Exploration of Creation Care and Sustainability Among Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) Members

Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC)

Publication Release Date: June 23, 2020
Date Posted: June 23, 2020
Submitted by: Daita Serghi
Content Type: Publications
Type: News or Magazine Article

Description

This exploration highlights Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) members who are creatively contributing to the common good and building a just, thriving world for all via environmental stewardship. The publication provides an overall analysis of what was found for each of CCCU’s 174 members on their public websites in 17 different dimensions of creation care and environmental stewardship. For each indicator the percentage represents what percentage of CCCU members indicate they do this facet of creation care on their websites. Over 45% of CCCU members were practicing sustainability in at least one dimension in some way, see results in the article.

Creation Care Dimensions Explored:

  • Distinctive Sustainability Initiatives Page on website
  • Energy Conservation
  • Sustainability / Conservation courses or curriculum
  • Curriculum at undergraduate and/or graduate level
  • Sustainability Office (stewardship/creation care) Institute / Center
  • Water Conservation
  • Waste Programs
  • Recycling Programs
  • Food Waste Programs
  • Compost Programs
  • Community Gardens
  • Student Involvement in Sustainability (RSOs; leadership; governance)
  • Materials Procurement (purchasing; reusing; restoring; chemicals)
  • Governance (Strategic vision or planning)
  • Green Investments / Endowment
  • Health and Wellness (personal well being connected to Earth well being)
  • Landscaping - Aesthetics

Reflection:

  1. There was no real geographic area (e.g., California) that was doing creation care and stewardship more
  2. Campuses with sustainability or Creation Care centers were able to be more holistic stewards and tell the story of this dimension of advocacy
  3. There is no ideal size to do environmental stewardship well -- Baylor University has 16k students but Houghton College has just over 1000 and both are Gold Star Stewards
  4. Recycling is done by many members but harder stewardship efforts (composting; green investments) are not. This makes them great targets for future environmental stewardship and justice efforts.
  5. Student engagement is a strong indicator or barometer of the value of sustainability and environmental stewardship on campuses

Gold Star Stewards

We are calling Gold Star members those who embrace at least 14 of these 17 dimensions of environmental stewardship. The following is a list of Gold Star CCCU members. These are not in order of greatest to least but ordered alphabetically.

Creation Care Allies

We are calling creation care allies those CCCU members who embrace at least 10 of these 17 dimensions of environmental stewardship. The following is a list of Creation Care Allies within CCCU membership. These are not in order of greatest to least but ordered alphabetically.

Shout Outs!

Shout outs for interesting concepts, project, partnerships that was eye catching to the undergraduate researcher on this project:

Share Your Efforts!

Please share what your campus is doing concerning environmental stewardship and sustainability. We would love to know who your champions are, what you are doing, and what public documents and/or online websites you are using to share your good work with the world.


Authors