Deliberation on Campus Sustainability (DoCS)

Logan McIntosh and Jeff Savage, U of A students and DoCS Co-founders, at the Phase 1 dialogue.
Student, faculty and staff co-creating academic recommendations during the Phase 2 dialogue.
Campus leaders choose action projects that they plan to implement during the Phase 3 event.

Institution(s)

University of Alberta

Author(s)

Lisa Dockman, Program Lead (Outreach & Engagement), Office fo Sustainability, University of Alberta

Jeff Savage, Logan McIntosh, Trina Innes, David Kahane, Lona Leiren, Susanna Haas-Lyons

Project Overview

The Deliberation on Campus Sustainability (DoCS) project was a campus-wide, student-initiated series of events that engaged hundreds of students, staff and faculty in creating recommendations for sustainability across the University of Alberta campus. The design of this series of dialogues was based on deliberative democracy, a set of theories and practices that have proven to be an effective method for engaging diverse community members in ways that encourage collaboration and individual empowerment. The recommendations developed by the DoCS deliberators were incorporated into a comprehensive final report that will inform sustainability planning across campus formally and informally, and will contribute to the upcoming campus sustainability plan.

Background

The DoCS project was started by two undergraduate students with a desire to make positive progress towards environmental responsibility and democratic accountability on campus. Passionate student leaders Logan McIntosh and Jeff Savage were inspired while studying a course on deliberative theory course by Dr. David Kahane at the University of Alberta. They discovered a diversity of success stories across the planet that demonstrated the benefits of citizen engagement. Logan and Jeff realized that sustainability was an ideal topic for campus community engagement and approached Trina Innes, director of the Office of Sustainability to see if her Office would be interested in partnering on using deliberative process to engage the ordinary campus community on sustainability issues.

Launched in 2009, the U of A’s Office of Sustainability informs and inspires students, staff and faculty to embed sustainable practices in all aspects of their lives. Sustainability initiatives have been happening on the campus for decades, however the coordinated effort and formalized support provided by the Office was relatively new. Trina was very enthusiastic about this idea as the timing was ideal for a wide-scale campus engagement, and because the products of these student, staff and faculty conversations would be invaluable in the creation of the campus sustainability plan. A partnership was created, and Logan and Jeff began working within the Office of Sustainability to set up the DoCS project.

Project Goals

• To provide a space for students, staff, and faculty to communicate and deliberate on their perspectives on campus sustainability.
• Celebrate the university’s current sustainability initiatives and build on the community’s shared interests and sustainability values.
• Involve senior university leaders and facilitate their recognition of the legitimacy of the DoCS process and the value of the recommendations.
• Identify and engage a representative sample size of the campus community, including individuals that are not typically engaged in sustainability.
• Collaboratively develop actions and priorities from students, faculty and staff that influence overarching direction for the university community’s sustainability vision and action priorities.
• Provide input and guidance toward the creation of plans and documents influencing campus sustainability.
• Inspire, activate and support campus action on sustainability issues that nurture collaboration between students, staff and faculty and create sustained momentum beyond a single school year.
• Demonstrate the value, applicability and document best practices to support continued implementation of Deliberative Democracy on campus.
• Create comprehensive final report which outlines the priorities, suggestions, and actions produced through the DoCS process that will help inform campus sustainability initiatives.

Project Implementation

The Deliberation on Campus Sustainability (DoCS) project piloted a series of sessions using deliberate dialogue techniques (e.g., public engagement, consensus building, and informing and empowering community members) on North Campus at the University of Alberta. .

The process for engaging the campus drew on the theories of deliberative democracy and utilizing examples of previous deliberations. Deliberative democracy draws together individuals from a community’s full spectrum, informs them about current challenges and opportunities in a bias-balanced manner, and empowers them to make recommendations and engage in actions that create positive change. The DoCS project used deliberative democracy to create an open dialogue that identified campus sustainability priorities and solutions to inform the campus sustainability plan. Students, staff, faculty and sustainability leaders participated by prioritizing focus areas within the field of sustainability, determining which areas are imperative for making progress towards a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable campus community.

The project consisted of a series of facilitated conversations designed to reveal participants’ perspectives on campus sustainability. Two committees guided this project. The Advisory Committee was a group of influential leaders on campus who are sustainability stakeholders that are directly involved in decision-making processes. This committee provided input from individuals whose buy-in was essential for the project’s success. Secondly, an Executive Committee led the planning and development of DoCS; they managed scope, direction and made key decisions. Membership of the Executive Committee included staff from the University of Alberta’s Office of Sustainability, experts in the field of deliberation and public engagement, and the student founders of DoCS.

Timeline

1) Planning Phase (May to August 2010) – This phase included the creation of a comprehensive timeline and work plan, defining roles and responsibilities, creating a recruitment process, and developing a communications plan to educate the campus community about where and when to get involved as well as consultations with various groups.

2) Sustainability Survey (January 2011) – After receiving Research Ethics Board approval, an electronic questionnaire was designed, piloted and sent out to campus community members using a web-based survey tool called Student Voice. The purpose of the survey was collect information on sustainability priorities from a large sample of the campus population, and to identify individuals interested in participating in the face-to-face deliberation. A representative group from the survey respondents was selected to participate in the deliberation process.

3) Phase 1 Dialogue (January 2011) – All survey respondents who indicated an interest in participating in DoCS received an invitation to attend a 3-hour dialogue. Campus sustainability leaders and key decision makers were also invited to attend. Discussions brought together a mixture of student, staff, and faculty deliberators. Both a professional facilitator and student lay facilitators invited participants to engage with the diversity of perspectives in the room. Together Participants identified six priorities issue facing campus sustainability: energy and building infrastructure, outreach and engagement, food, academics, resource efficiency and waste, accountability and transparency.

4) Deep Dives (February and March 2011) – “Deep dives”, a term borrowed from Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, refers to creating learning experiences where participants deepen their understanding of a specific issues and develop a more holistic understanding of inherent challenges within and across large systems. DoCS employed Deep Dives to foster informed decision-making and recommendation building. DoCS hosted six deep dive learning events focused on gaps of knowledge that deliberators identified within each issue area. Experts from both on and off campus were brought in to provide specific information to deliberators about each issue area to enable them to make informed and relevant recommendations to the university in the next dialogue. For example, the “Energy and Building Infrastructure” deep dive brought in the director, Energy Management and Sustainable Operations as well as an expert on LEED buildings and the president of the Energy Club, a student group on campus, to share their vision for sustainability and answer questions.

5) Phase 2 Dialogue (March 2011) – This dialogue focused on priorities identified in Phase 1, and provided deliberators space to develop recommendations to inform the campus sustainability plan. Deliberators also discussed the implementation of their ideas. Participants chose their discussion group according to the priority issue they were interested in. In small groups deliberators engaged in a participatory dialogue to co-create recommendations informed by the current status of campus sustainability. They also brainstormed a list of action project ideas which they felt the campus community could pursue collaboratively.

6) Skill-Building Workshops (March and April 2011) - The first step in supporting the transition from dialogue to action was a series of four skill-building workshops. These workshops provided deliberators and other members of the campus community an opportunity to build leadership skills and enhance their capacity for success. The workshops were hosted by the Office of Sustainability and well attended: 1) community based social marketing, 2) budgeting and grant writing, 3) team building and consensus decision making, and 4) program planning and evaluation.

7) Phase 3 Wrap-Up Event (April 2011) – This session focused on bringing the action projects identified during Phase 1 and 2 to life. At this final meeting participants met with one another, recruited new members from the campus community, and advanced their action project ideas in a meaningful way. Those interested in working on specific action projects were provided space for planning their next steps and the Office of Sustainability outlined some of the supports that exist for campus initiatives including two granting programs. While Phase 3 signaled the end of the formal DoCS project and the handing off of the deliberation results to the campus community, participants were assured that the Office of Sustainability was available to any groups requiring assistance in the form of peer review or for assistance building connections across campus.

8) Campus Voices Document (May 2011) - The final recommendations generated from DoCS were based on informed, fair, and democratic deliberations that involved a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff from the campus community. The recommendations for how the university should progress towards sustainability in each of the six priority issue areas were compiled and presented in a final report called the Campus Voices: Deliberation on Campus Sustainability’s Final Recommendations (i.e., Campus Voices).

Financing

All funding for DoCS was contributed from the U of A’s Office of Sustainability’s operating budget, a contribution that was crucial to DoCS’s success along with the hundreds of hours of staff and volunteer time dedicated to project delivery.

The staff time required for project planning and implementation of DoCS included ½ time support from one of the Office of Sustainability’s coordinator’s and 15 hours per week from two student sustainability interns from May 2010 to April 2011. Additional staffing resources were required in the weeks prior to and after the delivery of the deliberative events and including up to 8 additional staff and 35 volunteers. In addition, the Executive Committee (7 members) attended weekly meetings and the Advisory Committee (30 members) attended bimonthly meetings throughout the project.

Excluding staff time, the financial cost of planning (8 months) and delivery (4 months) of DoCS is divided into the following categories: marketing and promotions, event supplies and materials, hosting and contracted expertise.
Marketing and promotions included advertizing the Sustainability Survey for participant recruitment using online social media, newsletters and campus newspaper advertisements which cost approximately $2,500 (including 4 advertisements in campus media).

Event supplies and materials included room bookings, flip chart paper, markers and post-its which cost approximately $2,200.

Hosting was provided for large scale events and demonstrated best practices in sustainable catering (local, seasonal, organic and grain-fed). All snacks for meetings/trainings were ordered from locally owned businesses. The total cost for hosting was approximately $8,000 (including 2 large events, 13 medium-sized sessions and 5 small meetings).

Contracted expertise included two deliberative dialogue and facilitation practitioners who supported the delivery of the DoCS process. The cost for their consulting, participation in weekly meetings and advice was approximately $25,000. Lastly, the skill-building workshop series was hosted by professionals and open to the entire campus community supplemented the learning of the DoCS participants cost approximately $5,000 (4 workshops).

Project Results

In the long-term, the DoCS process will continue to influence planning and prioritization on campus until the campus sustainability plan is complete. Some of the more immediate outcomes and achievements of DoCS are outlined below:

• 1,742 campus community members (including 249 staff, 104 faculty members and a mixture of 1,376 graduate and undergraduate students) completed the online sustainability survey, allowing us to discover their sustainability priorities and inform DoCS planning and programming.
• 80 students, staff and faculty participated in the Phase 1 Dialogue, where they shared their perspectives in small groups and came to consensus on group sustainability priorities. This was a unique opportunity to have diverse campus audiences interacting and encouraging them to learn from one another and build trusting relationships to better campus.
• 45 students, staff and faculty members returned to participate in the Phase 2 Dialogue where they discussed and co-created 58 unique recommendations to the institution in order to influence campus sustainability planning. This resulted in the campus community feeling meaningfully engaged in sustainability planning on campus. For a complete list of recommendations, please go to the additional documents section, and see the Campus Voices document).
• Two sustainability interns, Jeff Savage and Logan McIntosh, co-founded this project and continued to be engaged in the development and implementation of both the DoCS project and other outreach projects delivered by the Office of Sustainability. This opportunity provided them with leadership experience, substantial professional learning and personal development. Working on this project was not only a rewarding experience for them personally, but also professionally.
• Approximately 40 student volunteers received training and experience as table facilitators. Their training included theoretical background on dialogic decision making and facilitation, as well as practice facilitation in small groups. Their volunteer work provided an opportunity to build leadership, confidence and employability skills.
• As a result of Phase 3 Wrap-Up Event, 17 grassroots action projects were proposed by participants as potential areas for student-led collaborative initiatives. Example action projects include sustainability awards, an academic bill of rights and a campus freestore. The student and staff leaders engaged in these projects are being provided with the opportunity for in-kind and financial supports to implement their projects successfully on campus. This result is especially powerful as it extends the scope of DoCS beyond the academic year and builds networks and collaborative relationships across campus.
• A comprehensive summary of ideas generated and results achieved was written and published to communicate the project and to legitimize the outcomes (see the full document attached titled Campus Voices). Although authored primarily by Jeff and Logan, the content was co-created and edited by the entire Executive Team as well as many DoCS deliberators.
• As part of the capacity building opportunities offered to DoCS participants, a series of skill-building workshops were deliver to help participants develop the skills needed to implement action project ideas. These workshops were not only popular, they were filled almost immediately with more than 100 participants registered. Positive reviews were received from the students and staff that attended.
• All 6 Deep Dives information sessions hosted a diverse panel of experts who delivered a variety of perspectives to deliberators. Presenters clarified many of the successes and challenges facing aspects of campus sustainability, leading to more meaningful recommendation building.
• As a result of the DoCS project, a professor within the Department of Political Science successfully received a grant that allowed him to hire two Research Assistants to work on the development of a toolkit to help others incorporate deliberative techniques into their campus programming.
• As a direct result of the DoCS project, there is an increased awareness of the Office of Sustainability. This has positively impacted our reputation and profile on campus; this is especially valuable for our new organization.
• Made meaningful progress on development of the campus sustainability plan.

Lessons Learned

• Faculty are the most difficult people within the campus community to get engaged. It requires considerable effort to ensure they are represented at events. Capitalizing on their relationship with students was most the most effective way to get them involved.
• Giving people the opportunity to get involved with campus sustainability planning is wonderful, but it is not enough to ensure large numbers of people are present. Some sort of incentive may increase participation (i.e. course credit, cash honorarium, recognition of contribution).
• Volunteer orientation and preparation must be comprehensive and mandatory. Before becoming involved as volunteer facilitators, our people attended a 2.5 hour orientation before each major event. We learned that this was not always enough time for people to feel prepared; we suggest investing a full day in orientation and facilitation training.
• Confident and knowledgeable table facilitators are essential. People are very passionate about sustainability and table discussions were sometimes heated as everyone brought a unique perspective. This challenge requires confident facilitators capable of ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to engage.
• Community members (outside of the University) are often interested in getting involved, so it is important to decide ahead of time how they might be meaningfully engaged. For example, we allowed them to be volunteers, attend workshops and complete the sustainability survey.
• Determine early on in the planning process if you intend to share the results of your project broadly. You may need ethics approval. We suggest that you apply early to ensure you have approval in hand well before project delivery.
• Walk the talk. It is important to demonstrate best practices in sustainable event planning when implementing projects such as DoCS. Attendees can be very critical if any part of your promotions, food or materials appear unsustainable. Examples include local/seasonal food choices, electronic handouts and communications as well as using Forest Stewardship Council certified paper for print products.
• Deliberative conversations take longer than you think. When you give people the opportunity to share their perspective and task them to co-generate content, it can be extremely time-consuming. Each of our major events was 3.5 hours long, and it was nearly impossible to accomplish our agenda items despite that length of time. Consider piloting your agenda with a small group to test both timing and facilitation techniques.
• Support for the project from upper administration is essential. Participants want to know that their contributions will make a difference and be used in a meaningful way. They will demand to know what high level support exists. We suggest ensuring that there is representation from senior administration at each event and that they publicly affirm the importance of your project.
• Delivering the entire DoCS process in 4 months was an unreasonable timeline. If you are creating something of similar scale as DoCS, give consideration to delivering it over the full 8 month academic year with planning occurring the previous summer.
• At an early stage, clearly demonstrate and communicate to participants how their input and recommendations will be used. They are very interested to know that the time and effort they spend is worthwhile. Give them a clear understanding of the big picture.
• Positioning DoCS as a student-initiated project was beneficial as it became easier to engage and empower the student audience. However, having student-staff coordinate a project of this size is difficult given their extracurricular time commitments and course schedule. It is very important to have dedicated staff time for the planning and implementation.