STARS can be a powerful tool for student learning. AASHE asked two students whose master’s theses are about STARS to share highlights from their research experience, including “aha!” moments and lessons learned.

Kevin Gilford (left photo), an MA candidate in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Kyle Murphy (right photo), who completed his Masters of Environmental Studies degree at The Evergreen State College in 2009, shared their experiences.

1) What wa***|*s/is your thesis question or topic?
*|Kevin Gilford*|: I am using our experiences in the STARS Pilot and version 1.0 as a case study to assess its value as:

1) A tool to measure sustainability
2) A process to educate students, faculty, and staff about real-world sustainability issues
3) A lens to focus the institution’s purpose as a leader in sustainability practice, education and research
4)  A catalyst to create a stronger sense of place and community around a common purpose, a more sustainable campus.

Kyle Murphy: My thesis project was completed and approved on June 19, 2009. The title of my thesis is “Evaluating the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) at The Evergreen State College.” I investigated three main questions in my study:

1. Is STARS an effective tool for use at The Evergreen State College (did the framework address issues important to Evergreen, did it meet the criteria of an ideal assessment framework, and what are the advantages and disadvantages)?
2. Does the STARS process lead to organizational learning?
3. What does STARS reveal about Evergreen’s commitment to sustainability?

**
2) Why did you choose to focus on this?**
Kevin Gilford: Actually, I changed topics from wind energy to a broader one of assessing all aspects of an institution’s sustainability efforts because my interests became broader in scope – I like the many dimensions of sustainability and they are represented in STARS. Also, my career plan is to be a sustainability coordinator in an organization, perhaps a college or university, or to be a consultant. The first step in job like this is to assess the current state of sustainability in an organization. STARS provides excellent real-world experience in doing sustainability assessment that is applicable to many organizations, including businesses, governments or communities, not just institutions of higher education.

Kyle Murphy: Much of the Masters of Environmental Studies Program at Evergreen focuses on understanding humans’ place in the ecosystem, increasing our understanding of the concepts of sustainability. Prior to my graduate work I didn’t have a lot of experience or knowledge with sustainability in general, or college sustainability in particular, so I was interested in gaining more knowledge. Another aspect that interested me was the notion of Evergreen as an environmental and sustainability leader. Evergreen regularly receives awards and is noted for environmentalism, sustainability and addressing climate change. Evergreen’s good reputation as an environmentally conscious institution has been with the college since its beginnings. Being able to use a comprehensive sustainability framework that looks at everything from environmental footprint to sustainable investing and human resources presented for me a very interesting opportunity to really test this reputation of Evergreen as an environmental leader, and at the same time, test this new framework and see not only what it revealed about Evergreen’s place on the sustainability spectrum, but also determine if the process of conducting a sustainability assessment in and of itself would lead an institution to make decisions that would promote and advance sustainability.
 

3) How did the project go? What did you do?
*|Kevin Gilford*|: We participated in the STARS pilot and learned much about our institution from that program. We presented our findings to the university’s leadership team and received enthusiastic support for participating in STARS V1.0 – no small feat in a time when funding any project is very difficult – which I think speaks to the value of STARS and the increasing importance of sustainability in higher education and at our institution. Now we are starting up our data collection for STARS 1.0 and several students are participating as part of independent study or research curriculum classes. It’s exciting -- we expect to complete the project and receive our rating by the end of this calendar year.

Kyle Murphy: Using a case study research design, I took a multidisciplinary approach to data collection for STARS implementation. What that means is I basically coordinated the completion of the STARS framework assessment at Evergreen. In order to complete the assessment it was necessary to seek data and information, and involve numerous faculty, staff and student employees/interns in the STARS process. I was then able to follow up the completion of the assessment with a serious of interviews and standard questions to those individuals to try and determine what they learned from the process of conducting a sustainability assessment. In addition, I went through all the credit reporting forms, and tried to determine the scores that Evergreen would have received. From this data I was able to conduct some quantitative analysis of Evergreen’s overall level of sustainability. (For a more detailed description of the methods I used, refer to Chapter 2 and 3 of my thesis (pdf).)
 

4) Were there any “aha!” moments or key lessons learned that you’d like to share? What advice would you give to others considering making STARS a thesis or research project topic?
Kevin Gilford: For me, and I think the other students who participated in the pilot, it was the realization of how valuable the STARS process itself, not just the rating, is. It was a great learning experience for the students, as well as the faculty and staff who collaborated on providing information, and gave us a clearer understanding of sustainability in general. And, of course, now we have a clearer picture of our university is performing in achieving our goal of becoming a more sustainable campus, which helps us plan our future initiatives.

STARS, because it is so comprehensive and measures many dimensions of sustainability, is an excellent measurement tool for research and it offers opportunities for exploring a particular area more in depth, such as food or transportation. STARS can answer many questions but it also raises many more. The most difficult thing about using STARS for a master’s thesis may be narrowing down your topic enough to finish it!

Kyle Murphy: I think the biggest lesson I learned was that STARS appeared to be a very effective tool for encouraging organizational learning. Organizational learning can lead to changes in behavior that reflect new knowledge and insights. I also found the STARS framework to be an effective tool for use at Evergreen, and I recommended the institution continue to participate in the program. Specifically the STARS framework addressed those areas that Evergreen feels are important, thus highlighting the sustainability work that Evergreen does. But it also address some areas that are important to consider in terms of sustainability that Evergreen hadn’t really spent much time thinking about, such as investing. I saw this as a benefit because it could force an institution to address those areas that are important to advancing sustainability, but maybe haven’t been a priority.

I was also encouraged by relative ease of implementing the STARS framework at Evergreen. I was basically able to fully and successfully implement the STARS framework at Evergreen, while working full time in my current career. This led me to the conclusion in my thesis that STARS provides an excellent opportunity for institutions of higher education to involve students in this type of work, thus providing students with practical knowledge that will help shape them as future leaders and decision makers. Additionally, in these tough economic times, it presents institutions with a very feasible option for implementing the STARS framework utilizing student labor which comes at a fraction of the cost of paid employees; in fact, I was actually paying the college to conduct the STARS assessment through my tuition.

I proposed follow up research on STARS that would be excellent opportunities for students. As I mentioned above, I found that STARS appeared to be an effective tool for encouraging organizational learning. Future research could delve deeper into this aspect of STARS and determine if continued implementation at an institution of higher education results in organizational change and the advancing of an institution’s commitment to sustainability. Also, a topic of concern that came up during my interviews and interactions with participating faculty, staff and students at Evergreen was how AASHE would normalize metrics to provide accurate comparability between institutions. Future research could be conducted on STARS implementation at various institutions to determine the fairness of the STARS normalization process.

For additional background, see Kyle's full thesis (pdf) and corresponding PowerPoint presentation (pdf).  

Many thanks to Kyle and Kevin for sharing their experiences. If you’d like to contribute to an article or blog post about your experience with STARS, please email the STARS Team (stars@aashe.org).