Public Engagement

Introduction

Engagement in community problem-solving is fundamental to sustainability. By engaging with community members and organizations in the governmental, non-profit and for-profit sectors, institutions can help solve sustainability challenges. Community engagement can help students develop leadership skills while deepening their understandings of practical, real-world problems and the process of creating solutions.

2946 resources

Willamette University’s Zena Forest & Farm: Serving Sustainability Plus Broader Institutional Goals

  • Willamette University (OR)

As more liberal arts institutions establish and acquire nearby farms and undeveloped properties for sustainability education and programming, it is of increasing importance to critically examine these decisions and see ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Sanctity of Sanctuary: Paul Strauss and the Equinox Farm

  • Xavier University (OH)

The Sanctity of Sanctuary: Paul Strauss and the Equinox Farm, is an Appalachian love affair between a man, his farm, and his desire to make the world a better place ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Building a Permaculture Garden with Community

  • Xavier University (OH)

Building a permaculture garden with community members, students, faculty and local farmers, has been an exhilarating experience. It started with an alumni neighbor asking if she could work on a ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Sponsored Theater Presentation: Partnerships in Sustainability: A Collaborative Approach Presenters

  • GSE Research (West Yorkshire)

Building responsible businesses in a sustainable society is a challenge which faces citizens and governments, employers and employees, producers and consumers alike. Possibly most of all, it is a challenge ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Payment for Ecosystem Services for Carbon Sequestration in Haiti: Offsetting University Air Travel Emission to Meet Sustainability Goals

  • Sewanee - The University of the South (TN)

This case study explores the institutional dimension of a university program taking climate action at the community level, with a goal to contribute to sustainable development in Haiti, while building ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Campus Community Garden Completed its First Successful Harvest

  • University of Alaska Fairbanks (AK)

After their first successful harvest, members of the UAF Campus Community Garden are looking forward to new opportunities next season. After being conceived last spring, gardening enthusiasts constructed a working ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Service Learning and Sustainability: Students prepare environmental risk assessment reports for urban homeowners in Nashville

  • Tennessee State University (TN)
  • Vanderbilt University (TN)

In 2010 the Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement at Tennessee State University (TSU), a historically black college, presented a proposal to the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Adaptation and Sustainability Planning for Metro Davidson County Tennessee

  • Lipscomb University (TN)

The City of Nashville experienced a historic flood in 2010 that resulted in $2 billion in estimated damages to private property; rainfall that exceeded 17 inches, highest in 140 years ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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A Call to Action: Higher Education, Civic Engagement & Resilient Communities

  • Strategic Energy Innovations (CA)

Climate risk is a function of exposure and vulnerability to impacts, and some communities are at greater risk than others. Impacts of climate change will be felt both as sudden ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Partnerships for Youth Development: Green Leadership Academy for Diverse Ecosystems (GLADE)

  • Missouri State University (MO)

The Green Leadership Academy for Diverse Ecosystems (GLADE) is a week-long academy for high school students sponsored by the Greater Ozarks Audubon Society, Missouri State University, Missouri Department of Conservation ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Reinventing Community: Oberlin College's Green Arts District

  • Oberlin College (OH)
  • BNIM Architects (MO)

The Green Arts District (GAD) is the heart of a regional plan launched in 2009 to transform the progressive college campus and city into a sustainable model of a post ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Lessons from Lama: The Importance of Community in Sustainability

  • Virginia Tech (VA)

Sustainability creates communities. Or perhaps it is that communities create sustainability. We in the sustainability field have known for a long time that to get the job done, we need ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Building Resilient Communities through Community-University Partnerships

  • Saint Mary's University of Minnesota (MN)
  • University of Minnesota, Duluth (MN)
  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (MN)
  • University of Minnesota System Office (MN)

The University of Minnesota builds resilient communities throughout the state: At scales from neighborhood to community to regional to statewide; In duration, from months to semesters to year-long to multi-year ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Developing Resilient Communities through Community-University Partnerships

  • Luther College (IA)

One of the key strategies for dealing with global climate change is campus–community collaboration (M’Gonigle & Starke) to develop resilient, sustainable communities (Ausubel); as demonstrated at two small ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Don't Go it Alone: Collaborations for Community Resiliency

  • Cornell University (NY)
  • Ithaca College (NY)

This session will discuss four important mutually beneficial collaborations that Ithaca College and Cornell University have undertaken together or in which they are major participants, along with other sectors of ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Closing the Loop on Waste: How Student Waste Becomes a Community Resource

  • Appalachian State University (NC)

At the end of every school year, students leave unwanted goods behind…literally tons of it. Faced with the question of how to handle this wanton waste, Appalachian State University ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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From the Bayou to our Campus: Immersive Experience as an Opportunity for Student Leadership

  • University at Buffalo (NY)

Over the last two years, our students have travelled to southern Louisiana as part of our Alternative Winter Break program to help transform and adapt the landscape into one that ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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The Sustainable City Year Program: An Adaptable Model for Large Scale, University Engagement and Impact

  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (MN)

In 2012, AASHE recognized the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) leaders with the Faculty Innovation Award. The award recognized the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP), which the ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Rehearsing Change: Using Creative Means to Empower the Sustainability Dialogue

  • Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Pichincha)

This workshop shares methodologies that can be used to addresses several obstacles to engagement and understanding: 1) we work in a multi-faceted field in which the many actors (students, faculty ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Access to Local Food in the Carolinas Program: Campuses to Communities

  • Davidson College (NC)
  • Duke University (NC)
  • Furman University (SC)
  • Johnson C. Smith University (NC)

The Duke Endowment (TDE) schools, Davidson College, Duke University, Furman University, and Johnson C. Smith University, all have significant interest in promoting sustainable farm and food systems in the Carolinas ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Playing Like A Team: Advancing Campus Sustainability By Greening Sports

  • University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (MN)
  • Green Sports Alliance (OR)
  • Natural Resources Defense Council (DC)

With help from organizations such as AASHE and the U.S. EPA, colleges and universities across the nation are implementing campus-wide sustainability programs to enhance their environmental performance. Many of ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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What to Know When Building Bridges With Evangelical Christians on Sustainability and Climate Change

  • Carroll University (WI)
  • Houghton College (NY)
  • Center for Environmental Leadership (CA)

Both what American evangelicals believe about the nexus of faith, science and culture, and the fabric of the social institutions they inhabit, influence their responses to environmental sustainability and climate ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Transforming Enemies Into Allies: How to Have Difficult—But Necessary—Conversations in Our Roles as Sustainability Change Agents

  • University of California, Office of the President (CA)
  • University of Hawaii - West Oahu (HI)
  • GreenerU (MA)

This workshop will give us the space to learn and practice some tactics for having those difficult conversations that are unavoidably part of the work of making change happen within ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Beyond Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities at the Growing Edge of Campus Sustainability

  • Appalachian State University (NC)
  • Warren Wilson College (NC)
  • Western Michigan University (MI)

Over the past 15 years, sustainability has grown from obscurity to a mainstream higher education phenomenon. The field’s maturity was evident in three questions raised during informal conversations at ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Farm to Institution New England: Successes & Lessons Learned in Institutional Local Food Procurement

  • Skidmore College (NY)
  • Farm to Institution New England (VT)

After several years of farm to institution projects and initiatives in the northeast, there have been many successes and many important lessons learned. This panel will highlight the ways that ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Renewable Energy Market Transformation Efforts by Illinois Community Colleges

  • Heartland Community College (IL)
  • Southwestern Illinois College (IL)

The Illinois Green Economy Network (IGEN) is building the capacity of Illinois community colleges to identify and fill gaps in the renewable energy market transformation efforts across Illinois. Attend this ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Practicing Behavior Interventions: Understanding and Implementing Sustainable Behavior Change on Your Campus

  • Stanford University (CA)
  • GreenerU (MA)

Behavior change is a buzzword in sustainability work – mostly because our job on campuses, among many other responsibilities, is to change people’s behaviors to ones that are more sustainable ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Collaborative Advocacy in the Southeast: Creating a Southeast College and University Coalition

  • University of Arkansas (AR)
  • Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (GA)

National organizations, such as AASHE, convene institutions of higher education on the premise that the exchange of ideas, resources and best practices better enable the design and adoption of sustainable ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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All Projects are Personal: Making Change by Building Relationships

  • University of Massachusetts Amherst (MA)
  • CoFED (NM)

Those of us inspired by campus sustainability have ideas for how to make change but often lack the knack for moving an initiative forward with others. People respond to ideas ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Minnesota's Next Generation Environmental Congress: A Sustainability Leadership Model

  • Hamline University (MN)
  • University of Minnesota, Morris (MN)

The Next Generation Environmental Congress: A Sustainability Leadership Model workshop will provide key insights into and results of a university and state government hosted forum that offered students and youth ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Case Study in Building Sustainable Partnerships: Fair Trade Learning in Vieques, Puerto Rico

  • University of Mount Union (OH)
  • Susquehanna University (PA)

Prescott College’s limited-residency Ph.D. program in Sustainability Education allows students to design and lead their second year fall residency. In order to enhance the experiential and transformative nature ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning and Students as Agents of Change within Local Communities

  • Hillsborough Community College (FL)
  • University of South Florida (Tampa) (FL)

Through innovative partnerships, students at Hillsborough Community College (HCC) are extending their education beyond the classroom by providing community-wide leadership in the field of sustainability. In 2012-2013, examples of student-led ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Leveraging Community Partnerships to Enhance Climate Resiliency

  • Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (MA)
  • Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (DC)

Recent extreme storm events and new studies in climate science have brought to light the need to both prepare for a changing climate and to maintain strong relationships with host ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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The Nature of Sharing: Collaborating across Universities to Develop Education for Sustainability Certificate Programs

  • Manhattanville College (NY)
  • Webster University (MO)

AASHE Proposal for 2013, Nashville, TN

Short Title: Developing EfS certificate programs

Title: The nature of sharing: Collaborating across universities to develop Education for Sustainability certificate programs

--With universities struggling ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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The Sustainability Research Collaborative: A Multi-Institutional Model for Applied Investigation

  • Princeton University (NJ)
  • Yale University (CT)

The higher education sustainability field recognizes the need to apply rigorous research to applied campus-based challenges, both operational and cultural. The active networks of sustainability offices across the country make ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Motivating People Toward Sustainability: Applying Psychological Science to Green Behavior

  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (MN)

Achieving sustainability on university campuses requires engaging and changing the behavior of students, faculty, administrators, staff, and other members of the university community. New programs can suffer unexpected roadblocks if ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Film as a Medium to Engage a Broader Audience

  • Northern Arizona University (AZ)

This session will showcase a collection of short films highlighting a variety of initiatives at Northern Arizona University using various cinematic styles. The films are aimed at a wide audience ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Building a Strategy for Changing Behavior at Your Institution

  • Oberlin College (OH)

Academic institutions cannot achieve climate neutrality through technology alone; members of the institution must also be engaged in creating a culture of sustainability. Our research project employed a community-based social ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Re-growing the Penn State Student Farm: Designing a Living Lab Experience by Bringing All Partners to the Table

  • Pennsylvania State University (PA)

In response to the need for greater integration of sustainability in higher education, many institutions have created student farms on their campuses. Founded originally as an agricultural college, The Pennsylvania ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Environmental Justice: Inspiring Action Through Words

  • University of Colorado Boulder (CO)

As the University of Colorado Assembly for Sustainability and Equity, we aim to spread awareness about environmental justice issues, as well as empower individuals with solutions to these issues. Ultimately ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Water Conservation and Pollution Mitigation at the Source: A Cooperative Town-Gown & Private Sector Mission for a Sustainable Future

  • Appalachian State University (NC)

With less than one percent of accessible freshwater on Earth available for drinking water, there is a critical need to conserve and recycle water. In addition, municipal water and wastewater ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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A Rooted University: Growing Resiliency, Community, and Engaged Food Citizens

  • University of Michigan (MI)

With the impending energy descent and accelerating impacts of climate change, the need to foster resiliency and adaptation in the realm of higher education is increasingly pertinent. Universities provide a ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Teaching Sustainability & Fostering Change at Vanderbilt University

  • Vanderbilt University (TN)

Sustainability is the most pressing educational issue of the twenty-first century. In a crisis prone world of limited resources and rapid change, colleges and universities play a vital role in ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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How to Build a Career Saving the Planet? Just Ask

  • Bard College (NY)

What skills and experiences do you need to become people of power, people with the ability to affect the future, within five to ten years? What does it take to ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Drinking Sunlight: Maple Syrup from Your Dorm’s Backyard

  • Calvin University (MI)

As students at a small liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, opportunities to get involved in the world of sustainable living are endless. Western Michigan is known for producing ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Sustain U: Centralizing the University Community Around Sustainability

  • Carnegie Mellon University (PA)

Sustainability has always had a presence on the Carnegie Mellon campus, but not one widely acknowledged. Students and staff often pass by the Solar Decathlon house or the recycling room ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Bridging the Town Gown Gap: A Case Study of Civic Engagement and Sustainability

  • Indiana University South Bend (IN)

For most of us in higher education, service is typically seen as a second class activity worth little note; a burdensome but necessary duty to participate in a campus committee ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Kwantlen MultiPass Program - More Than Just A U-Pass

  • Kwantlen Polytechnic University (BC)

In 2011, Kwantlen Polytechnic University was faced with a unique problem to solve when the province of British Columbia announced the rollout of a new Universal Bus Pass program for ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Historic Green Building, 21st Century Energy Monitoring & City, College & Business Partnership at Maryville College

  • Maryville College (TN)

In spring 2013, the first building on the Maryville College (MC) campus received LEED certification. Built in 1876, Crawford House is one of the oldest and among the first historic ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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Sustainability at Michigan State is Bolder, by Design

  • Michigan State University (MI)

This session will outline a progressive strategic initiative at Michigan State University and its impact on its sustainability program. This initiative is called Bolder by Design. Launched by President Lou ...

  • Posted Feb. 26, 2016
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This tab provides access to data collected through AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS). STARS is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. STARS enables meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community.

All responses reference content from reports under the latest version of STARS, version 2.2. AASHE membership and log-in is required.

EN 10: Community Partnerships

EN 11: Inter-campus Collaboration

EN 12: Continuing Education

EN 13: Community Service

EN 14: Participation in Public Policy

EN 15: Trademark Licensing

Additional analysis on scores and quantitative fields can be conducted using the STARS Benchmarking Tool.

Public Engagement Partners