sustainability Article Evaluation and Lessons Learned from a Campus as a Living Lab Program to Promote Sustainable Practices Paul Save 1 , Belgin Terim Cavka 2, * and Thomas Froese 3   Citation: Save, P.; Terim Cavka, B.; Froese, T. Evaluation and Lessons Learned from a Campus as a Living Lab Program to Promote Sustainable Practices. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1739. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041739 Academic Editor: Tiago Domingos Received: 5 November 2020 Accepted: 25 January 2021 Published: 5 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Cascadia Data Science Institute, Vancouver, BC V6B 2Z4, Canada; paul@datascienceinstitute.ai 2 Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Ya¸ sar University, Selçuk Ya¸ sar Kampüsü, Üniversite Caddesi A ˘ gaçlı Yol No: 37–39, 35100 Bornova, ˙ Izmir, Turkey 3 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada; froese@uvic.ca * Correspondence: belgin.cavka@yasar.edu.tr or belginterim@gmail.com; Tel.: +90-(232)-570-8144 Abstract: Any group that creates challenging goals also requires a strategy to achieve them and a process to review and improve this strategy over time. The University of British Columbia (UBC) set ambitious campus sustainability goals, including a reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions to 33% below the 2007 level by 2015, and 100% by 2050 (UBC, 2006). The University pursued these goals through a number of specific projects (such as major district energy upgrade and a bioenergy facility) and, more generally, through a “Campus as a Living Lab” (CLL) initiative to marry industry, campus operations, and research to drive innovative solutions. The CLL program has achieved significant successes while also demonstrating many opportunities for improvements and lessons learned. The aim of this study was to examine the UBC CLL program, to identify and formalize its operations, to extract key transferable characteristics, and to propose replicable processes that other universities and municipalities can follow to expand their sustainable practices in similar ways. There was a learning curve with implementing a CLL program at UBC; thus, the goal of this study was to potentially shorten this learning curve for others. The research involved an ethnographic approach in which researchers participated in the CLL process, conducted qualitative analysis, and captured the processes through a series of business process models. The research findings are shared in two parts: (1) generalized lessons learned through key transferrable characteristics; (2) a series of generic organizational charts and business process models (BPMs) culminated with learned strategies through defined processes that illustrate what was required to create a CLL program at UBC. A generalized future improvement plan for UBC CLL programs is defined, generic BPMs about CLL projects are evaluated, and the level of engagement of multiple stakeholders through phases of project life cycle given in the conclusion for future use of other Living Lab organizations. Keywords: Campus as a Living Lab (CLL); business process model (BPM); adoption of sustainable technologies; campus infrastructure 1. Introduction Universities play a vital role in addressing the global sustainability challenges and opportunities, because they are the intuitional platforms where research, educational activ- ities, community engagement, and operations meet to produce a long-lasting impact on societal change [1,2]). Higher education institutions have been instrumental for transform- ing societies with regard to sustainable development. However, it takes substantial time for these institutions to explore sustainable development implementations and holistically integrate these to their systems [3,4]. By educating future leaders and community members about sustainability, Interna- tional Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) member universities such as the University of British Columbia (UBC) are dedicated to embedding sustainability in curricula, operations, research, and public–private partnership visions: Sustainability 2021, 13, 1739. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041739 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability