Higher education institutions are charged with developing civically engaged leaders to address the pressing issues facing the country and the world. While existing literature suggests institutional practices, such as promoting co-curricular involvement, hold promise for fostering key learning outcomes, educational literature suggests the benefits of participation may not be shared by all students. Using structural equation modeling, we examine the role of background characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity and gender) and co-curricular participation in sustainability-related activities in fostering climate change leadership development and sustainability activism. We find that women reported significantly higher systems thinking, futures thinking, leadership development, and activism. Additionally, our results suggest systems thinking and futures thinking are key learning outcomes related to students’ climate change leadership development and activism. Moreover, we find a small negative relationship between sustainability literacy and leadership development and activism, suggesting there might exist an inflection point at which more knowledge about climate change and sustainability issues makes students less likely to engage in leadership and activism behaviors. We discuss the implications of this work for sustainability education pedagogy in higher education.

This study sought to understand the relationship of environmentally-themed Residential Learning Communities (RLCs) with aspects of Climate Change Leadership (CCL) among first-year college students. Two years of survey data were used to assess changes in CCL among students at the University of Michigan, including participants in an RLC known as the Sustainable Living Experience (SLE), neighboring residents, and students in other residence halls. Results showed greater increases in likelihood of reporting positive CCL outcomes for SLE participants, and in many cases also for neighboring students. These effects were often greater for SLE participants who are also underrepresented minority students. Findings indicated that the presence of an environmentally-themed RLC may be related to the development of CCL for neighboring students in addition to program participants. The study also observed campus-wide positive effects on several CCL outcomes after the first year of college, indicating that the campus environment and infrastructure itself can also be leveraged in support of student CCL outcomes.