Western Kentucky University
EN-9: Staff Professional Development and Training

The Office of Sustainability provides a variety of sustainability education and development opportunities throughout the year. These include workshops, demonstrations, and guest lectures on sustainability topics.

In Fall 2021 and Fall 2022, WKU Resource Conservation and the Office of Sustainability worked with Housing and Residence Life to train 200 Residence Assistants on how and why to recycling in Residence Halls is important, introduced the Cupanion program and informed them of other Sustainability related efforts on campus.

Environmental Service Attendants, Facilities and Grounds employees, and several offices (Student Activities, WKU Libraries, WKU Planning, Design, and Construction, etc.) around campus go through a recycling demonstration as a form of sustainability professional development, where they learn what is and is not recyclable on campus, led by the Coordinator of Resource Conservation, Beth Gafford. Employees continue to learn more about recyclables on campus through peer-to-peer interaction as they come onto the job, and learn more about what they will encounter as a WKU employee.

WKU employees in the Facilities Front Office and Facilities HVAC (two separate offices with separate purposes housed in the same building) host a friendly, but fierce, recycling competition between the two staff offices, determining by overall weight who recycled the most over each month's time! This recycling competition between staff offices allows for the fun, but educational opportunity to become even more acquainted with what is and is not recyclable on campus.

The sustainability champions staff organization is open to participation by all WKU staff. An educational/training item is presented at each monthly meetings for the organization.

All WKU Restaurant Group employees are trained regularly on techniques for reducing food preparation waste and composting, among other topics. All temporary employees for concessions are also trained on composting practices of the University.

WKU Facilities and the WKU Office of Sustainability offers professional development opportunities to its sustainability staff through the financial support and funding of attendance at the annual AASHE STARS Conference, several food waste documentary screenings, as well as inclusion in online webinars on GameDay Recycling initiatives, sustainability champions organizations, food waste diversion, and campus recycling.

Facilities management staff are expected to adhere to adopted sustainability policies of the University in their daily job-related tasks. An inherent part of their job performance reviews is, therefore, whether they adhered to these sustainability expectations.