<p> This research tells a story about how students form communities of practice that help them succeed in graduate school. Told within the context of individual and collective experiences, it holds valuable lessons for how student success can be supported across the higher education landscape. Communities of practice can develop spontaneously when individuals involved in a common activity or with a sense of shared identity come together to deal with organizational complexities or establish a forum for continued learning. The practice of becoming an accomplished and successful student who is able to develop scholarly abilities and deepen disciplinary understanding, experience personal growth and achievement, while at the same time maintaining a healthy school-work-life balance is a non-trivial exercise. Membership in a community of practice can help students achieve success as part of the process of navigating this complex journey. Generously informed by the experiences of Prescott College sustainability education doctoral students, this research used survey responses, anecdote circles, interviews, and grounded theory methods to determine how communities of practice develop among graduate students in support of their success. This presentation asks and answers questions about what communities of practice are, how and why they develop, and what value they can bring to higher education. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: student success, community of practice, graduate education, sustainability education, sustainable education, higher education </p>

<p>Given the threats of climate change along with limited natural resources, colleges and universities are in a position to role model sustainable practices and provide opportunities for students to learn how to live more sustainable lives. Campus housing departments are well positioned to implement sustainability education programs for their residential students. Residential college students are often less motivated to engage in sustainable living behaviors because they perceive minimal control over their living environment and are not held accountable for their resource consumption. This study evaluated the effect the No Impact Jack Sustainable Living Certificate program had on promoting and sustaining behavior change in residential college students. The program design applied the theory of planned behavior, which uses reported behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs to predict behavioral intention for performing the target behaviors. This study identified barriers and motivations for engaging in sustainable living behaviors, as perceived by first year residential students, alongside the testing of certain Community Based Social Marketing strategies including public commitment, social norms, and incentives. The No Impact Jack program was most successful in helping participants maintain their current behaviors and affirming their motivations for engaging in sustainable behaviors in the context of a new and slightly more challenging living environment. Those who participated in the No Impact Jack program were less susceptible than the other research participants to the perceived barriers (control beliefs) encountered in this new environment. Participation in the No Impact Jack program helped them learn more about sustainable living behaviors in the college environment and the certificate on the door provided additional motivation for holding themselves accountable to the commitment they made. The results provided direction on what type of education and programmatic outreach to provide to residential college students in order to facilitate and maintain desired behavior changes. </p>

<p> The number of colleges and universities with campus agriculture projects in the US has grown from an estimated 23 in 1992 to 300 today with possibly increased numbers predicted. The profile emerging from campus agriculture projects looks a lot different from the traditional land grant colleges of agriculture. In spite of this emergent trend and staunch advocacy for campus agriculture projects, limited empirical research on agriculture-based learning in higher education exists outside agriculture degrees and theoretical work of scholars such as Liberty Hyde Bailey and David Orr. The purpose of this exploratory research was two-fold. First, prevailing characteristics and pedagogical objectives of campus agriculture projects were explored through a survey of all known US campus agriculture project managers and educators. Second, interviews, photo-elicitation, field observations, and use of the Connectedness to Nature Scale and Inclusion of Nature Scale were conducted during the summer of 2013 at Yale Farm and the University of Montana's Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society Farm (P.E.A.S.). At these two farms, I studied whether and in what ways did academic courses connected to campus agriculture projects at US colleges impact participating students' perceptions of and connection to nature. </p><p> This mixed methods research illustrates a re-visioning of how higher education is interfacing with agriculture and agriculture-based education beyond traditional land grant colleges of agriculture through attention to sustainability initiatives and pedagogies. Agriculture-based education and campus agriculture projects can distinctively impact students' perceptions of connectedness to nature through experiencing agriculture's role in establishing a new worldview. Data offers empirical evidence that campus agriculture projects deepen connection to place, and offers substitutes to anthropocentric beliefs and behaviors. While experiences at the campus agriculture projects motivated pro-environmental and social behaviors specific to farming, food, and the more-than-human community at the farms, participating students did not report an increase in cognitive connectedness to nature or behaviors beyond food, farming, or the more-than-human community at the farms.</p>

<p>In light of the increasingly complex sustainability problems facing local and global communities, and the need to improve the scientific basis for decision making, sustainability science elevates the role of research collaborations and communication among scientists and stakeholders in developing solutions. Although many universities are heeding the calls for collaborative research and are making progress on bringing diverse groups together to address sustainability issues, disconnections between the production of knowledge and its actual use in society persist. These persistent divisions indicate that we still have a great deal to learn about how to develop university-stakeholder partnerships that facilitate collaboration between the various actors in society. </p><p> Building successful, enduring research partnerships is essential for improving links between knowledge and action. The overarching question addressed in this dissertation is: <i>"In the quest to develop sustainable solutions, what factors may strengthen or hinder the development of robust stakeholder-university research partnerships?"</i> In answering this question, I interrogate the role of communication in partnership development, the influence of communication practices on stakeholder and researcher interactions, and ways that we can use interdisciplinary forms of and approaches to research to improve communication with partners. The goal of this research is to improve university and community capacity for collaborative, problem-focused research to address pressing societal problems. </p><p> Using quantitative and qualitative survey data from the <i>Maine Municipal Official Survey</i> and the <i>Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement Survey,</i> each chapter addresses the overarching research question in different ways. In the first and second chapters, I develop theoretically and empirically supported statistical models to identify a set of factors influencing officials' reported interest in developing a community-university research partnership and factors influencing officials' participation preferences in community-university research partnerships, respectively. The models strengthen the capacity for co-learning by providing data on interest and preference alignment between potential project partners, and they provide data on stakeholder preferences and experiences that may improve communication between partners and inform partnership interactions. The third chapter bridges interdisciplinary theories from social psychology and communication to deepen the conversation about justice in community-university research partnerships. The dissertation concludes with lessons learned about developing community-university research partnerships. </p>

<p> Understanding the factors which influence adopting sustainability practices in IHE is an important issue to develop more effective sustainability's methods and policies. The focus of this research is to find out a meaningful relationship between adopting sustainability practices and some of the characteristics of institutions of higher education (IHE). IHE can be considered as the best place to promote sustainability and develop the culture of sustainability in society. Thus, this research is conducted to help developing sustainability in IHE which have significant direct and indirect impact on society and the environment. </p><p> First, the sustainability letter grades were derived from "Greenreportcard.org" which have been produced based on an evaluation of each school in nine main categories including: Administration, Climate Change &amp; Energy, Food &amp; Recycling, etc. In the next step, the characteristics of IHE as explanatory variables were chosen from "The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System" (IPEDS) and respective database was implemented in STATA Software. Finally, the "ordered-Probit Model" is used through STATA to analyze the impact of some IHE's factor on adopting sustainability practices on campus. </p><p> The results of this analysis indicate that variables related to "Financial support" category are the most influential factors in determining the sustainability status of the university. "The university features" with two significant variables for "Selectivity" and "Top 50 LA" can be classified as the second influential category in this table, although the "Student influence" is also eligible to be ranked as the second important factor. Finally, the "Location feature" of university was determined with the least influential impact on the sustainability of campuses.</p>

Construction is an investment intensive industry which has been notoriouslyknown to be cost and time ineffective. Further, the construction industry isknown to be the world’s largest resource utilizer and the largest polluter.Hence sustainability in construction is necessary.Since Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) are one of the most importantstakeholders in construction, this research aims to determine the sustainabilityaspects taught in Swedish construction programmes. On comparing the aimsand outcomes of all construction courses to the United Nations SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs), this research found that Swedish constructioneducation programmes lack political and social sustainability in theirconstruction curricula. Further, this research investigates the challenges toimparting sustainability education due to present research andpedagogical/teaching methods. Data to investigate the results was collectedthrough interviews with programme directors from various SwedishUniversities.The findings of this research show a connection between practical application,research and traditional education. Further, the factors affecting research andpedagogy are also inter-related and convoluted. A large cause and effectnetwork arising due to the interplay of the factors is addressed in thediscussions section. This thesis finds that sustainable development inconstruction requires development of sustainability evaluation methods as wellas combined efforts from various stakeholders and professions.