Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 67.42
Liaison Mary-Lee Townsend
Submission Date Oct. 6, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Western University
AC-10: Support for Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.00 / 4.00 Stefanie De Adder
Sustainability Coordinator
Facilities Management
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have a program to encourage student sustainability research that meets the criteria for this credit?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s program(s) to encourage student research in sustainability:
Environmental Science 4999E (an Honors Research Thesis) or Environmental Science 4970F/G (an Independent Study in Environmental Science) are major research project courses that upper-year undergraduate students undertake. Environmental Science 4999E is a major laboratory or field project that emphasizes experimental design, instrumentation, collection and analysis of data, and communication of experimental results by oral (presented at Earth Day Colloquium) and written presentations. On a more related note to sustainability, Environmental Science 4970F/G is a course in which students conduct a research project in a particular field under the direction of a faculty member who is a member of the Centre for Environment and Sustainability. Environment and Sustainability 9200: Interdisciplinary Consulting Project, is a course in the MES program that gives students an opportunity to work with a client in a non-academic, applied setting to undertake environmental research. Each consulting group is responsible for completing a professional quality report and a formal presentations of their research findings and recommendations to their client.

The website URL where information about the student research program is available:
Does the institution have a program to encourage faculty sustainability research that meets the criteria for this credit?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s program(s) to encourage faculty research in sustainability:
Western will continue to encourage and pursue research that promotes sustainability accomplishments and knowledge at the local, regional and international levels. Details of the scope of these commitments can be found in the link provided below: Creating a Sustainable Western Experience: 10-Year Goals and 5- Year Action Plan (2012) (http://sustainability.uwo.ca/documents/strategy/SustainableWesternExperience.pdf). Western invites innovative partnerships - on and off-campus - to research and propose solutions to society’s most pressing sustainability challenges.Collaboration is encouraged internally to increase opportunities for transdisciplinary sustainability research and raise awareness on the scope of Western’s research activities in fields of sustainability. A sustainability fund designed to encourage sustainability initiatives on campus has been explored and is supported by the President's Advisory Committee on Environment and Sustainability. A detailed report has been prepared to establish the logistics of the fund.

The website URL where information about the faculty research program is available:
Has the institution formally adopted policies and procedures that give positive recognition to interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research during faculty promotion and/or tenure decisions?:
Yes

A brief description or the text of the institution’s policy regarding interdisciplinary research:
The University of Western Ontario's policies, procedures and commitment to collaborative research are: "The University is committed to research excellence and innovation. To date, the University’s strengths as a research-intensive institution have derived in good measure from the efforts of individual scholars within the established scholarly disciplines. Increasingly, however, such areas are expanding to include a wide array of topics of investigation posing challenges best met through the development of more complex models of research. To meet this challenge, the University encourages the formation of collaborative research entities, both within and across traditional disciplinary boundaries."

The website URL where information about the treatment of interdisciplinary research is available:
Does the institution provide ongoing library support for sustainability research and learning that meets the criteria for this credit?:
No

A brief description of the institution's library support for sustainability research and learning:
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The website URL where information about the institution's library support for sustainability is available:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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