Purpose: The purpose of this article is to critique constructively and complement the Talloires Declaration with a focus on social and cultural elements that shape action. These elements are important to achieving the needed response to the environmental issues that the Talloires Declaration highlights. While the Talloires Declaration has been…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to respond to calls for higher education institutions to address sustainability within the curriculum. Institutions that aim to graduate citizens with prescribed attributes relevant to sustainability may need to develop teaching and learning support-programmes appropriate to the varied nature of students'…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to identify the offering and nature (scope) of sustainability accounting courses at universities that have signed the Talloires Declaration and also at universities with prominent sustainability accounting researchers' affiliations. For this purpose a university web sites content analysis for sustainability…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the importance of a focus on ethics in sustainability education and present results from a pilot graduate-level course titled the Ethics of Sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: This is a case study presenting a qualitative evaluation from a pilot 14-week Ethics of Sustainability course.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to design a community-based social marketing (CBSM) campaign to foster sustainable behavior change in paper reduction, commingled recycling, and purchasing environmentally preferred products (EPP) with faculty and staff at Pacific University Oregon. Design/methodology/approach: A CBSM campaign was developed…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to outline a unique six-step process for the inclusion of climate change adaption goals and strategies in a University Climate Change Plan. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-method approach was used to gather data on campus climate change vulnerabilities and adaption strategies. A literature review…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how a cohort of university faculty leaders in Canadian universities conceptualize sustainable development, sustainable universities, the role universities play in achieving a sustainable future, key issues facing the university, and the barriers to implementing sustainability initiatives on campus.…

Purpose: The aim of the present study is to contribute to the discussion introducing the concept of social capital as a significant parameter influencing students' perceptions concerning greening initiatives in HEIs. Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical analysis is presented concerning the possible links of social capital components…

Purpose: This article aims to provide an overview of Texas State University's Common Experience, an innovative initiative that engaged tens of thousands of people in shared consideration of sustainability as a single topic during academic year 2010-2011. Design/methodology/approach: The discourse begins with an overview of the Common…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe challenges and lessons learned in the design and development of a comprehensive, flexible environmental management system (EMS) in a real university setting; also to inform development of similar systems elsewhere and provide a modular, extensible software architecture for such efforts.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that Richard Register's ecocity model offers a strategic framework to help guide sustainability initiatives in North American higher education (HE) institutions. Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual paper examines the theory of the ecocity and investigates the implications for its proposed…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish necessity and methods for considering greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies at a system-level. The research emphasizes connecting narrowly focused GHG mitigation objectives (e.g. reduce single occupancy vehicle travel) with broader institutional objectives (e.g. growth in student population) to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how active learning may help address the legitimacy and practicability issues inherent in introducing education for sustainability into business-related degree programs. Design/methodology/approach: The focus of this study is the experience of the authors in the development and implementation of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe four phases for how universities have addressed a sustainability agenda and offer specific lessons for how and where experiences on one campus, the University of Colorado Boulder, have been met with success and other challenges. The authors offer general reflections for executing university-wide…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the integration of Okala curriculum into Interior Design coursework. Okala, as a teaching package, is utilized extensively in industrial design education. However, this study examines the expansion and insertion of Okala modules in an existing interior design curriculum. The Okala modules included…