Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 67.20
Liaison Megan Butler
Submission Date May 31, 2017
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Macalester College
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 1.00 Paul Overvoorde
Associate Dean of Faculty
Provost Office
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution conduct an assessment of sustainability culture (i.e. the assessment focuses on sustainability values, behaviors and beliefs, and may also address awareness of campus sustainability initiatives)?:
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::
Longitudinally to measure change over time

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

This assessment was developed by faculty and adopted in the fall of 2014 as part of the Educating Sustainability Ambassadors initiative.


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:

The survey was distributed to all professors who taught during the Tuesday/Thursday 9:40 course timeslot in the fall. Professors were asked to distribute paper copies to their students.

Professors distributed the paper copies to their students during the last two weeks of class (generally at the same time as their final course evals) and returned them via campus mail to the Institute for Global Citizenship. Student workers entered the data by hand and summarized the results.

This was the third annual survey. The two years prior, the timeslot in which the survey was distributed was a Monday/Wednesday/Friday course time. Each year, the registrars office told us the time slot in which the highest number of students was registered for a course, and they provided us with the names of the faculty members, their course name and number, and the number of students. We assembled envelopes with the correct number of surveys for each faculty, and sent them along with an intro letter (plus an earlier email alerting them that this would be coming.)


A brief summary of results from the cultural assessment, including a description of any measurable changes over time:

We have created an assessment tool to track the impact on students of our sustainability curricular and co-curricular programs. We have used this assessment tool twice, once to measure a baseline in November 2014 (six months after our curricular initiative, Educating Sustainability Ambassadors (ESA) launched) and again to measure progress in November 2015. Our measures indicate only a slight increase in students encounters with sustainability in the curriculum and co-curricular activities. However, our analysis of survey results found that student understanding of sustainability better reflected the three pillars (environmental, economic, social) in 2015 compared to 2014. In addition, student suggestions for sustainability opportunities on campus were more creative and sophisticated in 2015.


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:
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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.