Sustainability Commons^™

School Gardens As A Tool To Improve Student Health Outcomes And Increase Parent Engagement In The Clark County School District, Sabina Malik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Background-School Gardens (SG) have been used in student programming to help achieve many goals that include increasing academic achievement, improving nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, increasing physical activity rates, instilling eco-consciousness, and increasing student and community engagement. To date, garden programs have predominantly been evaluated by case control studies examining pilot or informal short term implementation without consideration of garden program longevity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of SGs on student knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to nutrition and physical activity, examine student connection to the garden, and to identify stakeholder perceptions of best practices …

The Green Movement In Hotels: Are College Students On Board?, Amy Walker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Purpose:

The purpose of this study is to see if environmentally friendly practices are a factor for college students when selecting a hotel. Another purpose of this study is to see if students would be willing to spend more for hotels who offer these environmentally friendly practices.

The Impact Of Individual Decision Making On Campus Sustainability Initiatives, Aurali Ella Dade

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) have increasingly committed to become more sustainable in recent years. Despite this commitment, academic publications in the sustainability field assert that progress has been slower at IHEs than expected and that most IHEs have found sustainability initiatives difficult to implement. Comprehensive sustainability initiatives require cooperation from a broad set of constituents with diverse and sometimes conflicting goals. Creating a sustainable IHE also requires changes in both physical infrastructure and individual behavior. Any number of institutional factors can advance or limit progress towards these objectives.

Previous investigations have assessed individual case studies, compared IHEs in a …

Assessing The Effect Of Simulation Models On Systems Learning In An Introductory Environmental Science Course, Heather J. Skaza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence within the systems dynamics community supporting the use of systems simulations in the classroom to improve student understanding, there is little published, controlled, experimental research. This paper describes the results of a paired experiment testing the effect of using system dynamics simulations to increase systems understanding in an introductory environmental science course. We believed that the students using the systems simulations would demonstrate a greater systemic understanding of environmental issues than those who did not.

We conducted an experiment during the fall semester of 2009, with 304 students enrolled in four sections of …

Innovations In Reuse, Lisa R. Osorio

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Material reuse benefits all sectors in the community by decreasing the amount of reusable solid waste that is discarded. It increases the resources available for various programs and builds partnerships with educators, and businesses to support and promote reuse programs that will improve the quality of life in areas in which they operate. Several areas of the country currently have reuse programs that focus on several areas of reuse. Successful projects in several cities have focused on such areas as reuse for education, the arts, or other nonprofit activities. These sustainable programs have benefited other communities and should serve as …