Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 74.81
Liaison Kelli O'Day
Submission Date March 6, 2020

STARS v2.2

University of California, Davis
AC-9: Research and Scholarship

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 10.51 / 12.00 Kelli O'Day
Assessment Program Manager
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Part 1. Sustainability research

Total number of employees that conduct research:
1,814

Number of employees engaged in sustainability research:
641

Percentage of employees that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
35.34

Part 2. Sustainability research by department

Total number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts research:
156

Number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts sustainability research:
88

Percentage of departments that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
56.41

Research Inventory 

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

A brief description of the methodology the institution followed to complete the research inventory:
The Office of Sustainability received an inventory spreadsheet including all sponsorships for research that was conducted in the 2016-2019 timeframe (including sponsorships for research that started prior to 2016 and continued into the three-year time frame and sponsorships for research that started during the three-year time frame and continued after 2019). A team of four sustainability team members identified which research projects from the inventory were related to sustainability by reading the project title, abstracts (if applicable for further determination), and PI websites (if applicable for further determination). Research was identified as “sustainable” or “not sustainable” based on the definition for “sustainability research” included in the STARS 2.2 Technical Manual under AC 9.

Once all sustainable research projects from the inventory spreadsheet were identified, any research activities labeled “training/instruction”, “fellowship”, “other”, “other service”, “public service”, “equipment”, and “infrastructure/capital improvement” were removed from the inventory because the sponsorship was not used specifically for research. The remaining data was analyzed in order to calculate the final numbers listed in the above sections.

The “total number of employees that conduct research” is the number of faculty at UC Davis, since UC Davis is a research institution where all faculty could potentially conduct research. To find the “number of employees engaged in sustainability research”, a list of PI names and Co-PI names whose projects were identified as “sustainable” were pulled from the inventory spreadsheet. Duplicate names were removed, and the final remaining names were counted to yield the number of employees engaged in sustainability research.

The “total number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts research” was calculated by counting the names of administrative departments specified in the inventory spreadsheet (duplicates were removed) and that number was added to the number of any remaining academic departments that were not specified in the inventory of research projects. Departments not specified in the inventory of research projects were added because UC Davis is a research institution and an employee from any academic department could potentially conduct research; the Schools of Medicine and Nursing and clinical research associated with UC Davis Health (Sacramento campus) were excluded, since the Davis campus is the reporting boundary for this assessment report. The final “number of academic departments that included at least one employee who conducts research” is greater than the number of academic departments included in PRE 5 because some of the research conducted by UC Davis employees belonged to academic divisions or research centers that were not included on the official list of academic departments. Because academic divisions and research centers including at least one employee conducting sustainable research were included in the numerator, academic divisions and research centers were also included in the denominator. The “number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts sustainability research” was calculated by pulling the list of administrative departments identified as participating in “sustainable” research from the inventory, removing any duplicates, and counting the remaining names.

The attached inventory PDF includes a list of all sponsorships for research projects during the 2016-2019 timeframe that were identified as “sustainable”. Because some researchers received multiple sponsorships for the same or multiple research projects, some researcher names appear more than once. Duplicate names were removed prior to calculating the final numbers included in the sections above.

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the institution’s sustainability research is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
Chinyi Lydia Kao, a student employee in the UC Davis Office of Sustainability, and Kelli O’Day, full-time employee in the UC Davis Office of Sustainability, led in compiling this credit response. Additionally, Kiana Lee, a student employee in the UC Davis Office of Sustainability, and Vindyani Jayasinghe, a visiting Humphrey Fellow with the Office of Sustainability, assisted in data analyzation for this credit.

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.