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Webinar: Assessing Sustainability Literacy & Culture: Innovations & Lessons Learned by Multiple Institutions

September 28, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EDT

Free

This interactive panel discussion will feature four presenters from different geographic regions (eastern and western United States) and institutional contexts (private and public, and from small liberal arts colleges to large universities) who will highlight their different approaches, shared challenges, and lessons learned from efforts to design and distribute surveys to assess sustainability literacy and culture (STARS credits AC-6 and EN-6) on their campus. The panel will discuss the process they used to design, peer-review and distribute their surveys, as well as approaches for analyzing and sharing the resulting data. The session will include insight on the opportunity to use these widely-dispersed sustainability surveys to fill in knowledge gaps pertaining to other sustainability initiatives, including those relevant to additional STARS credits, such as gauging: community service (EN-13), commuting data (OP-16), and courses (AC-1) and research (AC-9) related to sustainability. Participants will be encouraged to contemplate their institute’s goals for their literacy and culture assessment, including their target audience content matter and methodology. Lastly, the panel will review the new STARS 3.0 requirements for AC-6 and EN-6 so that participants can craft their sustainability literacy and culture survey to maximize STARS credits for versions 2.2 and 3.0, and at the same time, center the survey around supporting their institute’s sustainability initiatives. Participants will be provided access to the surveys designed by the presenters and their Institutions.

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Presenters

Details

	Tanja Srebotnjak, Director, Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives, Williams College Dr. Srebotnjak has worked on sustainability since 2000 and in a variety of settings, including at the United Nations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental think tank, academia, and an independent K-12 school. She holds a Masters in statistics from Dortmund Technical University and a PhD in environmental statistics and policy from the Yale School of the Environment.
	Julie Hopper, Sustainability Data Analyst, Office of Sustainability, University of Southern California Dr. Hopper recently joined the University of Southern California as a Sustainability Data Analyst and lead the effort to develop and launch a Sustainability Survey at USC on sustainability literacy, culture & behavior that will be going out to all students, staff, postdocs and faculty in April 2022. Prior to this she conducted research and taught undergraduate courses in Environmental Studies and Ecology at USC. During this time, she also conducted a project through the 2021 Scripps Rady Ocean Plastic Challenge focused on the processes leading to marine plastic pollution and relevant solutions. She received my PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015.
	Ashwani Vasishth, Professor of Sustainability, director, Center for Sustainability, Ramapo College Dr. Ashwani Vasishth is a Professor of Sustainability, Convener of the Sustainability Program (BA), and Director of the Sustainability Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He also serves as President for the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS). He has a Ph.D from the University of Southern California in Environmental Planning and a Master’s degree from MIT in International Development. He is currently focused on generating an ecosystem approach to ecological planning. He has worked in the area of regional planning in the fields of aviation planning, air quality planning and environmental planning, with a concentration in urban ecology and a broad range of interests in green infrastructure, impervious surface management, heat island mitigation, urban forestry, and landscape management in an integrative approach to regional planning. He currently teaches courses across a range of fields, from within a sustainability framework.
	Alice Mulder, Associate Professor Geography, director Sustainability Practices and Research Center, Weber State University Dr. Mulder is an associate professor of geography and the director of the Sustainability Practices and Research Center (SPARC) at Weber State University. She serves as the co-chair of the Environmental Initiatives Committee and is heavily involved in sustainability efforts across campus. Her current academic research interests sit broadly in human-environment interactions, specifically environmental sustainability on and off the campus, sustainability literacy and land conservation. Her worldview has been influenced by experiencing people, places and issues both near and far, including deserts of southern Utah, the monsoonal Deccan Plateau in India, New York’s Hudson Valley, beaches and volcanoes of Hawaii and the green misty hills of the Lake District in England.