What do we say when we talk about sustainability? Analyzing faculty, staff and student definitions of sustainability at one American university

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how faculty, staff and students at one American University define the term sustainability.

The authors analyze student, staff and faculty definitions by comparing word frequency counts to a list of the 25 most frequently found words in over 100 definitions of sustainability. Next, the authors analyze the definitions through content analysis, producing a list of emergent themes.

The authors find that our definitions do not rate highly when compared to a list of the most frequent words from published definitions, but examining them more closely highlights nuances in understanding.

These results can only speak to one university’s population, but may be similar to that of comparable schools. Further studies should include comparisons to a range of campus communities, including environmental leaders and laggards.

Administrators and educators at institutes of higher education must determine whether an ambiguous understanding of sustainability is sufficient for their own goals in producing an educated citizenry.

When a community fails to understand sustainability, it impacts how they conceptualize environmental problems and make decisions to solve them.

This study shows that unless one has polled a campus population, one cannot know how its members understand a fundamental concept such as sustainability. It also shows that the work of sustainability education is just beginning.