Background

The Campus Sustainability Assessment project (CSAP) was founded in 1999 to address the limited availability of high-quality resources for supporting colleges and universities in evaluating their social and environmental performance. Through extensive surveys of the literature and the campus sustainability assessment (CSA) corpus, and through correspondence with leaders in the field, the CSAP identified "gaps" among available resources. Using this information, the CSAP research team has created materials to help close these "gaps."

This website features the following resources:

1. A searchable database of over 1,200 campus sustainability assessment projects-providing project information, websites and contact information, and details on the assessment framework employed for select projects.
2. A "best practice" evaluation identifying exemplary CSA projects, both focused (category-specific) and comprehensive.
3. A guide to conducting a "snapshot" comprehensive CSA, including step-by-step guidelines, assessment framework, data calculators, information management databases, and various templates.
4. A searchable literature database with over 500 works related to campus sustainability assessment.
5. Comprehensive and condensed bibliographies of CSA-related literature.
6. Access to other CSAP publications, including articles, presentations and a thesis.
7. Links to important websites relevant to sustainability in higher education and campus sustainability assessment.

Other CSAP resources, available only on-site, include the world's largest electronic and hard-copy libraries of CSA reports and CSA-related literature, and a campus-greening research station available to all WMU stakeholders.

For more information on CSAP history, see Nixon (2002), Chapter 1.

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