UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development include business as a stakeholder and contributor to their achievement. This assignment was developed to engage universities and students in research that identifies companies’ - or in this case universities’ - contributions to specific SDGs, and shares this information through the open Wikirate platform in an open, usable way.

Just like companies, universities have measurable impacts on the world around them – and responsibilities around that impact. Many report these impacts in similar formats to companies – through CSR and Annual Reports.

In early 2017, students from University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute and University of Worcester, supported the addition of new university metrics to the Wikirate platform, and conducted a mapping of those university metrics across the Sustainable Development Goals, similar to the company specific SDG Compass mapping.

Two standards with metrics included in the mapping are: (1) the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) used by UK educational institutions, and (2) the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) developed by AASHE, which is a global standards for university reporting. Many other standards are out there and in development, so opportunities exist to add these to Wikirate as well, or to design new metrics.

Look through the following University of Michigan research for an example of good practices in conducting CSR data research according to these metrics:

• University of Michigan

You should choose one or more universities to research over 2 or 3 years.

Watch the tutorial video on how to conduct research through this Project: