Cities generate environmental impacts that have focused the global interest of scientists and authorities on the search for environment-friendly alternatives. The 'Ecocity' concept provides an innovative and sustainable vision of how to build and live in these settlements. Translating this vision to the university campus as a small-scale replica of a city is one of the challenges facing higher education institutions. Through teaching, research, outsourcing, association and university management, these institutions can promote and disseminate more advanced activities in sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experiences in this area on two different campuses, one urban in a historic city and another suburban in the outskirts of a large city. The methodology adopts a qualitative method based on the technique of the focus group and in-depth interviews with academics and the 'Ecocampus' offices from two Spanish universities, one in an urban context and another in a suburban. The hypotheses indicate that sustainable policies in terms of setting, infrastructure, waste and water are best met by the suburban university. The sustainability efforts of the university in an urban environment stand out in energy-related indicators, transportation and education. In general, the paper suggests that higher institutions adapt their sustainability policies depending on the location of the campus; that is, in urban and suburban areas. The implications of this work addresses two perspectives, the first consists in sustainability policies of universities and the second in the contribution of these best practices to the environmental problems of the city. The originality of this study is to learn from the different experiences of sustainability policies of universities with different types of campuses and the influence of these in the development of cities.

Cities generate environmental impacts that have focused the global interest of scientists and authorities on the search for environment-friendly alternatives. The 'Ecocity' concept provides an innovative and sustainable vision of how to build and live in these settlements. Translating this vision to the university campus as a small-scale replica of a city is one of the challenges facing higher education institutions. Through teaching, research, outsourcing, association and university management, these institutions can promote and disseminate more advanced activities in sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experiences in this area on two different campuses, one urban in a historic city and another suburban in the outskirts of a large city. The methodology adopts a qualitative method based on the technique of the focus group and in-depth interviews with academics and the 'Ecocampus' offices from two Spanish universities, one in an urban context and another in a suburban. The hypotheses indicate that sustainable policies in terms of setting, infrastructure, waste and water are best met by the suburban university. The sustainability efforts of the university in an urban environment stand out in energy-related indicators, transportation and education. In general, the paper suggests that higher institutions adapt their sustainability policies depending on the location of the campus; that is, in urban and suburban areas. The implications of this work addresses two perspectives, the first consists in sustainability policies of universities and the second in the contribution of these best practices to the environmental problems of the city. The originality of this study is to learn from the different experiences of sustainability policies of universities with different types of campuses and the influence of these in the development of cities.

Universities gather different social groups with diverse perceptions about sustainability issues. Higher Education institutions are interesting organizations to observe emergent social trends related to environment. The behavior (inside and outside the university) of those university stakeholders is related to their perceptions about universities" policies and procedures on sustainability. We focus our research on the students" perceptions on sustainability because of the actual and future role of students within the society. With 25 interviews (about 55,000 words), we elaborate a probabilistic topic model about the perceptions of a sample of Spanish university students on energy and transportation sustainability referred to their daily activities in the campuses. Students deal with questions about renewable energy, energy efficiency, recycled materials, or bicycle use. The method allows to obtain the main topics underlying the expressed students" perceptions. Corpus" analysis also shows some gaps between students" perceptions and behaviors. Conclusions are relevant not only to know more on students" perceptions about sustainability, but to recommend policies to universities and other organizations.

El valor de los conocimientos y del aprendizaje como fuente de competencias básicas distintivas

Students participating in mobility experiences have a great learning opportunity, but in many cases they hardly realise about the soft-competences they developed during mobility. In this context, the supporting role of universities is key for students to make the most of their mobility and be able to communicate their learning outcomes. This study analyses the support services that students receive for the development and acknolwledgement of mobility soft comptencies (related with the three dimensiones: knowledge, skills and attitudes or KSAs) in order to define the university strategy in this field. Results show two types of support for outgoing and incoming students: (i) passive initiatives based on delivering relevant information for the mobility period to students; and (ii) active initiatives based on training activities and activities for student integration in the host university/city/culture. No support initiatives on mobility related KSAs for returned students or academic staff have been identified.