When students are designing their capstone projects, one of the key things they can do to ensure their projects have a meaningful impact on sustainability is to focus on addressing real problems or issues related to sustainability that are currently facing their campus, local community, or beyond. Conducting thorough research into the major sustainability challenges and coming up with projects aimed at tangible solutions will help maximize the potential impact. Some key areas students may want to examine include energy usage and emissions reductions, waste reduction, water usage, sustainable transportation, sustainable food systems, and community education around sustainability issues.
Once students have identified a key sustainability problem area to tackle, they need to design their capstone project with sustainability and creating impact fully in mind. They should think through how to develop practical, actionable solutions and set clear, measurable goals and objectives for their project that are focused on driving real change. For example, if the project is aimed at reducing campus energy usage, goals such as decreasing energy consumption in a particular building by 10% over the course of a semester would help ensure the work leads to quantifiable benefits. Students should also develop a solid plan for how they will implement their project and see it through to completion to achieve those goals.
Securing stakeholder buy-in from individuals and groups on campus who are responsible for or can help enable achieving the sustainability goals is crucial. This may involve getting approval and support from facility managers, sustainability officers, administrators, student groups, and others. Developing partnerships can help open doors, provide valuable guidance and resources, and help ensure project outcomes are adopted and maintained long-term after students graduate. Leveraging existing campus sustainability initiatives and infrastructure where possible will increase the likelihood of real change resulting.
Students would also be wise to think about how to measure and quantify the impacts of their projects. Developing metrics and collecting data both during and following project implementation on factors like energy or materials savings, reductions in emissions, or shifts in behaviors is important. This data collection helps justify the projects, demonstrate their value, and provide accountability that goals were attained. It also allows impacts to be clearly communicated to stakeholders. Developing a plan to publicly report metrics helps disseminate results.
Having a plan to share project outcomes with the wider community as well to spread awareness of the solutions developed is another important consideration. This could involve hosting presentations on campus, publishing articles, developing educational materials, or participating in external conferences. Broader outreach helps multiply the educational impacts and may spark further campus or community sustainability actions. Wherever possible, students should seek to create open access reports, tools, and resources that others can learn from and utilize.
Thinking about long-term sustainability (no pun intended) of project impacts is also critical. Having the campus commit to maintaining projects post-graduation, creating student groups focused on continued progress, obtaining pledges for ongoing data collection, and more are strategies that can help ensure the sustainability of impacts achieved. This ensures any emission reductions, behavioral changes, installed technologies or other interventions achieved through capstone efforts are locked in and can continue driving benefits well into the future.
By grounding capstone projects firmly in real sustainability challenges, prioritizing measurable and quantifiable outcomes, integrating stakeholder support, developing comprehensive implementation and assessment plans, disseminating results broadly, and considering longevity, students have the best chances of completing projects that deliver meaningful and lasting benefits to sustainability on their campuses and beyond. Taking sustainability impact full circle from problem identification through solution development, implementation, evaluation and reporting maximizes the potential for capstones to support progress toward more sustainable futures. With diligence, passion and planning, students’ final academic works have great potential to not just demonstrate their learning but also create real change.