Past Projects

Initial Phase of the Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU) 2011 Implementation in the University of Leeds

"I’m delighted that Organisational Sustainability has completed an  initial assessment  of sustainability report for the University of Leeds. During two and a half months Organisational Sustainability collected information and analysed the performance for the 179 indicators of the Graphical Assessment for Sustainability in Universities (GASU) 2011 tool in the Profile, Economic Dimension, Environmental Dimension, Social Dimension, Educational Dimension, and Interlinking issues and dimension.
The work had three main objectives: (1) to identify  the owner or where the information can be found (including a gap analysis), (2) to create the first draft of the sustainability report, and (3) to analyse the performance values from the information collected, as shown in Table 1.
 

Table 1 Percentage of GASU 2011 indicators collated and their performance

Sustainability Reporting Dimension	Percentage of indicators collated	Performance of the indicators collated
Profile	76.74%	61.05%
Economic	66.67%	57.41%
Environment	63.33%	40.67%
Social	45.00%	29.53%
Educational	37.93%	18.29%
Inter-linking issues and dimensions	56.52%	40.00%
Total	57.47%	42.06%

The work allowed the University of Leeds to better understand its performance in each sustainability dimension and compare to  12 other universities. This comparison indicated a favourable result, showing higher levels than in published sustainability reports (see Lozano, R. (2011). The state of sustainability reporting in universities. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 12(1), 67-78)
 
The report will help us at the University to better engage in incorporating and institutionalizing sustainability into our systems, including curricula, research, operations, outreach, and assessment and reporting." Gary Tideswell, Director of Well-being, Safety and Health, University of Leeds.
 

Curricula Assessment of the University of Leeds' Faculty of Business and Faculty of Environment

We have finished the analysis, using the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities Curricula Hollistically (STAUNCH®), of the Bachelor and Master programmes' curricula of the Faculty of Business and the Faculty of Environment (including the School of Earth and Environment, School of Geography, and Institute for Transport Studies) at the University of Leeds.

We analysed 71 programmes in both faculties against 40 sustainability criteria divided into economic, environmental, social, and cross-cutting themes.

The analysis also included the number of credits and number of students per modules.
 

The International Advanced Research and Practice Workshop in Sustainable Development and Practice (SDP)

We participated (as keynote speaker and part of the scientific committee) on the workshop in Maribor, Slovenia (8-10 September, 2010), organised by the University of Maribor and supported by the European Social Fund.

On the workshop we discussed issues such as sustainability reporting, and sustainability education, among many others.