Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 73.99
Liaison Mary-Lee Townsend
Submission Date Oct. 20, 2021

STARS v2.2

Western University
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Mary-Lee Townsend
Sustainability & Compliance Manager
Sustainability Office
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program to encourage students in multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the student sustainability research program:

Western University houses the Human Environments Analysis Lab (HEAL) which enables students from various academic background to research issues related to health and the environment.

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.

There are also awards:
http://www.uwo.ca/enviro/undergraduate/awards.html


Does the institution have a program to encourage academic staff from multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the faculty sustainability research program:

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.

Western also offers Green Awards to faculty and students with outstanding contributions to sustainability on campus and abroad. Several researchers in the past (from a variety of disciplines) have won the award for their research.


Has the institution published written policies and procedures that give positive recognition to interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research during faculty promotion and/or tenure decisions?:
Yes

A copy of the promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
---

The promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:

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."

http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/policies_procedures/section7/mapp79.pdf


Does the institution have ongoing library support for sustainability research and learning?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s library support for sustainability research:

The University maintains memberships that grant faculty discounts on all APCs.


Website URL where information about the institution’s support for sustainability research is available:
---

Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
---

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.