Return on Experience from Sustainability Audits in European Engineering Educational Institutions

International audienceSustainability efforts of higher educational institutions in engineering have today a strong influence on their accountability and on continuous improvements of their programs and organization. Following the recent ISO 26000 guidelines promoted for the all types of organizations, accreditation or quality assurance systems for engineering education start to consider sustainability dimensions. In Europe, various initiatives have recently proposed specific dimensions and criteria for evaluation of universities or schools, e.g. the QUESTE-SI LLP Erasmus European project (QUality system of European Scientific and Technical Education - Sustainable Industry), or the Plan Vert validated by the French Ministry of sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the evaluation process for a campus sustainability audit. Based on experienced reporting and evaluations, both from an audited engineering school (i.e. quality referents) and auditor perspectives, the quantitative and quantitative results drawn in the paper should permit institution stakeholders to regularly collect internal sustainability initiatives, track records, in a way to better prepare self-evaluation reports and manage future audit visits. After an overview of some existing international accreditation procedures for higher educational institutions, both in engineering and business, the proposed analysis relies on four 2012 audits, two of them conducted in a French engineering school, and two other conducted in two different European technical universities. Several sustainability dimensions, linked to criteria, are considered and discussed. As an example for the QUESTE-SI label, the audit relied on (i) institution policy and strategy, (ii) social responsibility & sustainable engineering education (SRSE) and curriculum, (iii) student involvement & cultural development in SRSE, and (iv) research & innovation. As findings, apart from the score and ranking results thanks to the evaluations, the audit preparation, reporting and process permits to engage in an internal reflection that should contribute to coherently enhance the research & educational missions and strategies of the institution, so as to favour a national and international recognition of its politics and dynamicity in the area of sustainability issues. Thanks to a clear referential, framework, and guidelines for evaluation based on a systemic interdisciplinary approach, an integrated governance of sustainability dimensions at institutional level can be more flexibility formalized. Based on those results, the paper claims for possible cross-evaluations between institutions as a complement to external evaluations to better organize and institutionalize continuous improvement processes, so as implicate to students as key actors in the change process