News

Sustainability literacy is critical knowledge that all incoming freshmen at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville need. Victoria Peters, SIUE Office for Sustainability intern, has created a literacy assessment instrument for the University. 

“‘I realized that there was no effort on our campus towards understanding if our students were sustainability literate, regardless of the events held year after year,” said Peters, who is SIUE’s first sustainability intern. With the completion of this work, Peters also received her master’s in sociology at SIUE. 

It is important to create a sustainability literacy assessment because it is an available credit on the STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) report, she added.

“STARS is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance,” said SIUE Sustainability Officer Kevin Adkins. “It is a report created by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).”

Establishing a literacy assessment instrument on our campus benefits both students and the University, Peters said. Currently, SIUE has a bronze rating for the STARS report, but with the literacy assessment SIUE now has the opportunity to achieve a silver rating.

“We have the potential to be a sustainability superstar,” Adkins said. “Victoria has been extremely helpful in advancing our sustainability efforts.”

Previously, Peters queried 1,516 incoming freshmen at Springboard. Some of the assessment questions included:

• “The Urban Heat Island effect is…”
• “What is the biggest source of carbon monoxide?”
• “What is the primary benefit of a wetland?’

Overall, the students scored an average of 52 percent correct, which lets the Office for Sustainability know that there is still work to be done in the area of sustainability literacy at SIUE.

“As privileged individuals, we consume nearly everything – fairly certain we will be able to pay it all back someday,” Peters said. “In reality, however, that is not possible.

“Sustainability literacy is important, not only to SIUE, but to college and university campuses across the nation. Every child alive today is going to have to face unprecedented change in society during their lifetime.”