State of practice: Co-curricular sustainability programs

The literature on sustainability competencies is rich and multi-faceted across multiple disciplines. In construction-related disciplines, sustainability is now an explicit consideration in both Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) degree accreditation requirements, and is assessed in multiple ways that focus on being able to address larger contextual issues of society and environment over the whole lifecycle of design solutions. Multiple sources have provided a synthesis of sustainability skills and competencies for AEC professionals, including the UK Construction Industry Council (CIC, 2008) and Pearce and Ahn (2013). Likewise, general sustainability competencies also have been enumerated in the literature (Barth et al., 2007; Brundiers, Wiek, & Redman, 2010; Segalàs, Ferrer-Balas, Svanström, Lundqvist, & Mulder, 2009; Sipos, Battisti, & Grimm, 2008; Wiek, Withycombe, & Redman, 2011). However, as Mochizuki and Fadeeva (2010) point out, effective educational programs for sustainability should ideally be designed to promote competencies that are focused specifically on “whose needs and desires are being addressed for what purposes in what kind of world.”

Co-curricular sustainability training programs are a relatively recent development in multidisciplinary sustainability education at institutions of higher learning. Defined as activities, programs, or learning experiences that complement what students are learning in formal curricula, co-curricular sustainability programs are offered to students without formal course credit as a means of supplementing and enhancing their formal education. Co-curricular sustainability programs can be designed and implemented in a variety of different ways, depending on the context and needs of the institution developing them. Some key variables in their design include:

• Target audience (undergraduates, graduate students, mixed, other).

• Multidisciplinarity (single discipline, mixed within colleges, mixed across colleges).

• Cost to participants (free, fee-based, tuition/credit hour based).

• Program funding (internal, public-private partnership).

• Program duration (number of contact hours/non-contact hours).

• External involvement (companies, local government, campus, other).

• Follow-up opportunities included (mentoring, internships, other).

At the time of this writing, five other comparable co-curricular multidisciplinary sustainability program offerings were identified in the United States in addition to the Virginia Tech sustainability boot camp (Table 1).Virginia Tech’s program has a unique combination of characteristics compared with other programs, particularly in its degree of engagement with sustainability experts outside of academia and its focus on multidisciplinary upper-level undergraduates about to enter the job market. The 10-day program was developed with funding provided by the Virginia Tech Sustainability Institute (SI) and is completely free to participants, due in large part to private contributions. With faculty participation from each of Virginia Tech’s nine colleges, the SI is housed in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, managed by an institute director, and supervised by the college’s dean. The program provides learning experiences for students to problem solve with a cross-functional sustainability lens, build their professional network, and develop critical professional skills that are attractive to potential employers. It also includes opportunities for external involvement including mentorships, internships, and participation on project teams.

The primary goal of the boot camp is to produce graduates that organizational leaders want to hire, and connect the classroom to the workplace in multiple meaningful ways. The experience was developed with the intention of helping students learn how sustainability principles can be applied to entry-level positions in their discipline (e.g., construction, engineering, economics, communication, chemistry, forestry, and others), while working concurrently with students in other disciplines to solve real industry problems. The underlying philosophy of the program is that sustainability does not necessarily need to be a disciplinary major or even a word in a job title. Instead, sustainability is a way of seeing the world with an understanding that planet Earth, despite its complex network of interdependencies, is ultimately a closed system, with significant implications for how organizations operate in both the short and long term.

Study questions and objectives

The aim of the Boot Camp Development Team (BCDT) was to design and implement a co-curricular, multidisciplinary sustainability education program for upper-level undergraduate students to prepare them to apply sustainability principles to the broad, multi-disciplinary challenges they face in initial employment. Key questions to be answered in development included:

• What does industry believe is important for future hires to know about sustainability? In pedagogical terms, what should be the learning objectives of the boot camp?

• What should a co-curricular sustainability program look like that will achieve the identified learning objectives, based on what is known about the attributes of effective co-curricular sustainability learning experiences for undergraduates?

To answer these questions, the objectives of the BCDT were to: (1) identify industry-driven learning outcomes for the boot camp; (2) design and pilot test a co-curricular sustainability program to achieve the learning outcomes, based on pedagogy best practices; and (3) qualitatively assess program outcomes, identify lessons learned, and revise the program accordingly.

Methodology: Co-curricular program development

The boot camp program was developed in three distinct phases. The first phase defined learning outcomes that would achieve the overall goals of the boot camp, using a series of semi-structured interviews or “listening tours” with industry sustainability experts across a range of sectors. The first listening tour involved contacts made at sustainability-related conferences and events and follow up meetings, both in-person and on the phone. The director of the institute attended conferences and events to connect with a broad range of sustainability practitioners including, but not limited to: International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) bi-annual conference in Denver, CO; Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) training in Chicago, IL; Corporate Responsibility Association Commit Forum in New York City; Energy and Sustainability Conference in Richmond, VA; Environment Virginia Symposium in Lexington, VA; and the Circular Economy Conference in Washington, DC. Conversations were initiated during conference breaks and networking events and followed up with phone or in-person meetings. Two questions were asked of each interviewee: (1) What do entry-level hires need to know before they graduate to contribute to your sustainability program, in terms of sustainability knowledge and professional skills, and (2) What qualities make someone attractive for an entry-level position at your organization?

Interviewees were purposively selected for maximized variability (Rubin & Rubin, 2011) to represent a spectrum of organizations and roles, including chief sustainability officers in Fortune 200 conglomerate corporations, federal agency sustainability champions, sustainability managers in regional enterprises, sustainability directors within local governments, non-profit staff, and entrepreneurs launching purpose-driven benefit corporations. Practitioners in sustainability roles were selected for interviews because they could speak to both sustainability knowledge needed and basic professional skills that they found attractive in new employees. The purpose was to put the employer first and allow their input to inform the training program’s learning outcomes.

Thematic analysis was used to synthesize the first round of interview findings into a set of emergent competencies expected or desired of new hires. These competencies were used to produce a guiding document (Table 2) for the second listening tour, where in addition to the two core questions, practitioners were given a summary of proposed curriculum elements and asked to indicate which were most important, least important, and not included or missing as a means of validating the original elements. Two hundred and three individuals were interviewed as part of this process, with initial interviews producing a first-round set of learning outcomes that was further refined in the second round. Learning outcomes were created using this process to allow employer input to drive the program’s key elements rather than starting with predefined learning goals. The learning outcomes and program design developed in this way were then reviewed and refined by SI faculty fellows, who provided relevant learning content within the overall structure established by the listening tours.

The second phase involved developing and piloting the boot camp program using pedagogical best practices. A 10-day curriculum was developed to take place within a professional environment, including three key elements: sustainability integration workshops, professional development, and network building. Pedagogical best practices selected to work well with these elements included problem-solving scenarios (Hung, Jonassen, & Liu, 2008), skills-based workshops (Burns, 2009), and online panels with industry experts (Fleischmann, 2012). The boot camp program culminated in a 3-day industry assessment and networking trip where students could experience the role of sustainability in different sectors and brainstorm with leaders on problems facing their organizations. The training was offered during academic off-seasons (winter and summer breaks) at no cost to full-time Virginia Tech students. The program was pilot-tested during winter break in January 2016, with 30 students participating in the initial cohort.

Following the initial pilot test, the third phase of the study involved analyzing participant feedback, documenting lessons learned, and revising the boot camp design for a second offering in August 2016. Participant feedback from the first offering was captured by a written survey of student participants covering four topics: (1) Program Content and Activities; (2) Experts and External Participants; (3) Mentoring Program Interests; and (4) Program Fees and Academic Credit. Reflections and observations from the pilot offering of the course were also solicited from the SI personnel responsible for implementing the course. These reflections were provided in written form by the SI director. The outcomes of these evaluations were used to revise the boot camp in its second offering in August 2016. Observations and reflections from the second offering were also provided by the SI director to assess the effectiveness of program changes and supplement lessons learned from the first offering.

Results: Developing, deploying, and revising the boot camp program

Given the aim to create a multidisciplinary program responsive to industry needs, the BCDT used listening tour interviews of industry experts to identify competencies most relevant for the specific aims of the boot camp. The interviews revealed that while there are shared definitions of what “sustainability” is, each interviewee held a different perspective on what it means to them specifically in their position and organization. The goal was to understand what sustainability competencies and professional skills were most attractive to potential employers. The desired competencies emerging from thematic analysis of listening tour results included:

• The ability to think in systems and understand connectivity.

• The ability to learn how an organization functions and how sustainability can be integrated.

• An understanding of how a sustainability strategy aligns with organizational goals.

• The ability to “talk the talk” with the language of sustainability.

• An understanding of the concept of materiality and the feasibility spectrum.

• The ability to frame and pitch an idea.

• A grasp of the importance of metrics and ability to measure success.

• The ability to network effectively and build relationships.

The three key elements of the SI training program—sustainability integration strategies, professional development, and network building—were brought together in multiple ways to achieve these competencies through the boot camp program pilot (see Appendix A).Sustainability integration workshops were designed to provide understanding of how sustainability/corporate responsibility/citizenship programs function in the workplace. Specific learning outcomes developed for sustainability integration included the following:

• Students will be able to understand the connections between global issues and decisions made in the planet’s environmental, social, and economic systems.

• Students will be able to identify and differentiate sustainability program elements for private sector, public sector, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

• Students will be able to explain the business case for common sustainability practices.

• Students will be able to evaluate their own ideas to determine if they are material and strategic to an organization’s sustainability goals.

• Students will be able to construct an individualized approach for how sustainability principles can be incorporated into their discipline-specific decision making process (their sustainability lens).

The competencies developed in these workshops included evaluating sustainable systems, lifecycle assessments and supply chain impacts, assessing the integration of strategy, operations, people, and product/service, and learning the language of sustainability and what it means across industries. Choosing key metrics for the business case was important to establish students’ ability to choose and frame sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiatives strategically, in ways that appealed to each specific industry. Finally, students learned and applied assessment and reporting skills. Team-based activities (“iSpy”) focusing on applying sustainability to specific disciplines were also incorporated to show how concepts differ across different applications.

Professional development sessions were developed to have learning outcomes that develop important skill sets attractive to employers and critical to success as a new hire. The learning outcomes targeting professional development and network building included the following:

• Students will be able to recognize basic organizational structures and guiding documents for private sector, public sector, and NGO organizations.

• Students will be able to demonstrate strong presentation and oral communication skills.

• Students will be able to analyze their professional and academic experiences to determine transferrable skills.

• Students will be able to apply basic networking techniques to connect with their peers and experts participating in the program.

• Students will be able to formulate a cohesive pitch in small and large group settings.

Individual topics included identifying individual differentiating factors and communicating personal value to employers, relationship building, professional communication, and pitching ideas. The skills cultivated within the professional development trainings included learning how to assess the sustainability and corporate responsibility program of a workplace, how to frame ideas effectively, how to lead change and build trust, and how to maintain a professional presence.

Network building activities were also incorporated throughout the program design. Experts were brought into the classroom electronically through perspective interviews and panels at the beginning of the program. During the Travel Practicum portion of the program, students could engage with experienced practitioners in person through meet-and-greet meetings and “Think Tank” stakeholder panels that focused on challenges in the company being visited. The combination of sustainability integration strategies with professional development and network building content helped students connect their interests in having a positive impact at work to the skills they would need to build value and navigate organizations as a new hire.

After recruiting across campus for the first offering of the boot camp, the institute received a total of 140 applications for the 60 seats in two training cohorts. Applicants represented 66 different majors including building construction, mechanical engineering, sustainable biomaterials, interior design, real estate, nanoscience, accounting, economics, biochemistry, multimedia journalism, public relations, and fish conservation. Applications were received from every undergraduate college on campus. Not only was the applicant pool diverse from an academic perspective, but also it included numerous international students, first generation Americans, first generation college students, and a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The initial offering of the boot camp took place in January 2016 with 30 students selected from the applicant pool. Forty-eight industry professionals representing 45 different private, public, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participated in the training program as subject matter experts, panelists, or individuals sharing lessons they wish they had learned in a classroom. Eleven different Think Tank challenge activities were facilitated across a range of industry sectors that enabled students to apply their sustainability lens to a current issue faced by one of the partner organizations.

Two main methods of evaluation (participant surveys and staff observation and reflection) were used to assess the initial pilot offering of the boot camp. The purpose of these two methods was to obtain feedback about and refine the development of the boot camp. As observed by staff during the training, the immersion style of the program resulted in significant day-to-day changes in students’ ability to solve problems in multidisciplinary teams. Based on a combination of staff observations and student reflections, the quality of ideas and pitches improved between the first and second weeks. The organizations involved with the Travel Practicum at the end of the training were also impressed with the student participants’ performance.

The post-event survey of students revealed four distinct programming areas that needed adjustment—training day length, density of content presented each day, structure of problem identification and solving activities, and restructuring the Travel Practicum portion of the program. The training days ran from 10 am to 6 pm each day to mimic a typical eight-hour workday. More than half of the student participants noted, and the director observed, that the training hour from 5 to 6pm was not effective due to student exhaustion. For the August 2016 boot camp, the training day ran from 10 am to 5 pm, and initial feedback suggests that this is much more manageable for the participants. While the boot camp is an immersion-style program, it is important to prevent student burn out. Every 15-minute time slot during the initial training was filled with a lecture, workshop, guest speaker, activity, or break. Survey results from the first offering showed that the content was too dense and students had a difficult time processing everything that was taught each day. They noted that the topics that had a lecture immediately followed by an activity were more helpful in learning the new material.

For the second training, a reassessment of the training topics and activities was conducted to determine how to best reach the determined learning outcomes. With the decision to shorten the day, as noted above, ten training hours were lost. To maximize the day, most topics were presented as mini-lectures followed by an application-based activity. The number of virtual panels and interviews was also significantly reduced in the second offering. Initial feedback suggests that this was much more effective but that even more of the content needs to be presented in an activity-based format to keep students engaged throughout the day. The more interactive the day’s content was, the more engaged the students were.

Almost a quarter of student participants spoke of frustrations with the ambiguity and minimally structured iSpy problem identification and Think Tank Challenge problem solving activities. These two activities were the pedagogical approaches designed to develop the sustainability lens learning outcome. For the August training, the director worked with partner organizations to more clearly define each challenge and summarize it into a one page description with lists describing current barriers and cost considerations. These descriptions were shared with students at the beginning of the program and a short brainstorming session for each challenge was built into the schedule to prepare them for the interaction with partner organizations. This additional structure led to a clearer understanding of the problem by students, which enabled them to develop more comprehensive strategies to address them.

Student surveys showed that while most students learned a great deal from traveling to different sites in Richmond, VA during the Travel Practicum, the 3-day, 2-night trip was logistically challenging, especially for the introverted participants. There was no alone time for students to recharge. The adjustment made to the August training was to have three consecutive travel days starting at 8am and ending between 5 and 7 pm, depending on the distance traveled, with students returning home each night. With this revised schedule, students took on fewer Think Tank Challenge activities, but were more able to stay fully focused on the day’s target organization and their challenge for the day. Students could then recharge at home based on their needs in the evenings. Initial feedback suggests that the day trip approach was a practical way to still achieve learning outcomes while accommodating different developmental and personal health needs.

The learning outcomes were evaluated qualitatively, but deeper, quantitative assessment is required to understand the specific degree to which the outcomes were met. Evaluation of the first two trainings was to understand and test the format of an immersive, interdisciplinary program as it was created. Because this innovative approach was taken to build the program’s structure, evaluating the format, balance and blending of content, and intensity levels were important for establishing a strong program foundation. Future assessments will focus on measuring the change seen in student decision-making and performance between day one and day ten of the program.

Conclusions and paths forward

The approach to designing this program has helped differentiate the SI from similar programs, particularly the close coordination with and extensive involvement of industry leaders and organizations. The development process enabled a distinct set of competencies relevant for the workplace across multiple disciplines/sectors to be identified and incorporated as part of the learning experience. Ongoing industry participation in course delivery helps to ensure that learning objectives are met. The overall structure of the program (10 days, no cost to students, multiple interactive learning practices) has received positive feedback from students. Their participation in the initial boot camp opportunity resulted in some measurable opportunities for a significant portion of the initial cohort, including either job offers or internship offers to further develop solutions developed in the training.

Students from the initial cohort of 30 are being tracked to assess the potential impact on subsequent employment. An unofficial goal of the program was to increase the number of students hired within six months of graduation. Fourteen of the thirty students graduated in May 2016 and are being followed to evaluate employment. Short-term communication with students after the training revealed that seven of the thirty students were hired as interns with partner organizations as a result of the ideas they pitched during the training, and at least two graduating students were interviewed for full time positions with partner organizations. Additional quantitative assessment will be completed in July 2017 to evaluate program impact.

Future activities include partnering with external organizations on internship projects to continue working on problems addressed during the program’s Think Tank Challenge activities. A mentoring program is under development to match students with a mentor for one-on-one advising and networking. Finally, an “Employer Network” will launch in 2017 to establish an open line of communication between hiring organizations and high quality talent from all disciplines at Virginia Tech. The goal is to simplify the recruitment process and create pipelines for employment that move students and employers toward a more sustainable workforce. Detailed participant and partner organization surveys will collect feedback data on the August training, and the director is planning a reassessment of the program based on observational data and the combined feedback of both programs. This feedback will determine how the program can be improved for the next training in May 2017.

Moving forward, the focus of the program evaluation will shift from development into continuous improvement of effectiveness. Evaluation plans include pre- and post-testing of participants to assess their knowledge gains and skills obtained in terms of desired learning outcomes. Exit surveys will continue to help determine what the students think works very well within the boot camp and what could be improved, along with post-graduation surveys at the 6-month, 1-year, and 3-year marks to assess what concepts have impacted their professional practice. Additionally, a standardized assessment form is under development for partner organizations that participate in Think Tank Challenge activities to assess both student performance and quality of resulting ideas. While quantitative data will be collected across cohorts starting in 2017 to evaluate the program’s effectiveness, qualitative data will remain important to maintenance and development.

From a qualitative standpoint, the pilot launch in January 2016 and revised pilot in August 2016 have demonstrated positive impacts on student participants. Significant changes in student problem-solving approaches and performance during Think Tank Challenges were observed, supporting the conclusion that an immersion-based program can be effective in this context. Significant outcomes of note include Think Tank Challenge ideas resulting in intellectual property that creates a competitive advantage for a Fortune 200 company, a creative program to engage and retain Millennials at a global corporation, and a local green business certification program. Based on these outcomes, the authors see the potential for a multi-disciplinary program tailored for AEC disciplines. Adapting the SI approach to focus on how architecture, engineering, and construction students can collaboratively solve tomorrow’s infrastructure design challenges could be a powerful way to creatively infuse sustainability into our disciplinary curriculums.