This page contains general information on the Sustainability Projects, the General Format for Sustainability Project Reports, and the Guidelines for Lessons Learned in Implementing Sustainability Reports. All of this information can also be found in the printable syllabus document.

Sustainability starts in your own back yard — think globally, act locally. In this course, you will have a unique opportunity to do just that. Your project will help UW become a more sustainable campus. In addition, your work will help UW to demonstrate their commitment, progress, and accomplishments in areas of sustainability.

The sustainability project will have three main components.

(1) Project Development. Identify a sustainability opportunity; a problem and possible solutions. What is not sustainable at UW, and why is it a problem and a cost? How could UW become more sustainable, and how would the university benefit? Develop visions, explore alternatives, and investigate practices at other universities. Analyze the benefits and costs, and to whom they would accrue. Talk with UW personnel and stakeholders, investigate projects from other schools, identify successful precedents (especially cost savings), and conduct a rigorous analysis to support your project. (The type of analysis will depend on the project.)

(2) Project Indicators. Establish indicators to measure sustainability for your project area. For AASHE indicators, which ones are relevant to UW? Which ones are missing? Are data available? What does UW currently monitor (or need to monitor) for these indicators? What do other universities use for indicators in this area? How can we set targets and measure progress? Perform benchmarking, investigate resources, gather and analyze data, and develop the indicators (with supporting data) for your project area.

(3) Project Implementation. Create a plan to implement your sustainability project for UW. What needs to be done, and how can we do it? Why would this be beneficial for UW? Evaluate project feasibility; benefits and costs, incentives and challenges. Identify the necessary resources, people, and actions in order to implement your project.  You will learn that it’s not enough to come up with a good idea; you will need to “sell” your idea to potential decision-makers.  To do this, be sure to demonstrate the benefits or cost savings to UW, and support your recommendations with solid data and analyses.

A pedagogical goal of this course is to learn how to learn, when faced with open-ended problems, complexity, uncertainty, and conflicting interests and information. This learning process will require that you take responsibility for both investigating the problems and creating the answers. For instance, you will seek out needed information and people, develop solid analytical and evaluation skills, encounter and overcome barriers, and adapt your project when faced with new information and changing circumstances.

Prepare your report to cover each of the bold headings. The topics under each heading are to guide your thinking; your report can cover additional or related topics. Report length: six pages, not including appendices.

Executive Summary
1-2 pages. Highlight main findings, benefits, results, and recommendations.
Use bullet-point format.

Sustainability Project Development
Sustainability opportunity at UW; problem and possible solutions
Motivation; potential benefits to UW from becoming more sustainable
Other campuses; what we can learn from them; successful precedents
Visions and alternatives; most promising alternative
Decision-makers, stakeholders, resources
Purpose and scope of project; relationship with other projects at UW
Detailed and rigorous analysis of project

Sustainability Project Indicators
Sustainability assessment and benchmarking
Comparisons with other universities
Indicators to measure sustainability in this area
Evaluation of AASHE indicators; relevance to UW
Refined, deleted, and additional indicators
Most relevant metrics for measuring sustainability on your project
System for measuring progress on campus; easily implemented
Data sources; availability, reliability, accuracy, missing
Summary: set of indicators, data, benchmarks, targets, evaluation metrics

Sustainability Project Implementation
Plan to implement sustainability project at UW
Incentives and barriers
Resources needed to implement the project (e.g., financing, materials, technologies, expertise, cooperative agreements, further research, key individuals)
Project evaluation system
Benefits and costs (and to whom) of project
Overall feasibility and benefits to UW
Action items

Results and Future Recommendations
Be specific. Back up your recommendations.
Elaborate upon the main points in your Executive Summary.
Provide next steps.

Appendices
Include data, maps, resources, analyses, contacts, etc.

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Prepare your report to cover each of the bold headings. The topics under each heading are to guide your discussion, and do not need to be explicitly mentioned. Report length: six pages, not including appendices.

Executive Summary
Highlight main lessons learned (in 1-2 pages)
Use bullet-point format

Resources
Which resources were most helpful? How did I discover them? Which resources were not as helpful?

Barriers
What barriers and challenges did I encounter? How did I overcome (or sidestep) them?
What barriers remain? How could they be overcome, if feasible?

Successes
What were the "successes"? Why were they successful? What approaches were not as successful?

Learning
What were the most valuable things that I learned? How would I have done things differently?

Recommendations
Elaborate on points in Executive Summary
Provide recommendations for students trying to implement a sustainability project on campus
Provide recommendations for faculty and staff at universities trying to implement sustainability in the curriculum and on their campus

Appendices
Include information on resources, contacts, other universities, helpful organizations, references, web sites, transcripts of interviews, questionnaires, data sources, etc.