SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

9Measuring sustainability literacy

UPES checks what its students understand about sustainability and the SDGs. Its main tool is the Srijan Social Internship, which every first-year student completes and which is assessed through reports, mentor feedback and structured evaluations, alongside a sustainability knowledge quiz and structured literacy tools under the Internal Quality Assurance Cell.

Srijan: building sustainability understanding

• What Srijan is. The Srijan Social Internship is a mandatory, supervised 6–8 week full-time placement for every first-year UPES student, in every school, with a social organisation working towards the SDGs. Its stated aim is to improve lives, develop empathy and build leadership, so that students understand grassroots realities, poverty and marginalisation first-hand. More than 5,000 students have taken part, with 1,230 NGOs and more than 800 faculty mentors, contributing around 200,000 human work-days a year. Source: Srijan Social Internship.

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• Before the internship: learning the issues. Students first take a 10-hour pre-internship course on India's development challenges, such as health, education and poverty, with sessions led by UN representatives and Presidential Award winners. They are prepared through the Pragya, Springboard and Prerana programmes and masterclasses with social-sector professionals, and UPES makes training material on the environmental and social aspects of sustainability available to students. Source: Srijan Social Internship, UPES internships ecosystem, Social Internship: Srijan.
• During the internship: supervised learning. Each student is given a project and a mentor at the host organisation, and a UPES faculty mentor. Students keep a Daily Report Record (DRR) of their work, and UPES provides readings and assignments alongside the field work, so that learning happens "through action and reflection". Source: Social Internship: Srijan, What are social internships and why they matter.

Srijan: assessing what students learned

• Assessment. Srijan is formally assessed. The assessment stage combines student reports, mentor feedback and structured evaluations, and internship outcomes are mapped to academic credits and career readiness. This lets UPES check, for every first-year student, how well they understood the social and sustainability issues they worked on. Source: UPES internships ecosystem: SRIJAN.
• Reflection and presentation. Students record what they learned and how it is changing them in blogs and e-portfolios. After the internship they return to campus and present their learning to peers, seniors, faculty and staff at a campus-wide social fair. Source: What are social internships and why they matter.
• Feedback from NGO partners. Host organisations give feedback on the interns. Partners such as Habitat for Humanity, Ladli Foundation Trust, Pinkishe Foundation and My Choices Foundation have commended the students' work and the social responsibility and leadership the internship builds. Source: High commendation by social enterprises for interns from UPES.

Assessment tools and other measures

• Sustainability knowledge quiz. UPES runs a structured Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge, "Evaluating Awareness of Sustainability at UPES Through a Quiz", as a timed 15-minute online quiz. The results show UPES what its community understands about sustainability, so that it can tailor its education and sustainability initiatives accordingly. The quiz shown is the version for faculty, and UPES publishes the assessment tool it uses. Source: Sustainability awareness quiz (Microsoft Forms), UPES sustainability assessment tool (PDF).

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• IQAC sustainability framework. Under the sustainability framework of UPES's Internal Quality Assurance Cell, structured tools assess students' sustainability literacy and awareness. Source: Sustainability literacy at UPES (PDF), IQAC sustainability.
• Himalayan Fellowship. In the Himalayan Fellowship, 25 student fellows receive one-to-one faculty mentoring through a four-week field immersion on climate change, biodiversity, cultural resilience and social-ecological systems, framed by the SDGs. Source: Himalayan Fellowship.

This section covers the indicator on measuring sustainability literacy.