Older Adults' Perceptions of College Campus Accessibility

The emerging Age-Friendly University Global Network encourages universities to engage older adults in university activities (Gerontological Society of America, 2019). As such, attention should be devoted to the accessibility of campus facilities to older adults as a potential mechanism to increase age diversity. Intergenerational interactions, which may take place on college campuses, promote better perceptions of other generations (Bertram et al., 2017), making campus accessibility for all age groups a priority. The present study sought to uncover older adults’ perceptions of campus accessibility via an online survey. Participants were recruited through local newsletters, word of mouth, and included 81 community members (Age mean=71.58 years; 79% female; 89% White; 43% traveled to campus every few months). Descriptive analyses were conducted for closed-ended responses and two members of the research team used a constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) to code open-ended responses. Participants felt that campus was somewhat accessible (M = 2.72;1(very inaccessible) to 5(very accessible)), moderately easy to walk around (M=3.79;1(extremely difficult) to 7(extremely easy)), and felt somewhat welcome on campus (M=3.27; 1(strongly disagree) to 7(strongly agree). The following general themes emerged in the open-ended responses: 1)inaccessibility on campus was due to parking, drop-off locations, and topography (e.g., due to stairs, distance, hills) constraints; 2)feeling welcome on campus was due to people being helpful; and 3)difficulty in attending events was due to parking and lack of knowledge about events. Implications for campus initiatives that aim to attract older adults, especially for campuses that have topography constraints, will be discussed.

Developing Synergistic Relationships between Age-Friendly Universities and Age-Friendly Communities

The Age-Friendly University (AFU) initiative was designed to support the Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (WHO, 2018) and offers a range of opportunities for institutions of higher education to help communities adapt to their new age-diverse social structures as a result of shifting age demographics. In turn, age-friendly community partnerships are helping to fuel campus efforts to advance age-inclusivity through education, research, and community engagement. At present over 70 institutions have joined the AFU global network, as more campuses prepare to become age-friendly partners. In this collaborative symposium (Directors of Aging Centers and AFU Interest Groups), campus leaders will describe synergistic relationships between their age-friendly campus efforts and the age-friendly efforts of their neighboring communities. Montepare (Lasell University) will provide an overview of the AFU initiative and its set of 10 principles, and make the case that campuses and communities are necessary partners for creating and developing age-friendly efforts. Demonstrating this assertion, Pastor and Rogers (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will describe linkages between their community and campus initiatives, including developing a Panel of Elders, television programming for older adults, and hosting joint events. Black and Andel (University of South Florida) will discuss the intersection between the AFU principles and the processes undertaken by age-friendly communities. Revell and Viveiros (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) will show how campus collaborations with nearby communities are instrumental in sustaining age-friendly efforts, especially during a pandemic.

Conservation Initiatives/Practices at Universities

Growing actions on putting into practice the policy for improving sustainable development gives universities great variety of opportunities on implementation of different ‘green’ technologies in their campuses. Campus greening is the first step towards sustainability. The purpose of this article is to present existing approaches on the categories of sustainable campus initiatives, their significance for complete region development and the state of the environment. On the example of the inner garden of Volgograd State University, the authors describe the importance of greening the external campus sites for minimization of the negative environmental and health affects for students and faculty staff. The green initiative reflects the institution’s function as center of technological and social regional development. The green garden can reduce stress and also provide an esthetic sense by involving attractive surroundings. The impact of climatic zone on emerging of appropriate management and maintenance systems, meaningful comparison with the past landscape solutions are also reviewed in the present article. By implementing green technologies, the university shows its prudence and readiness to behave responsibly, sensibly and maturely in response to sustainability issues of the present and the future.

Green University Garden Towards Region Sustainability

Growing actions on putting into practice the policy for improving sustainable development gives universities great variety of opportunities on implementation of different ‘green’ technologies in their campuses. Campus greening is the first step towards sustainability. The purpose of this article is to present existing approaches on the categories of sustainable campus initiatives, their significance for complete region development and the state of the environment. On the example of the inner garden of Volgograd State University, the authors describe the importance of greening the external campus sites for minimization of the negative environmental and health affects for students and faculty staff. The green initiative reflects the institution’s function as center of technological and social regional development. The green garden can reduce stress and also provide an esthetic sense by involving attractive surroundings. The impact of climatic zone on emerging of appropriate management and maintenance systems, meaningful comparison with the past landscape solutions are also reviewed in the present article. By implementing green technologies, the university shows its prudence and readiness to behave responsibly, sensibly and maturely in response to sustainability issues of the present and the future.

Enhancing the Transparency of Student Merit System Using QR Code Technology: A Smart Campus Initiative

Technology has led to the utilization of information systems into human daily life activities. Computer systems have helped improve the modern human lifestyle by simplifying and facilitating activities from listening to music, grocery shopping to communicating with peoples across the world. Gearing up to smart campus initiatives, one of the issues to be tackled was the transparency in validating the student’s attendance system used in many campuses and university events. The employment of technologies such as QR Code and facial recognition to validate the student’s attendance certainly have helped in addressing this issue. In order to ensure the transparency of the existing manual student merit system used in the campus, this paper presents a solution known as CyberScan QR Code for Student Merit System that allows the students to obtain merits by scanning QR codes, as well as allowing student councils to provide merits for any events by generating QR codes. Students can keep track of their current total merit points and the events that they have previously attended so if there are any problems regarding their merits, they can always refer to their history of attended events as evidence. This paperless solution merit system also helps to reduce the usual time taken to calculate a huge amount of merits thus preventing from any miscalculation. Clearly, this initiative creates not just an efficient, transparent service but another greater experience for students to feel connected academically and socially.

The Impact of Education for Sustainable Development on Romanian Economics and Business Students’ Behavior

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has presented long-lasting interest for researchers and policy makers. Despite a significant body of research, more in depth empirical studies are required for a better understanding of how sustainable development goals are applied in higher education and how sustainable behavior could be shaped via ESD. The need for this kind of research arises from, first, the scarceness of existing studies that explore economic and business higher education, and, second, the necessity to properly assess the connection between ESD principles and students’ behavior. Following this rationale, the present paper aims to provide an overview of how students’ sustainable behaviors are shaped via their perception of sustainable campus initiatives, teaching staff involvement and curricula. Statistical and econometric analysis applied on data collected via a survey on students from Bucharest University of Economic Studies (N = 1253) provides findings on the extent to which the awareness of sustainable development-specific issues acquired through education leads to sustainable behavior among students. According to the results, we argue that an increasing share of sustainable development topics combined with teaching staff involvement to raise awareness of sustainability issues are crucial to students’ sustainable behavior. However, on-campus actions are unlikely to change behavior unless they are optional rather than compulsory. Our findings ratify that, since education is one of the main drivers of sustainable development, there is an urgent need for coherence in shaping higher education according to sustainability issues.

Something to Talk About: the Intersection of Library Assessment and Collection Diversity

Academic libraries have increasingly recognized the need to collect diverse materials. Simultaneously, academic libraries need to continue to develop additional measures to evaluate collections for diversity as well as connect to collections to their users and their campus initiatives and priorities. This paper features perspectives from two academic libraries and shares how both are grappling with not only assessing collections for the equity, diversity, and inclusivity, but also to place those collection efforts in the broader picture of institutional values and goals.