Sustainability Assessment of University of Gondar, Gondar, North-west Ethiopia

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the cross-institutional assessment of sustainable development practices in the University of Gondar (UoG). The focus of the assessment was the level of UoG academic departments’ integration of sustainability concerns in teaching, research and community service. Management contributions to sustainable development, student initiatives on sustainability issues and policy statements about sustainable development of UoG were also considered in the assessment. The data collection was based on the Unit-based Sustainability Assessment Tool (USAT); in addition, supplementary information was collected through observations across the four campuses of UoG from January to February 2012. The result of the assessment showed that only a few academic departments have incorporated sustainability concerns in their curricula and teaching approach. The initiation and commitment of academic departments in mainstreaming sustainability concerns in the research and community service delivered were relatively poor. The operation and management of UoG showed inadequate sustainable development practices on waste management, energy utilization and purchasing from environment-friendly companies. In addition, the written policy and statements of UoG did not reflect sustainability in an explicit manner. The university is expected to respond to the key themes defined through sustainability declarations on higher education; there is also a need to establish the relevance of these in relation to the systemic environment. From the study undertaken, we have learnt that sustainability assessment of universities using USAT will be more valuable, if universities have already initiated the embedding of sustainability so that USAT can be used to benchmark the continual improvement.