Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 71.76
Liaison Mike Versteege
Submission Date Oct. 10, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

University of Alberta
ER-T2-8: Themed Semester or Year

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.25 / 0.25 Lisa Dockman
Program Lead (Outreach & Engagement)
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution chosen a sustainability-related theme for its themed semester, year, or first-year experience during the past three years?:
Yes

A brief description of the themed semester, year, or first-year experience:

The University of Alberta’s Office of Sustainability established “Energy” as the major theme guiding activities in 2013-2014. As part of the theme year, we launched a program to build awareness about "Envision" the campus' energy management program.

Collaborating across our three focus areas – teaching & research, facilities & operations, and outreach & engagement – we established energy as the major theme for many existing and new programs. As a result energy-related awareness, behaviour change and communications messages received elevated profile within the Office of Sustainability and across the entire institution.

Examples of activities conducted include:

- Development and production of a “Flick the switch and save” sticker campaign.
- Expansion of the Green Spaces Certification Program to support conservation of energy in many environments, such as labs.
- Implementing campus-wide energy-related messaging, using various print and social media tools, with interesting ‘fun facts’ about energy use on campus.
- The November 2013 Sustainability Speaker Series featured speaker Paul Hawken and his talk entitled “Re-imagination of Carbon – Exploring new ways of addressing climate change”
- The theme for the January 2014 Student Sustainability Summit was “Power & Prosperity – The relationship between energy systems and communities”
- The Darkest Tower Challenge was expanded to incorporate Campus Conservation Nationals, incorporating real-time reporting of electricity reduction in residences.


The sustainability-related book that was chosen, if applicable:
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The website URL where information about the theme is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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