Rice University
EN-6: Employee Educators Program

Institution administers or oversees an ongoing faculty/staff peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program.  

In the program, employee sustainability educators are formally designated and receive formal training or participate in an institution-sponsored orientation.  The institution offers financial or other support to the program. 

This credit recognizes ongoing programs that engage employees on a regular basis. For example, employee educators may represent or be responsible for engaging workers in certain departments or buildings. Thus, a group of employees may be served (i.e. directly targeted) by a program even if not all of these employees avail themselves of the outreach and education offerings.

Training and/or professional development opportunities in sustainability for staff are excluded from this credit.  These activities are covered in EN 8: Staff Professional Development. 

This credit applies to all institutions.

Institutions earn the maximum of 3 points for this credit by having a peer-to-peer educator program that serves (i.e. directly targets) all employees (full- and part-time staff and faculty).  Incremental points are awarded based on the percentage of employees served by the peer-to-peer educator program.  For example, an institution with a program that serves 50 percent of all employees would earn 1.5 points (half of the points available for this credit).  

See scoring table and example in the STARS Technical Manual.

Timeframe

Report on current program status and offerings. 

Sampling and Data Standards

Include all full- and part-time staff and faculty; reporting on a sample or subset of employees is not allowed.