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You can find out whether your Alma Mater is making a difference in Sustainability. We’ve found a great site that allows you to check out most colleges in terms of their efforts to keep themselves green with green projects, green buildings, even in their transparency about the way environmental decisions are made.
If you are an Alum of the University of New Hampshire, you’ll probably be happy with what you see. If you happen to be from Duquense University, however, well… er…not so much.
The site does a tremendous job in allowing you to search by school, by state, even by athletic conference. You can also see how a school’s grades in each of the subcategories are improving (or not!) from year to year.
This is a non-profit organization which appears to put a great deal of thinking into their analysis.
From their site:
What is the College Sustainability Report Card?
The College Sustainability Report Card is the only comparative evaluation of campus and endowment sustainability activities at colleges and universities in the United States and in Canada. In contrast to an academic focus on sustainability in research and teaching, the Report Card examines colleges and universities, as institutions, through the lens of sustainability.
The Report Card is designed to identify colleges and universities that are leaders in sustainability. The aim is to provide accessible information for schools to learn from each other’s experiences and establish more effective sustainability practices.
The College Sustainability Report Card 2010 has the highest participation rate of any sustainability ranking or rating, with 318 of 332 schools (96 percent) responding to at least one Report Card survey.
What is the Sustainable Endowments Institute?
The Sustainable Endowments Institute is a nonprofit organization engaged in research and education to advance sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices. The College Sustainability Report Card and GreenReportCard.org are initiatives of the Institute.
Founded in 2005, the Institute is a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Please see About SEI for more information.
Here is a summary of their methodology.
- Selection: The College Sustainability Report Card 2010 evaluates environmental sustainability efforts at 332 schools in the United States and Canada.
- Survey Composition: Four surveys were designed to gather information about sustainability in campus operations, dining services, endowment investment practices and student activities. This year, for the first time, the complete survey responses are available online.
- Data Collection & Verification: Data collection for the College Sustainability Report Card 2010 took place from June through August 2009. The research process included sending surveys to administrators and students at all 332 institutions. Researchers also gathered information from publicly available sources.
- Assessment: A school’s overall grade is calculated from the grades received in nine equally-weighted categories. A total of 48 indicators are used to evaluate performance within the categories.
- Recognition:The Overall College Sustainability Leaders award is given to schools that have made notable achievements i
For our international readers, unfortunately this is focused on the US and Canada only but it’s a great model, not only for schools but other organziations.
Check out your school’s report card here:
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