Abstract
The Sustainability Cultural Indicators Program (SCIP) is a multi-year project designed to measure and track the culture of sustainability at the University of Michigan. It is intended to inform U-M administrators and others responsible for day-to-day operations of the University including its academic programs. Furthermore, it is intended to serve as a model demonstrating how behavioral research can be used to address critical environmental issues within universities generally and in other organizational settings. Culture of sustainability is meant to reflect a set of attitudes, behaviors, levels of understanding and commitment, degrees of engagement, and dispositions among a population such as members of a university community. This paper presents findings from three years of data collection (2012–2014)—focusing on trends in responses from over 17,000 students, faculty, and staff. One of the most positive findings is that respondents report increasing levels of sustainability knowledge over time. However, SCIP results indicate that there is considerable room for improvement with regard to pro-environment behavior, engagement, and expressed commitment to sustainability. Finally, a brief overview is provided of how SCIP results are being used by multiple units on campus to guide programming and how SCIP is informing efforts at other institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
The Council is comprised the University President, the Provost and Executive Vice President for Student Affairs, the Vice Presidents for Research, Student Affairs, Development, and Global Communications & Strategic Initiatives, the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, and the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
- 2.
The Planet Blue website can be found at: http://sustainability.umich.edu/.
- 3.
More information on the CSIA process, outcomes, and evaluation can be found at: http://graham.umich.edu/knowledge/ia/campus. Information on progress towards the 2025 Climate Action, Waste Prevention, and Healthy Environments goals can be found at: http://www.ocs.umich.edu/goals.html.
- 4.
The exception was Sustainability Food Purchase Index, where one question had five response options while the other two questions had four. These three variables could not be added up immediately. These three variables were first normalized and after normalizing, were added together.
- 5.
SPSS Complex Samples gives more accurate statistical estimates than Base SPSS.
- 6.
Additional regional analyses can be found in the SCIP Annual Reports available at: https://graham.umich.edu/campus/scip.
- 7.
Initial results from this work can be found in the Year 3 report found at: http://graham.umich.edu/campus/scip/materials.
- 8.
The project website can be found at: http://graham.umich.edu/campus/scip.
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Acknowledgments
The SCIP analytical work would not have been possible without the assistance of Will Chan, Minako Edgar, and Mary Hirt. We also acknowledge the statistical guidance provided by Brady West from ISR’s Program in Survey Methodology, and, Dan Zahs, Heather Schroeder, as well as the expert survey administration efforts of Cheryl Wiese and Andrew Hupp from Survey Research Operations (SRO) of ISR’s Survey Research Center. Finally, sincere appreciation must be extended to key leaders at the University of Michigan whose support makes SCIP possible—in particular, the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Institute for Social Research, the Graham Sustainability Institute and the U-M Athletic Department.
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Callewaert, J., Marans, R.W. (2017). Measuring Progress Over Time: The Sustainability Cultural Indicators Program at the University of Michigan. In: Leal Filho, W., Skanavis, C., do Paço, A., Rogers, J., Kuznetsova, O., Castro, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47889-0_13
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