May 9th, 2025

Student Evaluations of University Sustainability: Improving Student Involvement Through a Service-Learning Experience

By Adam Hepworth

Link to the JSE General Issue May 2025 Table of Contents

Link to Article PDF

 

Abstract: Universities are sustainability trailblazers, achieving a more sustainable future through research, community, and education. Critical to their pursuit of sustainability is ensuring that university stakeholders are supportive of university sustainability priorities. As a large stakeholder group, undergraduate students can exert a significant impact on sustainability priorities at the university and thus play a pivotal role in its sustainable development. However, research finds this group is often underutilized in university sustainable development. This paper accordingly examines opportunities to enhance student involvement in university sustainability. Over two research phases, the inquiry explores student evaluations of university sustainability initiatives through a classroom assignment and focus group interviews. Findings reveal that students’ perspectives of the university’s sustainability priorities do not align with what they feel is essential for the student experience. In the focus groups, students provide insight for how to create “buy-in” for university sustainability. The final phase of the inquiry applies the research findings in a service-learning consulting experience. Student teams work on a sustainability consulting project to implement suggestions for connecting university sustainability initiatives to the student experience. The service-learning consulting project allows students to apply their knowledge and skills to real sustainability challenges and, in turn, helps the university connect important sustainability initiatives to the student experience.

 

Keywords: sustainability education, university sustainability, student involvement, marketing curriculum, experiential learning, service-learning project

 

The intersection of sustainability and university strategy has permeated the higher education landscape. Higher education institutions, namely universities, have the influence and capabilities to make meaningful progress towards achieving a more sustainable future and play a central role in promoting this change (Yáñez et al., 2019). As such, universities have supported progress in sustainability through education, research, and fostering community (Ralph & Stubbs, 2014). Additionally, universities globally have institutionalized sustainability practices and laid out explicit sustainability development goals in their strategic plans in pursuit of this aim (Lozano, 2010). However, university administration cannot achieve sustainable development without the support of critical stakeholders who will champion such initiatives (Chakraborty et al., 2019). Though stakeholders play an instrumental role in university sustainable development, scant literature explores the how to involve them in university sustainability efforts.

As primary stakeholders of university initiatives, in general, students stand to be impacted by universities’ investments in and other key decisions involving sustainability (Grunwald et al., 2024). Students are one of universities’ larger stakeholder groups and consequently can significantly impact university sustainability priorities (Dagiliūtė et al., 2018). It is therefore in the best interest of the university to discover solutions for connecting students to university sustainability initiatives and potentially achieving greater buy-in from this critical stakeholder group.

The bulk of the literature in higher education sustainability examines students’ perspectives of sustainability as opportunities for involving students in sustainability. Research finds that age, gender, culture, and program of study all affect students’ likelihood to support sustainability (Sidiropoulos, 2018). Further, students show greater attitudinal support for environmental sustainability than other sustainability pillars (Kagawa, 2007; Swaim et al., 2014). Specifically for higher education sustainability, students believe that gaining knowledge in sustainability is important for all students, not only for students interested in specialized knowledge (Wyness & Dalton, 2018). However, believing in the importance of sustainability does not invariably translate into willingness to participate in sustainable actions; instead, a commitment gap exists (Emanuel & Adams, 2011; Teather & Etterson, 2023).

An inquiry is therefore warranted to gain a greater understanding of how to connect university sustainability to the student experience. In the first two phases, the research seeks to understand students’ perspectives of university sustainability and generate insight into what matters to students. The third phase of the inquiry applies the research findings of the two initial phases in a service-learning project with a sustainability client. Through this process, this research examines three research questions:

1. Which areas of university sustainability matter most to undergraduate students?
2. What are the primary challenges for universities to overcome to connect students with university sustainability initiatives?
3. How can universities enhance student buy-in of university sustainability?

Through the exploration of these research questions, the work contributes to the bodies of literature in sustainability education and university sustainability in three primary ways. First, the research adds to the literature in university sustainability by examining undergraduate students as a stakeholder of university sustainability. Sustainability initiatives undertaken at educational institutions depend considerably on the participation of undergraduate students and their level of engagement (Dagiliūtė et al., 2018). Their role as primary stakeholders of the university cannot be overstated. Over the two initial phases of research, the investigation constructs a rich understanding of students’ perspectives and experiences with sustainability. The findings identify sustainability initiatives that matter to students, but students believe that university sustainability priorities are misaligned with what matters to them.

Second, the research explores opportunities to close the gap between students’ sustainability awareness and their involvement. Scant research to date examines how to involve students in university sustainability. Though many students are knowledgeable about issues related to wasteful consumption and pollution, less are willing to change their behavior or participate in campus sustainability initiatives (Emanuel & Adams, 2011). Relying on education alone does not meaningfully transform student behavior (Silver, 2022). By incorporating students’ perspectives of university sustainability and their ideas for connecting sustainability to them, universities can bolster participation from students and work to close the commitment gap.

Lastly, the research offers a novel approach for incorporating sustainability in the classroom by designing an experiential learning, classroom-based assignment and client consulting project. Students evaluated university sustainability goals, identified challenges to gaining student support, suggested recommendations for improving student involvement, and participated in on-campus or community-based sustainability projects to help implement their recommendations. Research suggests that creating experiences that invest students in issues of interest such as service-learning projects have the power to connect students more meaningfully to the institution (Pike et al., 2003) and potentially elevate their connection with the university’s sustainability plan. In the next section, a review of the literature in university sustainability is discussed.

 

Sustainability on University Campuses

The concept of sustainability is ubiquitous, permeating all parts of our collective existence. Over time, sustainability has emerged from niche environmental circles to shape corporate strategy, legislative policy, and academic research. Though sustainability is perceived differently across stakeholders (Davis et al., 2024), a commonly held belief is that it is comprised of three pillars: people (society), planet (environment), and prosperity (economy) (Barber et al., 2014). Enhancing sustainability on university campuses is firmly entrenched in these pillars and is evident in universities’ strategic plans.

Universities on a global scale have been increasingly adopting sustainability as a strategic priority and implementing measures to promote greener and more socially conscious operations (Teather & Etterson, 2023). This commitment is frequently enshrined in universities’ sustainability and climate plans which detail specific actions for reducing detrimental impact (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Such measures include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to renewable energy sources, utilizing sustainable transportation options, and designing curriculum to educate students on environmental sustainability. Many universities have further expanded their commitment to include a focus on the social pillar and thus commit to enhance the collective well-being of university stakeholders by emphasizing the social needs of the university community. These initiatives include promoting employee and student physical health and wellness (Venkatasubramanian, 2022), investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion training, and shaping student learning experiences through community partnerships (Groulx et al., 2021).

One focus of university sustainability is educating students on the value of and need for sustainable development. In fact, international bodies, including the United Nations, acknowledge the legitimacy of education in playing a vital, strategic role in promoting sustainable development (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017). Research has found that undergraduate students care about sustainability and believe higher education institutions can do more to facilitate sustainability on campus (Rosentrater & Burke, 2017). Though students are concerned with specific issues in sustainability, their awareness and greater knowledge of sustainability and its pillars is marginal (Tasdemir & Gazo, 2020). Primarily, students’ sustainability concerns extend to lessening the harm rendered to the environment and conserving environmental resources (Zeegers & Clark, 2014). Commonly cited environmental concerns include wasteful consumption and pollution (Emanuel & Adams, 2011), climate change, and overexploitation of natural resources (García-González et al., 2020). Research to a lesser extent has explored undergraduates’ perspectives of social concerns and found that students are concerned by issues related to gender equality (Chaleta et al., 2021), poverty and hunger (García-González et al., 2020), and local community (Fisher & McAdams, 2015) among other social concerns. With respect to the economic pillar of sustainability, extant literature has largely overlooked student perceptions of economic sustainability in undergraduate education. However, in one study from Tasdemir and Gazo (2020), one-quarter of undergraduate students stated that they were not even familiar with this pillar of economic sustainability (Tasdemir & Gazo, 2020).

Despite considerable support for sustainability on university campuses, barriers to implementing sustainability initiatives complicate their enaction. Foremost, sustainability initiatives often fail to get implemented because of underfunding or being under-resourced. Frequently, sustainability programs compete for funding against other university supported programs and draw from the same financial pools, thus forcing administrators to trade off which programs receive funding (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Funding sustainability programs may therefore come at the detriment of failing to financially support other important university programs. Further barriers to support of university sustainability include on-campus cultural resistance (Sylvestre et al., 2013), lack of involvement and support from faculty and non-teaching staff (Leal Filho et al., 2018), and insufficient technological resources (Amaral et al., 2020). Though research indicates that various stakeholders, including students, are well informed about sustainability, far less is known about the “commitment gap” and how to involve stakeholders with sustainability (Emanuel & Adams, 2011).

Critical to the success of such sustainability measures across universities is the involvement of key stakeholders, namely undergraduate students (Davis et al., 2009). Though students are fundamental to the implementation of institutional change and university sustainability policies (Machado & Davin, 2023), this group remains understudied in the sustainability in higher education literature (Murray, 2018), especially as it pertains to how to involve students in university sustainability initiatives. Limited research in this domain suggests that developing innovative, formal sustainability curricula and service-learning projects to support student learning can educate and improve students’ awareness of sustainability principles and connect individuals to institutions (Zimmerman & Halfacre-Hitchcock, 2006). However, despite the intentionality of sustainability education, students’ perceptions of sustainability skew heavily toward environmental sustainability and often neglect the other two pillars (Zeegers & Clark, 2014). Beyond sustainability curricula, getting students involved through participation and campus activism can serve as important drivers to mainstreaming sustainability on campuses. However, research suggests that motivating students to uphold principles of sustainability through community stewardship requires significant institutional commitment. Specifically, developing a university community culture in which commitment to sustainability is pervasive in all aspects of campus life is imperative to fostering a collective commitment to sustainability from administration to students (Adams et al., 2018).

Beyond instituting cultural changes and formalizing sustainability curricula, research in sustainability in higher education is underdeveloped in determining how to involve undergraduate students in university sustainability. Accordingly, the present research examines students’ perceptions of specific university sustainability goals and explores opportunities for connecting students with sustainability initiatives to encourage stakeholder involvement in university sustainability.

Designing the Student Learning Experience

When designing a transformative learning experience for sustainability, research suggests that the students’ experience should be engaging, hands-on, and experiential (Burns et al., 2019). The learning experience was therefore designed to intentionally incorporate “synergetic transactions between the person and the environment” (Kolb & Kolb, 2005, p. 194) and offer students an opportunity to move beyond a traditional classroom transmission model of learning. Further, it sought to tie students’ learning about sustainability together with their university’s commitment to improving social, environmental, and economic well-being.

Thirty-five students enrolled in a Sustainability Marketing course at a large, midwestern, R1 university in which they learned about the social, environmental, and economic principles of sustainability within a business context. Key objectives in the course were for students to “uncover and explore challenges and opportunities in sustainability marketing” and to “examine business decisions using multiple lenses, including ethical, environmental, economic, and social.” Both objectives were instrumental in the design of this specific learning experience.

The learning experience involved three phases (see Figure 1 for a depiction of the research phases and consulting project phase). In Phase I, students evaluated the university’s climate action and sustainability plan to determine which goals were the highest priority for the university and which goals were most impactful for the student experience. An analysis of the data revealed differences in student perceptions of university sustainability priorities and their judgment of which parts of university sustainability matter to the student experience. The second phase used focus groups to uncover challenges for connecting students to university sustainability and opportunities for facilitating student involvement. In the final phase, student teams partnered with university and community contacts on a sustainability consulting project to implement recommendations for involving students in sustainability.

Phase I: Student Evaluations of University Sustainability Goals

Students were instructed to evaluate the university’s sustainability and climate action goals laid out in the strategic action plan. Specifically, students were challenged with reviewing the itemized goals and the accompanying descriptions to assess the impact of each goal. Students leveraged knowledge gained in the sustainability marketing course and their own perspectives to determine which two goals of the 32 goals outlined “will provide the greatest sustainable impact for the university and its stakeholders” (see Figure 2 for a succinct listing of the university’s sustainability and climate action goals. Goal categories are listed in bold text in the figure). In the second part of this assignment, students were tasked with identifying the two sustainability goals that they feel are most impactful for the student experience and were asked to explain why they chose these goals. This part of the assignment intended to evaluate whether students perceived university sustainability strategic aims are relevant and impactful to the student experience.

Students in the course spanned a range of classes and majors, which contributed to capturing a diverse range of student responses to the university’s sustainability goals (see Table 1 for student demographic information). All 35 students responded to both parts of the assignment in Phase I which respectively inquired about their belief in which goals provide the greatest sustainable impact to university stakeholders and, secondly, asked them to identify the goals that will most directly impact the student experience.

The first part of this phase asked students to identify the university sustainability priorities with greatest stakeholder impact. Responses to the impact of university sustainability on stakeholders were analyzed across the three primary aims of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic. Individual goals were evaluated and then coded to reflect one of the three sustainability aims. A separate judge was used to evaluate the author’s coding of sustainability goals and confirmed the original classification with 97% accuracy. The goal that was debated did not receive any support from the students (zero votes) and was therefore determined not to have an impact on the findings of the research.

Most of the sustainability goals students believed to exert the greatest impact of university stakeholders aligned with environmental initiatives (61.43%), followed by social (27.14%), and, lastly, economic (11.43%). Such findings are in line with prior research that finds students most associate sustainability with support for environmentalism (Kagawa, 2007). Students repeatedly stated concerns of climate change as the primary reason for rating environmental goals over social and economic goals. As one student stated, “While the university’s plan should prioritize other concerns like energy consumption and local food, climate poses the most widespread risk because its effect is far reaching more so than the other goals.”

An analysis of the data revealed that 13 of the 16 goal categories in the university plan received at least one vote that a student believed one of the goals in the category was of primary impact for the university stakeholders. However, student belief in the impact for university stakeholders was not evenly distributed across categories. Overrepresented were the goal categories of buildings, energy, investments, and waste, which collectively accounted for 50% of all scores for university stakeholder impact. Across these categories, the primary belief was that the university’s primary sustainability goal is to seek more sustainable, less wasteful means of operating and thus reducing its aggregate footprint.

Student perceptions of which goals they deemed to most impact their own experience differed considerably from their evaluations of the university sustainability priorities in the first part of the assignment. When students rated which goals they felt were most impactful for the student experience, their assessment of priorities shifted from environmental to social sustainability. More than two-thirds of students (67.14%) felt that goals related to social sustainability are most impactful. Environmental sustainability comprised 32.86% of the votes, and economic sustainability measures garnered zero votes. Another notable difference is the representation of fewer goal categories in the data. Namely, the top four goal categories of student life (35.71%), curriculum core (18.57%), food (12.86%), and transportation (8.57%) accounted for more than 75% of all goal category votes. All four of these goal categories differed from the primary four categories that students believed were most impactful for all university stakeholders. Further, students overwhelmingly indicated that support for students’ physical and mental well-being (30%) should be a primary aim of the university’s sustainability plan for the student experience. This finding contrasted with students’ perceptions of the university’s sustainability priorities for all stakeholders, in which only 4.29% of the votes were cast for supporting students’ physical and mental well-being. Another point of distinction between the students’ evaluations of sustainability aims for students and all university stakeholders was for the category of curriculum core. Across both goals in this category, only 7.14% of students felt that the curriculum core was a primary sustainability aim for the university. However, close to 19% of students felt it was a top priority for the student experience. Interestingly, all the students that indicated curriculum core as a priority believed that the specific goal for increasing “opportunities for formal, experiential, and community-engaged sustainability learning experiences” was of primary concern.

Phase II: Focus Groups for Connecting Students to Sustainability

Phase II explored opportunities to improve student involvement with university sustainability initiatives. This phase extended the findings of the first phase by examining the challenges to increasing student acceptance and involvement of sustainability initiatives. Students were asked to recall the two sustainability goals in Phase I that they identified as being the most impactful for the student experience. If they were unable to recall both goals, the instructor/researcher assisted with recall. Then, students identified challenges or obstacles to overcome to increase acceptance and involvement (“buy-in”) from students. Lastly, students were asked whether the university should consider any additional sustainability goals that are not currently listed in the plan.

Focus groups were designed as eight semi-structured interviews involving 3-5 students per group. The author conducted the focus groups with all 35 students from Phase I participating and each focus group averaging 41 minutes in duration. Transcriptions were generated using an audio recording device. Additionally, a student was employed to record notes of each session. Transcripts were analyzed for themes using NVivo 20.

The interview data were extensively examined, and transcripts were compared to identify key themes (Glaser & Strauss, 2017). Three themes emerged as challenges for connecting students with university sustainability: lack of awareness, lack of relevance, and disinterest in sustainability. For ways to increase student buy-in, themes included improving sustainability messaging, involving students in decision making, making students aware of their personal impact, and consolidating sustainability goals.

Primary Challenges for Connecting Students with Sustainability

Lack of Awareness

Nearly 43% of students stated that the foremost challenge  to connecting students with sustainability was a general lack of awareness about the initiatives. Central to this concern was feeling inundated by other university communication, namely emails. Students’ inattentiveness to sustainability initiatives stemmed from overlooking communication related to events, organizations, and activities on campus. One student stated:

“Many students feel that they’re overwhelmed by the amount of emails, posters, and messages that they see from the university and disregard some of them that do not look ‘important’ to them. Reaching students may be challenging if the message is not clear, straight to the point, and inviting or intriguing.”

Lack of Relevance

Other students mentioned that many of the on-campus initiatives fail to resonate with them because it is unclear how these initiatives impact students. Even campaigns to reduce energy usage by turning off lights fail to resonate because students do not see the connection to why they are affected. Students juggle demands from class, work, and social commitments; therefore, modifying their behavior to be more sustainable often falls outside their purview. One student remarked:

“It may be difficult for some students to see the connection between sustainability and their major or career goals. It is crucial to show students the intersectionality between sustainability and all industries and in different contexts.”

Disinterest in Sustainability

The last challenge cited by students was a general disinterest in sustainability at this life stage. Students were unwilling to adopt more sustainable behaviors or participate in university sustainability initiatives because they felt overwhelmed by other commitments, and sustainability was not a priority. Students explained that sparse attendance at events like Earth Day celebrations was attributed to students wanting to spend their time studying or socializing. When explaining this challenge, one student expressed concern that:

“My fear with setting up (sustainability events) is getting enough students to sign up and reaching an audience beyond Environmental Science majors who are likely already dedicated to living more sustainable lifestyles.”

Enhancing Student Buy-In

Upon discussing challenges to student involvement, the conversation pivoted to focus on opportunities to enhance student buy-in and engagement with university sustainability initiatives.

Improving Sustainability Messaging

As indicated previously, students felt they were not aware of various sustainability initiatives because of their muted promotion on campus. To remedy this lack of awareness, students mentioned that sustainability messaging could be improved by avoiding busier times of the academic year and leveraging faculty to support the initiatives. Specifically, students suggested avoiding mid-semester and the week of final exams, as students feel overwhelmed and less likely to acknowledge the message. The timing of the messaging was mentioned by four students in separate discussions, with each student lamenting poor timing in promoting student resources:

“It seems to be that during finals week, there are many resources to help with mental health, but some students don’t have time to read these or go to events. If it is communicated before finals, the students will be more willing to listen or participate.”

Four other students separately suggested professors and professional staff as resources for promoting sustainability initiatives and events. Through frequent interaction with students, faculty and staff establish trust and can help with making students more receptive to on-campus sustainability. A student in one focus group remarked:

“The university faculty are a great resource for getting students to not only find out about an opportunity to learn something but also to buy into it. If a professor I loved told me to take a specific class, I would probably take it because that professor knows what I’m able to do and what I like to do. “Buy in” doesn’t happen with just emails or just listing classes on a website.”

Involving Students in Decision Making

Approximately 23% of students suggested that the university involve students in decision making around sustainability initiatives to improve buy-in. Prior research in university student sustainability finds that students are more likely to participate when they feel empowered (Hamann et al., 2021). Students noted that if they have a voice represented, they are more likely to feel part of something greater and thus engaged. Several students echoed similar suggestions for involving students in the design and decision making of on-campus sustainability initiatives:

“If the university found a way to involve students in the decision-making process and provided them with opportunities to directly contribute to sustainability efforts, there would be more motivation for student support. This could be done through student-led sustainability committees or organizations that directly involve students in the planning and implementation of initiatives.”

“The university could get more student ‘buy in’ for the initiatives by involving us in the processes and letting us have a say in the decisions made. This does not mean that our say is final, but to even be considered and voice our opinions at meetings. I know that I may not know much about something, but it is nice to have a say.”

Making Students Aware of Their Own Impact

During three of the focus groups, students identified self-reflection as being instrumental to reforming their perspective and, eventually, their actions. Specifically, they recalled an assignment in the class in which they were asked to reflect on their weekly consumption behaviors and grade their own sustainability. Many of the students were surprised when learning about the effects of their personal consumption decisions and stated that they became more self-aware after having considered their behaviors. Consequently, they suggested that making other students aware of their own consumption footprint can meaningfully reform students’ intentions to behave more sustainably. One student suggested that through educating students about food choices, the university can affect change by encouraging students “to reflect on their own choices and change their habits.” Another student suggested that the university could implement self-care programs and “activities like yoga on college green to attract students and allow them time to reflect on their mental health.” In line with prior sustainability research that illuminates the benefits of reflective observation for students (Upadhyaya et al., 2019), several students in the focus groups suggested faculty and the university can create assignments and programs that intentionally make space for self-reflection.

Consolidating Sustainability Goals

The fourth theme emerged when students discussed whether the university should considered additional sustainability goals. More than 30% of interviewed students maintained that the university should not include additional goals but rather consolidate its sustainability goals so a clearer, more unified direction can be communicated. Students felt that 32 sustainability goals across 16 goal categories lacked direction and would be more impactful if the university reduced the total number and instead prioritized specific goals. Some of the goals were believed to overlap with others or be redundant. For instance, developing energy efficiency, especially for campus buildings, was reflected across three separate goals.

“There are a lot of goals for the university, and I feel like some of them overlap with each other. That is not a bad thing, but if they want to see progress and have obtainable goals, I would reduce the number of goals and combine some of them together to make the list seem less demanding.”

“I think the university should do a better job of promoting its existing sustainability goals, so students have a better idea of what (the university) wants to do.”

Phase III: Applied Learning in Sustainability Consulting Projects

The final phase of the learning experience sought to apply findings from the second research phase through developing sustainability consulting opportunities for student teams in the sustainability marketing course. Teams of 4-5 students partnered with the university’s Office of Sustainability to work on a service-learning consulting project over the course of several weeks. Teams were connected to primary client contacts for eight different projects addressing an array of sustainability aims. Consulting projects included both community-based and on-campus initiatives, ranging from increasing the use of natural light on campus to reducing plastic bag usage and landfill waste.

All sustainability consulting projects shared a common theme that centered around the primary finding of the focus group interviews: each initiative suffered from a lack of student awareness and required better promotion to create buy-in from students. University sustainability research suggests that adequate communication is imperative for influencing behavior and fostering an understanding of sustainability (Figueredo & Tsarenko, 2013). Student teams were therefore tasked with building a comprehensive communication strategy complete with marketing tactics to promote their selected sustainability initiative. To design and implement the communication strategy, teams leveraged concepts learned from the sustainability marketing course and other prior marketing courses. They developed ideas for building awareness for sustainability that were generated from the focus group discussions and team conversations with the clients.

Crucial to the design of each sustainability communication strategy was striking a balance with the appropriate amount of communication (Franz-Balsen & Heinrichs, 2007). Overpromotion by inundating students with a barrage of information about eight different sustainability initiatives could prove to be counterproductive and instead reduce the acceptance of sustainability from students. Therefore, student teams worked closely with the course instructor and primary client contacts to design and place communication messages about each initiative mindfully and to avoid oversaturating students with sustainability messages.

When teams completed their sustainability communication strategies, they presented their findings and suggestions to their project client and the course instructor. Each team also shared resources they created with the client to implement the communication strategies for the projects. Part of each team’s communication strategy included diverse tactics for reaching and informing students about the initiative. Such communication ideas ranged widely from painting a mural on a wall at the university to designing marketing messaging collateral to creating and maintaining social media platforms for the initiative. An example of one marketing message for increasing the use of natural light is shown in Figure 3. The consulting-based learning experience helped the university better promote under-resourced sustainability initiatives and, in turn, provided students with the unique opportunity to apply their new knowledge. One student remarked about their experience, “I loved helping the school and other local organizations improve their sustainability! It was interesting to have real-life experiences to translate to our class.”

 

Discussion

Universities outline broad measures to achieve greater sustainability in strategic plans, however, such lofty aims may not be optimally implemented without the assistance of critical university stakeholders (Davis et al., 2009). As such, it is incumbent upon universities to discover means for connecting to stakeholders to sustainability aims and thus enhance the potential for achieving sustainability. One critical stakeholder group often overlooked is undergraduate students (Murray, 2018). To enhance stakeholder support and engagement with sustainability, universities need to understand what is important to this group and how to optimally incorporate students in sustainability initiatives (Von Der Heidt & Lamberton, 2011). Students, as primary university stakeholders, offer a unique perspective into sustainability, yet university governance underutilizes this group when planning.

Over two phases of research and a third phase in which students’ learning was applied in a sustainability consulting project, the inquiry revealed students’ perspectives of university sustainability initiatives, which sustainability issues matter most to students, and how to increase student involvement and support for sustainability. Through the consulting-based experiential learning opportunity in the third phase, students applied their knowledge to help a university- or community-based client strengthen its sustainability communication. By building sustainability into the course curriculum and connecting students with strategic aims of the university, we can facilitate a greater learning experience and more meaningful connection between students and the university (Davis et al., 2024).

This research explored students’ perceptions of university sustainability goals and revealed practical insights to better align students with university sustainability aims. Essential to increasing student buy-in is crafting messages tailored to students that enhance their awareness of the initiative. Additionally, students suggested that universities include them in conversations and decisions about university sustainability, improve curricula for having students become aware of their own footprint, and consolidate the university’s sustainability plan so it is more clearly communicated and better received. Future work in this domain should explore students’ sustainability perceptions among a more representative sample that draws on a diversity of backgrounds, majors, and other criteria that may contribute to such perceptions.

 

Conclusion

Sustainability integrated in universities’ strategic plans touches every part of the university’s footprint. Accordingly, there are ample opportunities to incorporate experiential learning in the classroom within the space of sustainability (Burns et al., 2019). Many university programs including sustainability initiatives, are often strapped for financial resources (Leal Filho et al., 2018) and can therefore benefit from partnering with students who seek real-world learning experiences. In turn, elevating students’ sustainability commitment can enhance sustainability stewardship and impact of the greater university. By building sustainability-focused service-learning projects into existing courses across the university, students can apply their knowledge and skills to real sustainability challenges facing the university and local community.

 

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