Adaptation of sustainability community indicators for Malaysian campuses as small cities

Big campuses resemble small cities in terms of populations and urban characteristics. Malaysia is a country that recognizes the concept of sustainable campus (SC) by ratifying Talloire Declaration. This country lacks a local assessment tool to assess the level of SC in its university campuses. An exploratory research inclusive of observation, interview and content analyses was conducted to identify the specific challenges of Malaysian universities in terms of the community and social aspects. The construct of those challenges and constructs of Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF) was combined together and was proposed as a set of a questionnaire survey and distributed among the experts of four Malaysian research universities. The result of the survey indicated that majority of CSAF constructs in four categories of involvement and cohesion, diversity, services and program were accepted by Malaysian experts. However, some indicators such as “Graduate in the community” were not found out conducive for Malaysian context and some new indicators such as “Actions that bring different races together” were proposed as the new suitable indicators. The finding can function as a reference for Malaysian universities which aim to assess the level of their social sustainability in terms of community in their organization.

► A 48 community aspect of SC indicators is proposed for Malaysian context.
► CSAF is found a suitable base line to be adapted for Malaysian context.
► Involvement and cohesion, diversity, services and sustainable programs are the main rubrics.
► Action that brings different races together is a specific indicator for Malaysia.
► The proposed approach is adaptable for other campuses with different priorities.