The integrative role of the campus environmental audit: experiences at Bishop's University, Canada

Purpose – This paper seeks to suggest that the campus environmental audit can become an important tool that synergizes active learning and operations planning and management approaches to promote sustainability on university campuses.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the author's experiences at Bishop's University with the evolution of the campus environmental audit program between 1993 and 2003. In those ten years, the campus environmental audit program began as an undergraduate thesis project, and then became transformed into a pedagogical tool for giving students active learning experience. The environmental audit program eventually became institutionalized when it received official recognition as a university‐sanctioned operations planning and management tool.Findings – These experiences are used to draw out the lessons learned about the integrative role of the campus environmental audit and the need for further research. Lessons include: the need to overcome important barriers of cost,...