University of Alberta
ER-15: Sustainability Research Identification

The Office of Sustainability produced a companion document to the University of Alberta’s academic plan (Dare to Deliver) titled, “Integrating Sustainability into the Academic Experience”. This document provides a plan for incorporating sustainability into the educational and scholarly practices at the university between 2011-2015. The Office of Sustainability is structured and comprised of individuals from three strands: Outreach and Engagement, Academic Teaching and Research, and Facilities, Operations and Services. The Office of Sustainability Academic Advisory Committee* developed the following definition of sustainability in June 2010: “Sustainability is the process of living within the limits of available physical, natural and social resources in ways that allow the living systems in which humans are embedded to thrive in perpetuity.” *The Office of Sustainability Academic Advisory Committee is comprised of two members of the Office of Sustainability (ex-officio), nine faculty members representing nine departments across the university, two graduate student representatives, two undergraduate representatives, one dean, and one provost-designate.

The University of Alberta maintains a research portal online that identifies research. The School of Energy and the Environment (http://www.see.ualberta.ca/) conducted a survey which identified researchers involved in energy and environmental research and the Environmental Research and Studies Centre (http://www.ualberta.ca/ERSC/) lists professors considered to be environmental experts. To complete the inventory, the University of Alberta’s website contains a link to all faculties and departments. Each faculty and department contains a link to all faculty members. All faculty members' research interests were read and then identified as sustainable according to the definition. Once this was catalogued, the results were compared with the School of Energy and the Environment’s website, the Environmental Research and Studies Centre’s website and a spreadsheet developed during Environment Week, when researchers were asked to identify themselves or colleagues who might be involved in sustainability research. Finally, the websites of major funding agencies, such as Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council were searched for funding related to sustainability research to researchers at the University of Alberta.