References for Campus Sustainability

Relevant Web Sites

AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education)

Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable future

APPA (Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers)

Sustainable Development on Campus: Tools for Decision Makers (International Institute for Sustainable Development)

Blueprint for a Green Campus , Initiatives for Higher Education (A Project of The Heinz Family Foundation)

Alliance For Sustainability Through Higher Education

Campus Ecology Program , National Wildlife Federation

Relevant Articles

"Green Destiny: Universities Leading the Way to a Sustainable Future",
Christopher Uhl; Amy Anderson
BioScience, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 36-42

Annotation: General article about greening college campuses. Case studies include various objectives such as reducing dependence on fossil fuels, conserving water resources, ending materials waste, and eating food produced sustainably, among others.

"Rating Colleges",David W. Orr
Conservation Biology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 138-140

Annotation: This article is about rating colleges based on their sustainability. This could be useful for comparing NCG schools.

"Sustainability: A Touchstone Concept for University Operations, Education, and Research", Christopher Uhl, Dominik Kulakowski, Jeffrey Gerwing, Michelle Brown, Mark Cochrane. Conservation Biology, Vol. 10, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 1308-1311
Annotation: This article talks about the benefits and importance of teaching sustainability on campus. Probably not the most useful article, but page 3 has a table with "Possible Indicators of a Sustainable University," which might be helpful.

"Education in the Real World", Ben Strauss Conservation Biology, Vol. 9, No. 6 (Dec., 1995), pp. 1346-1348
Annotation: An article that explains usefulness of teaching sustainability. It includes the 10 major recommendations of the "Blueprint for a Green Campus."

"Institutional assessment tools for sustainability in higher education: strengths, weaknesses, and implications for practice and theory", Michael Shriberg. University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, 418 Second #3, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, USA

Annotation: This paper analyzes recent efforts to measure sustainability in higher education across institutions. The benefits of cross-institutional assessments include: identifying and benchmarking leaders and best practices; communicating common goals, experiences, and methods; and providing a directional tool to measure progress toward the concept of a "sustainable campus". Ideal assessment tools identify the most important attributes of a sustainable campus, are calculable and comparable, measure more than eco-efficiency, assess processes and motivations and are comprehensible to multiple stakeholders. The 11 cross-institutional assessment tools reviewed in this paper vary in terms of stage of development and closeness to the "ideal tool". These tools reveal (through their structure and content) the following critical parameters to achieving sustainability in higher education: decreasing throughput; pursuing incremental and systemic change simultaneously; including sustainability education as a central part of curricula; and engaging in cross-functional and cross-institutional efforts.