Strategic Plan

Advancing sustainability at IUPUI

The latest version of IUPUI Sustainability's strategic plan was adopted in 2018 after a year-long process of gathering feedback and commitment from focus areas across campus.  This plan is a culmination of those efforts.  Though IUPUI Sustainability takes ownership of this plan, it would not be possible without the support and partnership of our colleagues across IUPUI.  In alignment with IUPUI's Strategic Plan and AASHE STARS, focus areas of this plan include: Academics, Operations, and Engagement.  The plan can be viewed by focus areas below or downloaded in entirety.

 

Download IUPUI Sustainability strategic plan

Areas of Commitment

Evaluate sustainability literacy and culture of campus (2020)
  • Draft assessments with benchmarking metrics against other universities
  • Distribute to campus via sample population size in partnership with IRDS
  • Analyze results
  • Formulate actions and steps to address literacy or cultural deficiencies
Increase sustainability integration into courses (2025)
  • Assess sustainability academic assets currently in place
  • Create transferable sustainability learning outcomes that can be incorporated into any course
  • Disseminate information to faculty
  • Market programs to students
Integrate student learning into strategic plan in support of the campus as a living laboratory model (2025)
  • Identify best project(s) from strategic plan for coursework integration
  • Match students, faculty, and operations to projects
  • Have active projects identified that can run annually, as well as others that can run on an as-needed basis
Create incentive program for faculty to create new sustainability courses or integrate sustainability into courses that already exist (2025)
  • Inventory existing support
  • Identify faculty needs
  • Conduct gaps assessment of resources needed
  • Fill gaps and advocate for resources

Air and Climate
  • Inventory Scope 1-2 emissions annually; Integrate known Scope 3 data into annual assessment (2020)
  • Enlist course(s) or intern(s) to conduct GHG analysis annually (2020)
  • Create a real-time dashboard to show energy used on campus and associated emissions (2022)
  • Set specific smart goals once solid baseline is established, including offsetting goals (2022)
Buildings
  • Create a real-time dashboard to show building water usage on campus (2022)
  • Explore use of LEED O+M practices in campus buildings (2022)
  • Integrate building-level water metering into building design and construction (2025)
Energy
  • Consumption
    • Conduct annual energy analysis and tracking (2020)
    • Create a real-time dashboard to show energy used on campus (2022)
    • Establish energy reduction goals from baseline (2022)
  • Renewable Energy
    • Explore expansion of increasing purchased renewable energy portfolio for campus; increase from 10% (2022)
    • Assess potential for physical solar installation on campus, targeting rooftops and parking garages, including financial models (2022)
Food and Dining
  • Purchasing
    • Develop and implement a tracking system to assess sustainability attributes of campus food purchases (2020)
    • Create sustainable food purchasing guide (2020)
    • Establish food purchasing goals from baseline (2022)
    • Work towards reaching food purchasing goals (2025) and revisit as needed
  • Dining Experience
    • Expand pre-consumer composting program to post-consumer in residential dining operations (2020)
    • Formalize the integration of recovering leftover food by the Campus Kitchen at IUPUI into IUPUI Food Services’ waste stream management (2020)
    • Expand pre and post-consumer composting to all retail dining operations (2025)
Grounds
  • Landscape Management
    • Facilitate interzone cooperation for meetings and training on appropriate grounds maintenance (2020)
    • Create training and best practice guidelines for grounds staff (2020)
    • Develop a plan to test and implement more sustainable grounds application products, including herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides, salt, and equipment (2022)
    • Implement plan (2025)
  • Campus Biodiversity
    • Conduct a campus-wide biodiversity assessment, including native plants and pollinators (2022)
    • From assessment, establish a campus goal for percentage or type of biodiversity to pursue (2025)
    • Make significant progress towards achieve a campus canopy coverage of 28% by planting more trees (2025)
    • Demonstrate sustainable landscapes are desirable and beautiful using metrics on aesthetics and saved maintenance costs (2025)
  • Continue maintenance of Tree Campus USA and Bee Campus USA designation (ongoing-2025)
Purchasing
  • Paper
    • Increase percentage of paper purchased at IUPUI that is post-consumer recycled paper to 25% of total paper purchases (2020)
    • Reduce total campus paper purchases by 10% (2022)
    • Increase percentage of paper purchased at IUPUI that is post-consumer recycled paper to 50% of total paper purchases (2025)
  • Green Cleaning Supplies
    • Increase percentage of clean supplies purchased at IUPUI to 70% of total cleaning supplies purchased (2020)
    • Increase percentage of clean supplies purchased at IUPUI to 90% of total cleaning supplies purchased (2025)
Transportation
  • Install level 2 and 3 charging stations (2020)
  • Improve bike storage facilities in high traffic areas (2020)
  • Double the number of spaces allocated to non-traditional fuel vehicles (2022)
  • Improve communications around sustainable transit options on campus (ongoing-2025)
  • Create a bike master plan for IUPUI (2025)

Waste
  • Map waste stream movement across campus and management of those streams (2020)
  • Achieve waste diversion rate of 30% for campus (2020)
    • Continue expansion of desk-side recycling program
    • Expand recycling to outdoor areas on campus
    • Collaborate with housing to make waste management programs more robust
    • Expand on-campus food recovery efforts of Campus Kitchen at IUPUI
    • Continue to educate students, staff, and faculty about waste reduction and recycling options
  • Enhance IUPUI Surplus supply chain processes and reporting (2022)
  • Achieve waste diversion rate of 40% for campus (2025)
    • Housing and Residence Life, Student Affairs, IUPUI Food Services, CFS, and Sustainability collaborate to expand post-consumer composting on campus and into residence halls
    • Continue to educate students, staff, and faculty about waste reduction and recycling options
Water
  • Draft plan to pilot gray water capture and reuse in a set of buildings on campus using current technology and automation software (2022)
  • Install gray water capture and reuse system (2025)

Students
  • Expand programming of Sustainability Coordinators in Housing and Residence Life (ongong-2025)
    • Develop monthly engagement programming run by Sustainability Coordinators
  • Host a robust sustainability outreach campaign – the IUPUI Energy Challenge – with measurable impact on campus annually (2020)
  • Campus Kitchen at IUPUI
    • Create strategic plan for sustainability of the Campus Kitchen at IUPUI with dedicated resources (2020)
  • Strengthen the presence of sustainability in student orientation programming (2022)
Faculty/Staff
  • Launch Green Office Certification Program to encourage sustainable behavior and practices in office settings (2020)
  • Create an employee educators program in which faculty and staff educate and mobilize their peers around sustainability through the expansion of campus Green Teams (2022)
  • Develop a staff professional development program in sustainability that is offered at least once annually (2022)
  • Integrate sustainability into all new employee orientation programming (2025)
Community
  • Re-launch a statewide higher education network so anchor institutions can share best practices and work collaboratively to advance sustainability on our respective campuses (2020)
  • Offer at least one sustainability continuing education course that is open to the public (2022)
  • Continue to work with partners across Indianapolis to advance sustainability by utilizing campus resources and expertise (2025)
  • Grow the impact of IUPUI's Sustaiability Summit to include statewide participants and impact (2022)
General Campus Community
  • Launch Green Event Certification Program to encourage the campus community to host sustaianble events (2020)
  • Improve IUPUI Sustainability website to focus on user experience (2020)
  • Evaluate sustainability culture of campus (2020)
    • Draft assessments with benchmarking metrics against other universities
    • Distribute to campus via sample population size in partnership with IRDS
    • Analyze results
    • Formulate actions and steps to address literacy or cultural deficiencies

While we are incredibly proud of our campus sustainability achievements to date, we also recognize there is still much work to be done. As IUPUI continues to grow our commitment to sustainability, we look forward to accelerating that growth together with our entire campus community.  

Jessica Davis, Director of IUPUI Sustainability