First year students’ experience with respect to sustainability at McGill University
Juliana Fanous 260509924ENVR 495 – Honours Thesis
Supervisor: Dr. Julia Freeman
Due: April 22nd, 2016
Abstract
Higher education institutions have increasingly introduced sustainability concepts into their academic dialogue, allowing students to comment on society and its challenges, and to engage students in sustainable living. This paper explores first year students’ experience with respect to sustainability at McGill University. The project’s data was collected using an online survey distributed to students living in McGill downtown residences.The two main objectives of this research project were: 1) to investigate the variations in sustainability conceptions, motivations, attitudes and behaviours held by undergraduate first year students living in residence halls at McGill, and 2) to propose strategies to effectively move forward with sustainability initiatives on campus from a student standpoint. Atotal of 167 first year students completed the questionnaire yielding a response rate of 5.8%.The study revealed that the environmental pillar was most frequently articulated of all three dimensions of sustainability (ecological, social and political). Interestingly, verbs and words pertaining to sustainable ‘actions’ were most commonly mentioned. Results also showed that sustainability was not a motivational factor in attending the institution for most entering students. Respondent attitudes demonstrated differences in viewpoints across the three dimensions of sustainability, and across three scales: societal, institutional and personal. Findings substantiated the effectiveness of the residence dining hall-composting program. Recommendations included utilizing students’ desire to partake in research experience, and highlighting these opportunities across all disciplines. The study further highlights the role of McGill University as a significantplace to educate, motivate and support community sustainable action.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction
Background
The Concept of ‘Sustainability’
The Role of Higher Education for Sustainability
Research Context: McGill University
Target Population
Research Question
Methods
Participants
Survey
Variables
Results and Discussion
Demographic Characteristics of Respondents
Understanding of “sustainability”
Keywords
Definitions
Motivational Factors for Attending McGill
Attitudes with respect to three pillars of sustainability
Behaviours and responses to sustainability initiatives on campus
Scaled Questions
McGill Initiatives
Comparative Analysis
Recommendations for McGill’s sustainability community
Limitations
Future Research
Conclusion
References
Appendix A: Survey
Appendix B: Keywords
Introduction
Arecent challenge of our time is to take the abstract concept of “sustainability” and applyit into our daily experience. As McGill University and other higher education institutions begin to prioritize sustainability, it has become critical to interpret student understandings, attitudes and behaviours in order to turn this broad concept into a usable reality. Through this applied research project, sustainability can be investigated through the lens of first year McGill students. The study will help understand their personal manifestations of a broad concept while fostering self-reflection of their own conception of the term. These students will be directly influenced for the next few years by newly developed sustainability policies at McGill.
Background
The Concept of ‘Sustainability’
Sustainability is notoriously complex and ambiguous. The most commonly cited definition of “sustainable development” appeared in the 1987 United Nations Report Our Common Future, which brought together the economic, social and environmental components of sustainability(WCED, 1987). It is possibly the most recognized definition today as it states sustainable development to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p.2). Embedded in this concept is the notion of intra-generational and cross-generational equity(WCED, 1987). The vagueness of sustainabilitycan sometimesmake it difficult to find a balance between trade-offs to help protect interests of all community members (Aber, Kelly & Mallory, 2009). Sustainability should remain a work in progress that needs to be informed and interpreted by the community and situation in which it is being utilized. It allows users to develop a specific meaning within the diverse cultural, social and ecological systems of the local context.The description is necessarily broad so that various organizations with diverse goals can apply the concept to their own workings. For the purpose of this project specifically, a provisional definition is one that emphasizes a balance between three interacting pillars: environmental responsibility, social equity and economic well-being (Edwards, 2012; Newport et al., 2003).
The Role of Higher Education for Sustainability
Higher education institutions are critically important places of knowledge production, perpetuation and dissemination (Astin,1993; Bartlett, 2004; Cortese, 2003). Universities have increasingly introduced sustainability concepts into their academic dialogue (Kelly, 2009). Higher education has unique academic freedom and diversity of skills to develop new ideas, to comment on society and its challenges, and engage students in sustainable living. This is essential for students to be aware of the impact of their daily life in affecting the relationships between environmental, economic and social issues, and to influence their actions as both local and global citizens. The importance of sustainability in higher education has beenwidely acknowledged from 1990 onward with the writing and signing of the Talloires Declaration by hundreds of universities worldwide (Khan, 2013). The document, of which McGill University is a signatory, recognizes the responsibility of universities in “creating an equitable and sustainable future for all humankind in harmony with nature” (ULSF, 1990, p.1). Given the research, resources, intellectual freedom and unique social conditions created by universities, such higher learning may well offer important contributions to moving toward a sustainable future.
Research Context: McGill University
McGill University is an established higher education institution with an international reputation for scholarly achievement and scientific discovery. The university is located in Montreal, Quebec and has a student body of 27,075 undergraduate students, and entering class of 5,906 students that have varying demographic backgrounds (McGill University, 2016). Student interest in sustainability has increased in recent years, reflected by the incorporation of sustainability into the curriculum, considerable growth in sustainability-related student groups, student involvement in large-scale sustainability projects (including the creation of McGill Office of Sustainability (MOOS) and the Sustainability Project Fund (SPF)), and the emergence of student-university partnerships in the areas of food, waste, energy systems, among others. With McGill’s multicultural and diverse community, it is important to understand student views and interpretations in relation to sustainable living to better apply this concept to campus life (Thaman, 2002).
Target Population
For the purpose of this study, first year students were chosen as a specific group of individuals who may have widely different levels of exposure tosustainability (as both a concept and set of practices) prior to attending university. This group of individuals will be directly influenced for the next few years by newly developed sustainability policies at McGill. This is the year the foundation upon students’ entire educational experience is built and is a key time to introduce students to issues of sustainability (Astin, 1993). Residence halls in particular are facilities critical for fostering knowledge creation and many of which are organized around themes emphasizing the focus of campus culture (Aber, Kelly & Mallory, 2009). The critical impact of residence halls due to the amount of time students spend in these environments allow for engaging activities to encourage student involvement in sustainable initiatives (Astin, 1993). Results from this study might help guide the sustainability community at McGill in furthering efforts to engage students in sustainable practices and ways of thinking in the long term. These students’ experiences will provide an excellent opportunity to shape the campus culture.
Research Question
This project aims to explore the following question: what are undergraduate first year students’ experiences with respect to sustainability at McGill University? This is important to gain a comprehensive understanding of how those students – not yet exposed to the university’s sustainability practices– can help strengthen effective initiatives for communicating and implementing those habits on campus. My two main objectives are to:
1) Investigate the variations in sustainability conceptions, attitudes and behaviours held byundergraduate first year students living in residence halls at McGill, and
2) Propose strategies to effectively move forward with sustainability initiatives on campus froma student standpoint.
Methods
This section offers information on the cross sectional study, specifically the research participants, the survey instrument developed, and the data collection process.
Participants
I recruited participants from the incoming Fall 2015 first year class living in residence halls belonging to the downtown campus of McGill University. The residences participating include: Carrefour Sherbrooke, Douglas Hall, La Citadelle, McConnell Hall, Molson Hall, Gardner Hall, MORE Houses, New Residence Hall, Royal Victoria College, Solin Hall, University Hall, and First Peoples’ House Residence. Survey respondents were at least 18 years of age in order to be eligible, and were chosen as a group of individuals who may have widely different levels of exposure to sustainability prior to attending university (N=167).
Survey
An online survey questionnaire, created in consultation with MOOS, was developed to collect both structured and open-ended data. A copy of the survey has been included in Appendix A. It contains five major sections of questions:
a)Demographic characteristics and general information about student participants
b)Students’ understanding of the term ‘sustainability’
c)Motivating factors for attending McGill
d)Students’ attitudes with respect to the three pillars of sustainability
e)Student behaviours and responses to sustainability programs implemented on campus
The Internet survey link was distributed directly by Student Housing and Hospitality Services (SHHS) via e-mail, and participation in this survey was entirely voluntary.
Variables
The dependent variable analyzed was undergraduate first year students’ experiences with regards to sustainability and related issues. This includes their understanding of the concept, whether or not sustainability was a motivational factor in their decision to come to McGill, students’ attitudes and behaviors relating to sustainable initiatives on campus, and their response to implement projects. The independent variables tested relate to their demographic characteristics, including their program of study, gender, and geographic place of childhood. The report seeks to understand the complex relationships of these variables.
Results and Discussion
This section moves through the parts of the survey itself. An analysis of each component will lead to a set of recommendations for McGill’s sustainability community.
Demographic Characteristics of Respondents
One hundred and sixty seven first year students living in downtown residences completed the online survey, yielding a response rate of 5.8%. It should be noted thatthere is underrepresentation of students native to Montreal considering the survey was restricted to students living in McGill downtown residences. This section encompassed a wide range of questions including the student-respondent’s year in school, faculty, department, gender, place of residence, type of livingenvironment (setting), and ethnicity. For the purpose of this report, the analysis focused on specific key characteristics outlined in Table 1.
Table 1: Comparison of Sample (N=167), and Population 2015 Entering Class Demographic Data
Sample / Population (Entering class)Faculty (N = 166) / Frequency / % / %
Arts / 70 / 42.2 / 32.8
Arts and Science / 16 / 9.6 / 3.2
Education / 2 / 2.3 / 7.1
Engineering / 15 / 9 / 12.4
Management (Desautels) / 13 / 7.8 / 10.5
Music / 2 / 1.2 / 2.7
Religious Studies / 0 / 0.0 / 0.2
Science / 43 / 25.9 / 19.2
Type of area (N = 163)
Suburban / 71 / 43.6 / Unavailable
Urban (metropolitan area) / 70 / 42.9
Rural/small town (countryside)
Other / 19
3 / 11.7
1.8
Gender (N = 165)
Female / 117 / 70.9 / Unavailable
Male / 45 / 27.3
Other / 3 / 1.8
Of the total sample size, 70.9% identified as female, 27.3% identified as male 1.8% identified as gender fluid or bi-gender. Evidently, a larger proportion of respondents were female, this either might be related to the gender distributions of the target sample (although this was unavailable), or because of gender response bias. Response biases favoring women are typically common in online surveys of the general public (Cull et al, 2005).This distribution may impact this study’s findings given that the literature indicates that female students tend to exhibit greater concern toward the risk-related sustainability issues and greater support of the intrinsic value of nature than male students (Sahin, Ertepinar, & Teksoz, 2012; Torbjornsson, Molin, & Karlberg, 2011). Another key demographic factor are students’ faculties. The Faculties of Arts, Science, and Arts and Science had the greatest proportions of students with 42.2%, 25.9% and 9.6% of the sample respectively. Students in these faculties were moderately overrepresented, whereas those in Education, Engineering, Management and Music were slightly underrepresented. As for the type of environment students predominantly grew up in, there is an interesting pattern. Respondents were rather evenly split between growing up in suburban environments (43.6%) and urban, metropolitan centers (42.9%). Only 11.7% of students grew up in rural areas or small towns.Indeed, in a study of rural youth in Iowa, Schonert et al. (1991) found that the majority of rural secondary students tended to not gravitate towards higher education institutions in larger cities. Nonetheless, these findings demonstrate thatrespondents have experienced living different density sized areas. The distribution of the samples in the university as shown in Table 1 conforms, to a certain extent, to the population distribution of McGill’s Fall 2015 entering class.
These statistics were utilized to ensure that the sample of respondents captured the diversity of the campus. Overall, the sample reflected the population in most respects and inspires confidence in the data despite a low response rate. Evidently, we do see a greater representation of survey respondents identifying as female (70.9%) and enrolled in the Faculty of Arts (42.2%), which will be factored into the analysis of the survey.
Understanding of “sustainability”
This section of the survey began with a scaled question about the level of familiarity with sustainability. Most students seem to be familiar with the concept sustainability. Out of 167 responses, over 66% of them rated this 4 or 5 on the 5-point Likert scale. These findings are moderately similar to Kagawa’s research (2007), which found that over 77% of students self identified as having an above average level of familiarity with the term sustainability. It should be noted that nuances exist with the word “familiarity”. Familiarity is a generic feeling that might provoke a subjective feeling of recognition. Therefore there is a distinction to be made about “familiarity” and words like “awareness” or “knowledge”.
Keywords
Participants were first asked to brainstorm keywords, ideas, or thoughts generated when considering sustainability.No definition of sustainability was provided in order to analyzethevarious understandings of the term. Within the dataset, a coding scheme was manually developed to detect the subtleties of human expression, and to identify the ideas and phrases that appeared most often. Codes were used multiple times for the same response if key words or phrases within the same category appeared in that response more than once. This dataset was used to gain a general understanding of the ideas and actions respondents were linking to sustainability. The frequencies for the coding scheme are reported in Appendix B.
A Word Cloud on Wordle was generated usingthe basic list of words and the number of times they have been found in student responses. A Word Cloud is an image composed of words in which the size of each word indicates its frequency. Figure 1 illustrates the Word Cloud for the sustainability survey. Most respondents focused on the environmental aspects of sustainability as exemplified by the highest frequency of the word “environment” which 67 students identified (Table 3 in Appendix B). Students also strongly associated the action of “recycling” with the notion of sustainability (Table 7 in Appendix B). This is most likely due to student engagement with the action, as well as the recognition of the role and potential of to preserve the environment and its resources. The state of Coloradoeven considers recycling to be the “cornerstone of sustainability” (CAFR, 2010).
Figure 1. Word Cloud generated based on respondents’ keywords for sustainability(N=161)
Figure 1 reveals that most students recognizedenvironmental and technological issues of sustainability, but few students associated the three-legged stool with sustainability, which simultaneously acknowledges the economic and social dimensions as well as the environmental aspect of sustainability. These findings reflect heavily those of Azapagic et al. (2005) and Summers et al. (2004) that discovered students’ understanding was strong in terms of the environmental element of sustainability, but there was a significant lack of insight and recognition of the social and economic aspects. This discovery is indeed reflected in the results as illustrated by Table 1 of Appendix B. The tableshows a wide margin between total word frequency of the ‘ecological category’ (147), and both ‘social aspects’ (73) and ‘economics’ (34)categories. Interestingly, this table also illustrates how students tend to refer to“action”words when considering sustainability. The ‘action category’(Table 7 of Appendix B) is the most frequently coded category, andshows how students most commonly address the need to take concrete ‘sustainable’ action.
Definitions
Directly following the keyword section, participants were directed to attempt a definition of sustainability (N=156). Central themes and ideas were identified to determine common as well as unique definitions of sustainability. Qualitative data analysis allowed for patterns to emerge from students’ definitions.
Definitions that focused on the environmental pillar including the earth, energy and resources,were most common. I further divided the environmental category into definitions that appeared to address resources or the environment as a means to support humans (anthropocentric) and those that included a reference to the environment beyond human-centered reasoning (biocentric). Examples that alluded to the environment as a means to support humans (N=76) included mention of human needs, generational needs, and keeping resources available to people. As one participant explained, sustainability is often understood as,
“The ability to sustain oneself by their own means, for example by using natural resources for source of energy as they do not run out, so that the future is secure.” (Male student, Faculty of Engineering)