Connecticut College
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

The cultural assessment is delivered as part of our Sustainability Literacy and Culture Survey. The questions were developed in Spring and Summer 2019 through a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability and the Office of Institutional Research. The assessment was first delivered in 2019 and then again in 2020. It will be administered every 2 years starting with 2022.

Questions included in the uploaded file.

The cultural assessment is administered as part of our Sustainability Literacy and Culture Survey. The culture questions represent 34% of the full survey. The Sustainability Literacy and Culture Survey was administered through the Office of Institutional Research to the entire campus community from September 16 to October 7, 2022. The survey was sent to all full-time employees (faculty and staff, n=615) and all full-time students (n=1,916). Students received automatic reminders to complete the survey, while faculty and staff received 3 reminders throughout the response period. For employees, the response rate was 30% (n=184 responses), with 33% of faculty members responding and 29% of staff members responding. Among students, the response rate was 15% (n=284 responses).

In terms of the representativeness of the respondent, overall, the respondents were within 7 percentage points of the campus population as a whole in terms of race/ethnicity, although student respondents were less representative of the whole campus population in this regard than faculty and staff: among faculty and students, the percentage of white respondents was within 4 percentage points, whereas with staff, white respondents were overrepresented by about 14 percentage points.

In terms of gender, overall the respondents were within 6 percentage points of the campus population as a whole. Again, staff respondents were less representative in this regard, with females overrepresented by 10 percentage points (compared with only a 2-percentage-point gender difference for faculty and a 7-percentage-point difference for students). In terms of students' class years, sophomores were represented among respondents most closely to their proportion of the overall student body (about a 7-percentage-point difference), while juniors and seniors were underrepresented by a much larger extent and first-year students were about twice as heavily represented among survey respondents as among the student body as a whole.

There are three main focus areas in our culture assessment. The first relates to student, faculty and staff understanding of sustainability and climate change. In 2022, 81% of our students responded that "climate change is mostly human-caused and is an urgent concern that requires immediate action." This was a decrease from 87% who selected this response in 2020. 77% of faculty and staff selected the same response. We also ask to what extent they view different areas as related to sustainability and for all but two issues (access to capital for small businesses and access to job training) a majority responded that they were very related to sustainability. This shows that our community has a broad view of sustainability encompassing social, economic and environmental justice.

The second area focuses on how important sustainability is to our community and how that is shown in their actions. In 2022, 78% of students said sustainability was very important or extremely important to them. This was a decrease of 3% from 2020. 79% of faculty and staff responded that sustainability was very important or extremely important to them. This was also a slight decrease from 2020. Across both groups we saw similar responses to a question about which sustainable practices that they regularly engage in. The most common responses for students in 2022 (and in both previous surveys were) "making choices to reduce the amount of waste I produce," "recycling properly," and "reducing driving." For Faculty and Staff, the third most common response was "reducing meat consumption" instead of "reducing driving." Both groups reported high levels of participation in sustainability events on and off campus - 70% of students reported participation in one of our listed options and 73% of faculty and staff reported participation. For both groups, the most common activity was attending an on-campus lecture focused on sustainability.

The final focus area is how they view the College's commitment to sustainability. There was an 8% increase in the number of students who responded that they agree or strongly agree that "Connecticut College prioritizes sustainability in decision making" and there was a slight decrease in the number of faculty and staff who responded the same. 92% of students agreed or strongly agreed that it was important to them that the college prioritize sustainability in decision making (the same as in 2020). 85% of faculty and staff agreed or strongly agreed that it was important to them that the college prioritize sustainability in decision making (a decrease of 6% from 2020). We have seen a steady increase in the number of students who report that Conn's sustainability efforts were a very important or extremely important part of their decision to attend. In 2022, 20% of students selected one of these responses compared to 16% in 2020 and 11% in 2019.

The full 2022 results can be found in the attached file below.