Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 72.78
Liaison Emily Vollmer
Submission Date Feb. 18, 2021

STARS v2.2

Virginia Tech
AC-9: Research and Scholarship

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 11.25 / 12.00 Laurel Miner
Chief of Staff
Office of Vice President for Research and Innovation
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total number of employees that conduct research:
3,550

Number of employees engaged in sustainability research:
892

Percentage of employees that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
25.13

Total number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts research:
102

Number of academic departments that include at least one employee who conducts sustainability research:
67

Percentage of departments that conduct research that are engaged in sustainability research:
65.69

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

See attachment. A running total of the number of researchers/investigators is available at the bottom of each page.


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

Virginia Tech’s database for sponsored research projects from the last three years were reviewed to find sustainability-related sponsored projects in three ways:

- Tagged as related to sustainability
- Tagged as related to any of three of Virginia Tech’s Destination Areas related to sustainability:
(1) Economical and Sustainable Materials,
(2) Equity and Social Disparity in the Human Condition, and
(3) Global Systems Science. More about these Destination Areas is available here.
- With titles containing STARS keywords (found here: STARS accepted keywords)

The projects tagged with the above method were then reviewed by key personnel in related units, including institute directors and associate deans for research. Those personnel were invited to ensure that the correct projects were included and excluded.

All principal investigators and co-principal investigators on the identified projects are included in the employees that are engaged in sustainability research.


Website URL where information about the institution’s sustainability research is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

The timeframe for this was July 2017 – June 2020.

The Departments included in this request include:

- All academic departments
- Research institutes and centers that are outside of departments and have administrative
organization on the level of departments
- Agriculture Research and Extension organizations (counted as one department)

The total number of employees who conduct research include: tenure and tenure track faculty; Non-
tenure-track instructional faculty (eg, collegiate, instructors, and faculty of practice); research faculty;
adjunct faculty; and administrative faculty (for example, Deans and Vice Presidents).

The sustainability tags were discontinued in 2019, so newer projects cannot be tagged this way.

Here's an article on research relating to sustainable shellfish aquaculture: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2021/01/cals-seafood-arec-grant.html?utm_source=cmpgn_news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vtUnirelNewsDailyCMP_012221-fs


The timeframe for this was July 2017 – June 2020.

The Departments included in this request include:

- All academic departments
- Research institutes and centers that are outside of departments and have administrative
organization on the level of departments
- Agriculture Research and Extension organizations (counted as one department)

The total number of employees who conduct research include: tenure and tenure track faculty; Non-
tenure-track instructional faculty (eg, collegiate, instructors, and faculty of practice); research faculty;
adjunct faculty; and administrative faculty (for example, Deans and Vice Presidents).

The sustainability tags were discontinued in 2019, so newer projects cannot be tagged this way.

Here's an article on research relating to sustainable shellfish aquaculture: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2021/01/cals-seafood-arec-grant.html?utm_source=cmpgn_news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vtUnirelNewsDailyCMP_012221-fs

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.