Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 76.41
Liaison Krista Bailey
Submission Date Dec. 12, 2023

STARS v2.2

Pennsylvania State University
AC-9: Research and Scholarship

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 12.00 / 12.00 Krista Bailey
Sustainable Campus Strategist
Sustainability Institute
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Total number of employees that conduct research:
2,549

Number of employees engaged in sustainability research:
1,800

Percentage of employees that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
70.62

Total number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts research:
88

Number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts sustainability research:
88

Percentage of departments that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
100

A copy of the inventory of the institution’s sustainability research (upload):
Inventory of the institution’s sustainability research:

Attached is a list of researchers including, for each, their departmental affiliation, website, and brief description of sustainability research area. A search using the pure.psu.edu


A brief description of the methodology the institution followed to complete the research inventory:

Using the Pure Elsevier data base (https://pure.psu.edu/) a search was done for research related to the UN's sustainable development goals. The database has a built in set of search terms. For example, for SDG 1 No Poverty terms were: "extreme poverty" OR "poverty alleviation" OR "poverty eradication" OR "poverty reduction" OR "international poverty line" OR "financial aid" OR "north south divide" OR "child labor" OR "social protection" OR "micro finance" OR "safety net" OR "economic resource" OR "food bank"
Titles were reviewed to ensure they represented the intent of this search. For example, the term "financial aid" may refer to research on operations or staffing of a financial aid office vs support for low income students.

We continue to work on how to effectively include creative accomplishments, as is done for promotion and tenure decisions, so that faculty from the arts were eligible for inclusion because sustainability research can result in creative accomplishments such as poetry, novels, plays, artwork, and shows.

Faculty in the arts were included in our counts for all researchers. although their work is likely not well counted here.

The total number of employees that conduct research was from a Fall 2021 headcount of all tenure line faculty, including assistant, associate and full professor. Non tenure line faculty includes research faculty: assistant, associate and full research professors. It does not include Lecturers or Instructors.

The total number of academic departments with at least one faculty member who conducts research was assumed to be the same as the total number of academic departments reported in PRE-5. The list of sustainability researchers' departmental affiliations was matched with this list to determine the number of departments with at least one faculty member who conducts sustainability research.


Website URL where information about the institution’s sustainability research is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.