Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 65.05
Liaison Konrad Schlarbaum
Submission Date Feb. 15, 2021

STARS v2.2

University of Colorado Colorado Springs
AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 4.00 Niki Juhl
Instructor
Chemistry & Biochemistry
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution conduct an assessment of the sustainability literacy of its students?:
Yes

Which of the following best describes the literacy assessment? The assessment is administered to::
The entire (or predominate) student body, directly or by representative sample

Which of the following best describes the structure of the assessment? The assessment is administered as a::
Standalone evaluation without a follow-up assessment of the same cohort or representative samples

A copy of the questions included in the sustainability literacy assessment(s):
A list or sample of the questions included in the sustainability literacy assessment or the website URL where the assessment tool may be found:

See attached.


A brief description of how the literacy assessment was developed and/or when it was adopted:

The rubric was designed by the Compass Sustainability Committee, a team of faculty members who offer sustainability courses on campus. The rubric was tested and improved during our first year of assessment in Summer 2017. Inter-rater reliability measures were high and indicate that with training raters are able to use the rubric to consistently assess student learning about sustainability.


A brief description of how a representative sample was reached (if applicable) and how the assessment(s) were administered :

Once the course has been approved by the Compass Sustainability Committee, each faculty member is responsible for their own course content and assignments. Faculty members are asked to select one or more representative assignments that they believe show evidence of student learning about sustainability. These artifacts are collected and de-identified. Then a representative sample is drawn and distributed to faculty raters for scoring. As mentioned above, a representative sample was drawn from the work submitted, but not all faculty members are currently submitting work. We hope to improve this and reach a 100% submission rate in the next two years. All students must take a sustainability focused course before graduating, so we believe that sampling from all of these courses will provide a representative sample.


A brief summary of results from the literacy assessment(s):

Student work was scored on a faculty designed rubric with a 1-4 scale. The average scores across campus are reported below with the increased understanding since our 2018 submission.
Rubric Criteria                                   Campus Mean                 Change since 2018 Submission
C1 - Pillars of Sustainability........................2.6........................... +0.56
C2 - Interconnection of Pillars.......................2.2............................+0.34
C3 - Human/Environment Interaction....................2.4............................+0.58
C4 - Sustainability Related Evidence..................2.0............................+0.39
C5 – Sustainability Related Policy/Action.............2.2............................+0.38


Website URL where information about the sustainability literacy assessment is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Along with the assessment of the entire undergraduate population, the Sustainability Minor administers a pre/post assessment at the beginning and end of the capstone course required for the minor. The quiz used as an assessment is uploaded here.


Along with the assessment of the entire undergraduate population, the Sustainability Minor administers a pre/post assessment at the beginning and end of the capstone course required for the minor. The quiz used as an assessment is uploaded here.

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.