McMaster is committed to promoting a campus
culture of sustainability through leadership,
communications, engagement and learning.
The following stories of progress, projects and
initiatives are just a few of the ways McMaster’s
students, faculty and staff furthered our community’s
culture of sustainability over the past year
WHAT IF?: New student sustainability fund empowers change
What if students were given $10,000 to make campus more sustainable? What could they achieve?
Facility Services plans to find out with the launch of
a new annual $10,000 Student Sustainability Fund to support McMaster student-led initiatives later this year.
Awarded projects will support one of the university’s four main drivers of sustainability: a Culture Focused on Sustainability; Teaching, Learning and Research;
Creating a More Self-Sustaining Campus and; Operational Excellence.
The McMaster Sustainability Advisory Committee, comprising both staff and students, will review project proposal submissions. The entire university community, including you, will be invited to vote on a short list of projects early in 2025. Your voice matters in shaping our sustainable future.
“It’s important that we engage our students in the university’s sustainability projects, but this fund is designed to spark their own ideas about how the university can become more sustainable,” shares Dave Cano, director of Sustainability.
“We are excited to be inspired by our own students use of campus as a living laboratory and see what they can achieve through this initiative.”
By participating in the Student Sustainability Fund, students not only get the chance to bring their innovative ideas to life but also gain valuable experience in project management and sustainability.
Once selected, the winning project group(s) will have monthly check-ins with our Office of Sustainability. Project teams will share photos, videos, stories and other behind-the-scenes content monthly to keep the campus community updated and engaged in their sustainability initiatives.
Leadership and Vision: Recognizing our global impact
McMaster has ranked 30th in the world in this year’s Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings, an improvement of three spots from last year.
The impact rankings are an important international benchmark for more than 1,900 universities around the world working toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 goals that address global challenges like poverty, climate change and peace and justice.
“McMaster is proud to be a global leader in this international ranking, particularly because our community is so committed to advancing health and well-being for all,” says McMaster’s president, David Farrar.
“This is a wonderful recognition of the important ways our faculty, staff and students are working every day to create more equitable and sustainable communities here and beyond our campus borders.”
Information Box Group
Learning and Development: New bee garden takes root
A new native bee garden grows on campus with the groundwork for the garden laid by a group of third-year sustainability students as part of their class project.
Emma Chau, Alicia McLinden, Crystal Gilbert and Ekim Bagree designed the garden, consulted bee experts from the biology department and landscapers from McMaster’s Grounds department.
They also created a toolkit for the implementation of the garden complete
with a materials list, maintenance plans and proposed educational elements. During the summer of 2023, volunteer students, faculty and staff used their plan to break ground behind Alumni Memorial Hall.
The addition of the garden will cater to the wider variety of bees found in the area, says Susan Dudley, a professor of biology in the Faculty of Science and one of the project champions for the third-year sustainability students.
“What we do here when we create these gardens is we take an area that would otherwise be a bit of a desert to the bees and we provide habitat nesting sites,” says Dudley.
“This nesting garden is going to have sites where clay-loving bees and sand-loving bees and ground nesters can nest.”
The garden is the next step in the Native Bees at McMaster project, which has seen 75 bee homes (birdhouse-like structures that contain nesting materials) installed throughout campus.
Information Box Group
Strategic Partnership and Continued Engagement: Let’s go for a ride
McMaster undergraduate students voted to partner with Hamilton Bike Share for a significant discount on the community bike-use program.
In the McMaster Students Union referendum, 94 per cent of voters favoured the $25 student fee increase to provide students with 90 minutes of ride time daily. With seven bike share locations on campus and the lowest cost per use for any bike share program in the country, this initiative will make it even easier for students to travel sustainably.
The new fee will provide over $600,000 annually to the local not-for-profit organization, helping support the continued operation of the City of Hamilton’s bike share system.
Communications: Showcasing sustainability at Earth Day Fair
In March 2024, McMaster operational teams hosted their first post-pandemic Earth Day Fair and educated students on some of campus’ lesser-known sustainability initiatives.
Hosted in The Hub (one of McMaster’s newest sustainable buildings targeting LEED® Silver certification), the event connected students with departments such as Hospitality Services, Facility Services, the McMaster Okanagan Office, Nature @ McMaster, Media Production Services, as well as external campus vendors.
With healthy, sustainable study snacks and fun, anti-stress activities like plant potting and decorating, the event was buzzing with students excited to learn more about sustainability. Plans are in place to expand the event in March 2025.