Overall Rating Bronze
Overall Score 37.30
Liaison Jennifer Dunseath
Submission Date July 26, 2022

STARS v2.2

Roger Williams University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.00 / 3.00 Allen Hance
Associate Provost for Global and Community Engagement
Community Engagement
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Name of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability :
Narragansett Bay Estuary Program

Does the institution provide financial or material support for the partnership? :
Yes

Which of the following best describes the partnership timeframe?:
Multi-year or ongoing

Which of the following best describes the partnership?:
Sustainability-focused

Are underrepresented groups and/or vulnerable populations engaged as equal partners? :
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability:

https://www.nbep.org/
Narragansett Bay Estuary Program: RWU is the host organization for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (NBEP), one of 28 programs in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuary Program (EPA-NEP). Through a cooperative agreement with EPA, RWU serves as the employer and fiscal sponsor of the four-person NBEP team and has administrative and faculty representatives on the NBEP Executive Committee, Steering Committee, and Science Advisory Committees, which in turn engage some 30 additional non-governmental, governmental (municipal, state, and federal), tribal, and university partners. The mission of NBEP is “to catalyze scientific inquiry and collective action to restore and protect [the] water quality, wildlife, and quality of life” of the three-state Narragansett Bay region (RI, MA, and CT). NBEP provides independent convening, scientific data analysis, and watershed project funding for local communities, with a particular focus on environmental justice communities (which NBEP has mapped systematically). Over the next five years, NBEP will invest over $1-1.5 million annually in those local communities.


Name of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (2nd partnership):
RWU KidWind Program

Does the institution provide financial or material support for the partnership? (2nd partnership):
Yes

Which of the following best describes the partnership timeframe? (2nd partnership):
Multi-year or ongoing

Which of the following best describes the partnership’s sustainability focus? (2nd partnership):
Sustainability-related

Are underrepresented groups and/or vulnerable populations engaged as equal partners? (2nd partnership):
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (2nd partnership):

https://www.rwu.edu/news/news-archive/rwu-hosts-250-fourth-graders-lesson-wind-energy
A partnership between Roger Williams University and the Bristol Warren School District, the KidWind program features RWU students bringing together two academic disciplines to introduce more than 200 fourth graders each year to wind-turbine energy and the engineering design process. The interdisciplinary program combines students from EDU 342: Teaching Inquiry Science in Elementary School and ENGR 340: Sustainable Energy Systems to teach an engineering design and wind energy curriculum to elementary students. The fourth graders engage in science and engineering through worksheets, videos and hands-on lessons that have them designing, building and testing small-scale wind turbines. An article by the lead faculty for the program was published in 2021 in the journal Sustainability.


Name of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (3rd partnership):
Communities of Hope

Does the institution provide financial or material support for the partnership? (3rd partnership):
Yes

Which of the following best describes the partnership timeframe? (3rd partnership):
Multi-year or ongoing

Which of the following best describes the partnership? (3rd partnership):
Sustainability-related

Are underrepresented groups and/or vulnerable populations engaged as equal partners? (3rd partnership):
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s formal community partnership to advance sustainability (3rd partnership):

https://ecori.org/
Communities of Hope (CoH) is a community-driven, solutions-oriented journalism news service in Rhode Island, developed and operated by Roger Williams University's students, staff and faculty. CoH currently engages more than 20 students per semester from a variety of disciplines, three professional journalists, and formal and informal partnerships with different community organizations and media outlets, including the environmental news organization EcoRI News.


A brief description of the institution’s other community partnerships to advance sustainability:
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Website URL where information about the institution’s community partnerships to advance sustainability is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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