Strengthening Sustainability Data Infrastructure

This project began with hiring the Office of Sustainability's Data Analyst who joined the team in November 2025. Bringing valuable experience from her previous role as the Data Analyst for the University of Texas at Austin’s Office of Sustainability, she hit the ground running. 

Most significantly, the Office of Sustainability acquired access to important sustainability data warehouses across campus. The team also purchased licensing which will allow the creation of interactive data dashboards, improving data access, and decision-making. 
 
Two student employees have been hired to support reporting needs. Together with the Data Analyst, they have significantly sped up anticipated reporting timelines and expedited the creation of dashboards, while receiving hands-on experience working on projects that have real-world impacts.  

To date, the team has developed multiple data dashboards for partners, made significant progress for the latest data submission to the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS®), been charged with creating a full database for greenhouse gas emission reporting, and is on track to launch a sustainability culture and literacy survey this fall. These are just a few of the many accomplishments of this team.  

The Office of Sustainability has secured funding to maintain the position of the Sustainability Data Analyst and student workers. Moving forward, data reporting processes will continue to be streamlined, and gaps that were identified during the first year will continue to be addressed. This includes collecting accurate and usable data, finding data gaps, and addressing areas where data is unreliable, and replacing those data collection processes with more reliable methods. The reporting process through STARS will continue every other year, with plans to use the STARS report as a gap analysis to see where campus improvements will be made. 

As the team reflected on the project’s first year, the Project Manager noted:  

“One reason why this grant was so necessary is because we recognize that data activities on this campus can be very siloed and disconnected. Bringing together these various systems through the lens of sustainability was one of the primary drivers for this project, but it continues to be a challenge. We have made substantial progress towards collecting data that we have not had access to before, and with building relationships with the various data related units on campus, but this work takes time to do correctly and meaningfully."