A number of STARS Charter Participants have asked for advice on how to approach the data collection process. We asked four STARS Liaisons, whose institutions participated in the STARS Pilot Project in 2008 and are now registered as STARS Charter Participants, for lessons learned and tips to share. Read on for sage advice from:

• Sara Cleaves – Associate Director, University Office of Sustainability, University of New Hampshire
• Chrissy Cooley – Sustainability Resource Coordinator, Pacific Lutheran University (Wash.)
• Clare Hintz – Campus Sustainability Coordinator, Northland College (Wisc.)
• Julie Plummer – Sustainability Manager, Eastern Iowa Community College District

AASHE: What approach is your institution taking to collecting data? How did you gather data for the pilot?

Sara Cleaves:Our approach to collecting data is as follows:

1. We are using the STARS pilot data and building off that base.
2. I have an undergraduate intern working the entire academic year for me 10 hours/week with 90% of his time spent on collecting STARS data. He culls websites and course catalogues, various office and departmental reports, our greenhouse gas inventory, and other existing data sources to update/add on to our pilot year data.
3. After getting approval and buy-in from our President, Provost, and the President's Cabinet (which includes various vice presidents), we ask certain VP's or deans/associate deans to please email their managers and staff that will be in touch for STARS data collection and to please work with us on this.
4. My student or I send follow-up emails, phone calls or meetings to get updated data.
5. Since there is no one person or office who collates all of data on what is taught and researched on campus, we will also be doing a survey online of faculty and graduate students to try to capture this information. My intern and I have a draft list of courses, academic programs, and research we've collated from course catalogues, websites, office/departmental reports, the Office of Sponsored Research (external research funding), etc., and we will ask people to update and add to this list.

Chrissy Cooley:A lot of the information we have needed can be found through various ways online; either on the website or various news articles that have been posted in campus publications. If the information is not available, we try to decide who would have the information we need, and add it to a list of questions. Once we feel like we have all the questions for someone, we ask. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it takes a little while to get a response.

Clare Hintz:Northland has about 150 faculty and staff, 650 students, and 17 buildings on one campus. We have no position for institutional research, and data collection and storage on environmental performance has been fairly decentralized up until the last five years or so, though we have energy data going back to the 1990s. The culture of the campus, building on over thirty years of an environmental ethic, is such that nearly all faculty and staff are supportive of the project; at the same time, most are handling multiple responsibilities and have very limited time. As campus sustainability coordinator, I led the data collection process for the pilot, with some help from our Director of Facilities, Rick Waligora. I also had the part time help of two work-study students over the summer and academic year: my energy coordinator, and the student chair of our Environmental Council. I also involved an Environmental Ethics course in evaluating the criteria of the pilot. To collect data for the Curriculum component, I conducted surveys of our faculty, and relied on data kept by the Dean’s Office. I interviewed the offices of Facilities, Business, and Human Resources to collect much of the other data.

For our current STARS application, I am working with a student who is making the data collection the capstone project for her major, as well as the offices I listed above. I also plan to involve courses as the timeline of the project permits. Several courses are involved with creating our Climate Action Plan, and that work also supports the STARS data collection.

Julie Plummer:I was the only person at our institution responsible for our participation in the STARS Pilot Project and the associated data collection. When collecting data for the STARS pilot, I first had to identify which EICCD department and contact held the data that I needed. Since we have three campuses, this was sometimes three different people. I first identified contacts for each STARS credit. I then wrote an explanation of the STARS pilot project to go along with my written data request, and although I often spoke to people in person or by phone, I always provided a written request as well. Since these were electronic, people could often attach the data or provide answers right on my document. I worked closely with the Facilities Managers, Business Office, and Institutional Research for most of the data collection, and relied on the Deans at each campus to provide me much of the curriculum information. Oftentimes I found that my contacts would point me in the right direction to the data, but that I had to look it up in the files myself. I also got energy usage information directly from the utility companies – in most cases this was provided for free, but I had to transfer the data to a spreadsheet on my own. I did find that in some instances, data that would fulfill the requirements of a STARS credit was already collected for another purpose by the institution.

AASHE: Are there any lessons learned about collecting data that you’d like to share?

*|Sara Cleaves: *|

1. Get administrator buy-in ahead of time and ask them to communicate to their managers, staff, and faculty colleagues that UNH is participating in STARS as part of our commitment to sustainability and to please work with whomever is collecting the data as needed. This gives staff and faculty "permission" to spend time getting you information and shows top-down buy-in.
2. Start early! It takes time to collect and organize all of these data.
3. Involve students as it's a great learning experience. My intern also presents his or her findings at our annual Undergraduate Research Conference.
4. Stress the internal benefits of doing STARS: an institution can use the data collected to see where they are and make plans for where they want to go with sustainability; you could use some of the data in grant and RFP applications, student and faculty recruitment materials, other PR, etc.

Chrissy Cooley:Start NOW. January 2011 seems like it is so far away, but some of this information is really hard to get, because it goes through so many people. Reading through the first 17 or so pages of the technical manual is important, as it gives you some information that is nice to know later on. Also, it is really important to collect all of the questions you might have for an individual or department so that you aren`t going back to them repeatedly. Using the information on the AASHE website has been very helpful, as well.

Stay organized. Keep an electric folder of each credit to hold ALL the documents and your personal notes. This helps for reference later, and not duplicating work.

Clare Hintz:It was helpful to have completed two greenhouse gas emissions reports prior to the STARS pilot: the process of data collection and checking was already underway. It was critical to have the help of skilled students, though I learned that some data collection was better conducted by staff, because the process of orienting the students took too long. Building a collaboration with faculty and their courses was helpful, especially when I framed and narrowed the tasks ahead of time, and did not leave it up to the classes to choose which portion of the project to work on. I had easy access to the vice-presidential level where I needed data; on campuses where this may be more difficult, it will be helpful to have the support of a president or provost to help the flow of information.

Julie Plummer:Lessons learned include allowing adequate time for my data requests, but also giving firm deadlines; providing an explanation of how the data will be used, and how the STARS program will benefit the institution so that people had the reason behind my request; and timing my requests to avoid the very busiest times of the semester or academic year for my colleagues. I found that I learned many things about my institution by undertaking STARS pilot data collection, including more about our purchasing procedures, learning outcomes of various curriculum offerings, and support programs for underrepresented groups. The opportunity to collect STARS data expanded my ability to integrate into the “big picture” of our institution’s mission and operations.

AASHE: Do you have any advice for other institutions that are embarking on the data collection process?

Sara Cleaves:See above. Start early and stay organized. Spreadsheets and talented student interns are key. And communicate to others what you are doing and why so a request for data doesn't come out of the blue.

Chrissy Cooley: You can never report on something without affecting the end result. Some departments that we have worked with have been interested in pursuing the idea of sustainability more in depth than we expected originally. We have drafted a list of recommendations based on each of the STARS points (with our current initiatives as a baseline) that we can then pass on to those departments. The key is, just stick with it. It can sometimes seem overwhelming, and sometimes no one has the answer you need, but the more investigating and asking you do, and the more time you have, the more successful you can be. But if you start asking people about these programs, be prepared to follow through with support to get them started.

Clare Hintz: Most importantly, I would advise campuses to begin right away, and set weekly goals for data collection, so that it doesn’t pile up at the end! Keeping clear notes about where data is stored and who updates it is important not only to teach future students how to collect the next round of data, but also serves to preserve knowledge amidst staff turnover. I find it helpful to have a summary checklist to show me which credits we have achieved, which we need more data to be recognized for, and which we still want to reach for: this forms the backbone of our strategic development as a sustainable campus, and is a concise report to provide to the administration.

Julie Plummer: Data collection IS a time-consuming process; the better organized you can be, the better the collection process will go. Some of the STARS credits require trend data over a period of years, and I am glad that I took the time to set up a system to allow me to continue to collect data for future years during my initial pilot collection.

Many thanks to Sara, Chrissy, Clare, and Julie for sharing this advice.  Please add your suggestions for and questions about data collection strategies by commenting on this post.

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).