Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 69.70
Liaison Kelly Wellman
Submission Date Dec. 2, 2021

STARS v2.2

Texas A&M University
AC-9: Research and Scholarship

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 12.00 / 12.00 Kelly Wellman
Sustainability Director
Office of Sustainability & Campus Enrichment
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Part 1. Sustainability research

Total number of employees that conduct research:
1,294

Number of employees engaged in sustainability research:
464

Percentage of employees that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
35.86

Part 2. Sustainability research by department

Total number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts research:
81

Number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts sustainability research:
61

Percentage of departments that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
75.31

Research Inventory 

A copy of the inventory of the institution’s sustainability research (upload):
Inventory of the institution’s sustainability research:
See attached file.

A brief description of the methodology the institution followed to complete the research inventory:
Because of the availability of information, the faculty research report considers faculty participating in sponsored research. The researcher population used in our analysis reflects researchers that currently have active research and/or have been part of research within the past three years (August 1, 2016 – August 1, 2019).

Using the Texas A&M System Budget, Payroll, and Personnel system and the Texas A&M System Research Information system, all tenured/tenure track and research faculty were identified to provide the total number of faculty performing research. The 71 keywords used in Credit AC-1 were used to search the sponsored research database for faculty research proposal/project titles, and existing project abstracts.

To further refine the researcher inventory, Office of Sustainability (OS) staff conducted an audit of the results from the keyword search by reviewing faculty biographies and research interests available online at Texas A&M departmental websites. All entries in the database were reviewed.

Because only sponsored research was reviewed for this credit, the total number of researchers is a conservative estimate. Additionally, since Texas A&M (TAMU) is a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant institution, we have numerous faculty that hold joint appointments with Texas A&M Agricultural and Engineering Extension Agencies. Our database review only considered researchers who were primarily affiliated with TAMU. As a result, this likely further reduced the total number of researchers.

To determine the number of departments that conduct sustainability-related research, the list of researchers and their departments was compared to the 89 equivalent departments identified in credit IC-3; however, there were 13 equivalent departments that were excluded because they represented interdisciplinary programs or institutes. Additionally, 2 colleges, 1 Engineering Service Program, and the TAMU Library are not included in IC-3 because they do not have course offerings. Ocean Engineering is a newer department that was not included in data used to complete IC-3. They have been added as equivalent departments for this credit only due to engaging in sponsored research.

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the institution’s sustainability research 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.