Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 60.52
Liaison Lindsey MacDonald
Submission Date March 1, 2019
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Western Washington University
EN-7: Employee Educators Program

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 1.97 / 3.00 Carol Berry
Manager
Transportation Services
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total number of employees (staff + faculty, headcount):
2,660

Number of employees served (i.e. directly targeted) by a peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education program (avoid double-counting):
1,750

Percentage of employees served by a peer-to-peer educator program:
65.79

Name of the employee educators program:
Sustainable Office Certification

Number of employees served (i.e. directly targeted) by the program (headcount):
1,750

A brief description of the program, including examples of peer-to-peer outreach activities:
Sustainable Office Certification (SOC) is for all staff in administrative and academic office working groups. The program recruits a volunteer coordinator in each office, and provides training, coaching and assistance for the Office Sustainability Coordinator and other office staff. Training includes use of the Sustainable office score sheet and tools, to assess and measure baseline workplace practices; coaching in improvement of practices, maintaining a commitment to best practices, gaining participation of all office staff, and attaining certification goals for their daily practices that reduce energy and materials consumption, impacts and waste. SOC provides offices with a checklist for Sustainable Workplace assessment and offers assistance with the certification process. Upon submitting the assessment, an office receives a framed Certificate of Schievement with its appropriate rating: bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. To additionally increase participation and add competitiveness, SOC hosts a Recognition event annually. The program also communicates with all campus employees in "Power Down" campaigns, promoting energy conservation awareness and action, 4 times per year.

A brief description of how the employee educators are selected:
Outreach and recruitment by word of mouth, personal contact, presentations to Directors meetings, through University communications network, and campus surveys. Volunteer coordinators may be nominated or assigned the role by their supervisors, or may request the assignment. To date, a total of 34 office working groups are certified, 25% of all administrative, academic and clerical offices, including over 300 total non-student, staff and professional employees. Another 190 student employees are involved, within these offices

A brief description of the formal training that the employee educators receive to prepare them to conduct peer outreach:
Education for the employee educators and departments is provided in the following ways: one-on one meetings between the Department Coordinator and the SOC manager; group meetings, information sessions and trainings that all the SOC coordinators and other interested staff are invited to attend; and department staff meetings where the SOC manager presents an information session or a training to a department, with the assistance of the department coordinator; Assistance with situational problem-solving in an office or department.

A brief description of the financial and/or administrative support the institution provides to the program (e.g. annual budget and/or paid faculty/staff coordination):
The Sustainable Office Certification Program, Power Down, and other elements of the Employee Sustainable office Program makes up 35% of the duties of one full-time staff administrator in the office of sustainability, and one .5 FTE student staff position The annual Budget for the program ( payroll and programming) is $63,600

Name of the employee educators program (2nd program):
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Number of employees served (i.e. directly targeted) by the program (headcount) (2nd program):
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A brief description of the program, including examples of peer-to-peer outreach activities (2nd program):
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A brief description of how the employee educators are selected (2nd program):
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A brief description of the formal training that the employee educators receive to prepare them to conduct peer outreach (2nd program):
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A brief description of the financial and/or administrative support the institution provides to the program (e.g. annual budget and/or paid faculty/staff coordination) (2nd program):
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A brief description of all other employee peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education programs, including the number of employees served and how employee educators are selected, trained, and supported by the institution:
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Total number of hours employee educators are engaged in peer-to-peer sustainability outreach and education activities annually:
116

The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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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.