The University of Vermont’s Office of Sustainability aims to foster sustainable development and promote environmental responsibility at every level of the university. In 2010, the Office of Sustainability launched an initiative to incorporate collective intelligence and idea management into the Office’s processes and began by seeking out ideas for their Clean Energy Fund. Read more about how the University of Vermont increased user participation by 72% through changing their submission process and received 68 new ideas from students to help create a greener campus.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
UNIVERSITY CASE STUDY
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IDEASCALE

2. The University of Vermont’s Office of Sustainability aims to foster sustainable development
and promote environmental responsibility at every level of the university and to do that
requires the cooperation and inspiration of the campus community.
In 2010, the Office of Sustainability launched an initiative to incorporate collective intelligence
and idea management into the Office’s processes and began by seeking out ideas for their
Clean Energy Fund. The Clean Energy Fund is a program sustained by a small, self-imposed
student fee each semester and maintained in order to advance renewable energy research,
education, and infrastructure on campus. It relies on student participation and investment to be
successful.
When the Clean Energy Fund sent out a call for project proposals to UVM’s various listserv’s and
made individual classroom visits to ask for suggestions, all of the users were directed to submit
their proposals directly to The Office of Sustainability’s Ideascale page as opposed to the
formal project submittal process of years previous where students were required to upload
PDFs of their suggestions. As a result, the Office of Sustainability...
• saw a 72% increase in user participation.
• received 68 new ideas to investigate and follow-up on as a campus community.
• prioritized the various suggestions based on user feedback
• voted to do further research on 15 of the 68 ideas based on a variety of criteria including
the feedback from various sources.
• developed a meaningful FAQ section of the Office of Sustainability’s website in order
answer to a number of questions that appeared on the site, making the content on their site
relevant and impactful.
• approved several proposals including pursuing two structural and architectural studies for
the installation of revolving doors and rooftop solar photovoltaic panels; a Green Labs energy
conservation program, and more. All in the name of a greener campus.
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The program was an overwhelming successful, and the Ideascale model will be taken into account
in planning for future campus initiatives that would benefit from student engagement and
investment.
2IdeaScale Case Studies
The University of Vermont
Research Collaboration at the EPA