators was calculated by multiplying the average number of hours worked by trained employees per week (6) by 30 weeks. This is calculated this way because most of the work on the Sustainable Office Program is done by two work study students during the academic year, hence 30 weeks. The third individual is the full-time Sustainability Program Manager, who works on the program for an average of 2 hours/week.

Students' hours: 30 weeks x 6 hours/week = 180 hours annually
Manager hours: 52 weeks x 2 hours/week = 104 hours annually

The number of employees was determined by checking Lehigh University's Fall Profile from the Office of Institutional Research.
Total: 284 hours

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.