I have very similar questions - as my college is looking for best practices in assessing sustainability.

Hi Luisa and Jeremy,

I'm on the STARS Steering Committee so I'm obviously fairly biased.  However, I'm also a student now and I am encouraging my school (University of Michigan) to use STARS in addition to a separate assessment that we already do every year because I think STARS offers some very real benefits over doing an independent assessment.  Below are some of the points I'm using to make the case for using STARS here.  They were written specifically for University of Michigan, but I expect they will be relevant for most campuses.

• Enhanced recognition for our sustainability leadership -  UM is doing a lot but it isn't really recognized either on campus or nationally. Participating in STARS could be a big help in overcoming this challenge. STARS is likely to emerge as the national standard for evaluating sustainability in higher education. It's the most comprehensive, comparable, and transparent system, and it has the support of many higher education associations. Media organizations, prospective students, and others are likely to turn to STARS for information on what campuses are doing. If UM isn't represented here, we'll likely continue to be overlooked.
• Receipt of an overall rating – Since STARS aggregates all sustainability efforts into a single metric, it provides a useful indicator of how we are doing over time and how we compare relative to other institutions.
• Reduced need to fill out other sustainability surveys – Several other sustainability rating systems have emerged, and many of them rely on annual surveys to collect their data. Each survey asks for data in different ways and responding to such requests can take quite a bit of time. Some other institutions are planning to submit their data through STARS and then just tell other rating systems to get any data from the institution's STARS submission. Having a strong STARS score can also provide defensibility if UM gets rated poorly in one of the less accountable and transparent systems.
• Greater contextual understanding of our efforts – Participating in STARS will help us see how we compare with peer institutions on specific sustainability indicators. While cross-campus comparisons are always imperfect, they can raise important questions and better enable us to learn from our peers.  Further, I think presenting our data where it can be viewed comparatively will make it more meaningful and interesting for students. A comparative rating is likely to be crucial for convicingly demonstrating to students and others that UM is serious about sustainability and could be an important part of creating a culture of sustainability on campus.
• New Ideas – The credits in STARS cover a wide range of sustainabilty practices so using STARS could provide additional ideas for ways we can move forward on sustainability.
• Unified framework for tracking all UM's sustainability efforts – STARS is quite a bit broader than our annual environmental report, so it may provide a useful tool for bringing data about all of UM's efforts into one place and bring new people into the conversation. It will also help students and others find answers to questions that aren't covered by the report..
• More effectively sharing our sustainability story for less cost – Most data submitted through STARS will be made available online in a searchable and easy-to-browse format. In one step, all of the information about what UM is doing will be made easily accessible to students, the campus sustainability community, and the public. It's almost certainly cheaper and more effective to post this information through STARS site than to create a similar structure ourselves.
• New educational opportunities – Preparing a STARS submission is great educational opportunity and indeed, STARS has already been the basis for a couple of Masters theses at other institutions.
• Opportunities to help shape the system – STARS will be evolve over time, and getting involved now will give us the opportunity to understand the system and provide feedback to help ensure it appropriately captures UM's sustainability efforts.
• Participating in STARS shouldn't be very costly - Registration fees for AASHE members like us are $650 if we register before Dec 31 ($900 after that). UM already collects a fair amount of the data required for STARS so there shouldn't be too much extra work in that regard (especially if you can get students like me to help out!). Also, third party verification isn't required, and the documentation requirements are fairly straightforward.

For those schools that don't already have a regular assessment in place, STARS will also save substantial time that would be required to develop indicators of your own.

I hope this is helpful!

Julian

Greetings all,

I have completed my research study pertaining to strategies that relate to environmental sustainability progress on U.S. campuses. First, for a full review, my dissertation is available online in AASHE's database of student sustainability research. Feel free to use it for your own information or research efforts.

A brief overview of the study

I investigated whether or not the advancement of environmental strategies within institutions had any impact on environmental sustainability rankings of colleges and universities. All data was quantified. 335 institutions were asked to participate, of course, not all institutions responded. Two tools were used.

AISHE (The Auditing Instrument for Sustainability in Higher Education) was used to acquire information pertaining to environmental strategies used at U.S. colleges. AISHE is an internationally used self assessment tool that was based on strategies identified by the Talloires Declaration. It was selected because it had already been successfully used in several other countries and was under modification for improvements and STARS was, at the time of the study, not yet fully piloted within the United States.

The second tool used to analyze the environmental rankings of institutions was the Green Report Card, released annually.

Results

There were no significant relationships between strategies used and the advancement of environmental sustainability on college campuses. For example: If having a "vision" was a strategy implemented on a campus, it did not guarantee a sustainable campus. In addition, if the vision was well developed and well known by all stakeholders, it still did not guarantee a sustainable campus. I examined 15 different strategies.

Review

The outcome may be surprising, but if you think about it, there are many variables at work and I only examined a fundamental, potential, connection.

1. For environmental sustainability to be successful, it's multidimensional components should be acknowledged. Back to the "vision" strategy. Having a vision and only a vision for a campus will not solely move the campus toward sustainability. You must also consider the connections between having a vision, developing the vision, educating stakeholders, implementing programs, so on and so forth. Strategies suggested by the Talloires Declaration and other strategies that have been implemented by leaders are strongly interrelated. This would be an excellent research area.

2. Campuses are unique. While some campuses may benefit from strategies A,B,C, other campuses may not benefit from those very same strategies. Why? The culture is different, operations are different, stakeholders are different, campus sizes are different, and you can go on and on.

Anyway, I loved the research. It was an eye opener for me. I am in search of an organization that will support me so that I may continue and expand my research! lol! I have had the opportunity to present my research abroad at a few international conferences.

By the way, AISHE and STARS are excellent assessment tools that are available to colleges and universities looking to self assess, evaluate and improve. Of course, tools are not perfect, but they are constantly be reevaluated and improved upon.

If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at: williams.cdh@gmail.com