Roosevelt University Receives Award for Green Initiatives

CHICAGO — Roosevelt University in Chicago received gold-level recognition from the Illinois Governor’s Higher Education Campus Sustainability Compact and the Illinois Green Governments Coordinating Council for its green initiatives, according to an announcement on Jan. 27. The state honored the university’s strategic, sustainable planning, which has involved Roosevelt’s administration, faculty and students who have implemented a variety of programs.

“This recognition is one of Illinois’ highest honors for sustainability in the higher education arena,” said Paul Matthews, assistant vice president for campus planning and operations at Roosevelt, in a statement. “We are proud of the accomplishments we’ve made thus far and are right on track to make many more strides in the future.”

The initiatives that the university started during the past five years include reducing its energy consumption, introducing composting, diverting 44 percent of its waste from landfills through recycling, implementing sustainable land-use practices and creating an internship program for students to further sustainability initiatives on campus. Five students have gone through the internship program to date.

In addition, many members of the Roosevelt community came together last semester to develop a five-year plan for integrating sustainability broadly across the university’s Chicago and Schaumburg campuses.

“The plan is being reviewed by the Roosevelt administration for approval and also will be presented to the executive council, faculty senate and board of trustees for endorsement,” Matthews said in a statement.

The Illinois Governor’s Higher Education Campus Sustainability Compact gold-level recognition is one of many sustainability awards the university has received since 2012. The university has taken several measures to improve building efficiency, receiving LEED Gold for its new 32-story Wabash Building. Additionally, the new Lillian and Larry Goodman Center for University athletics received LEED Silver in 2013. That same year, Roosevelt was honored with USGBC’s Emerald Award for Green Innovation.

The university has also been listed for the last three years in “The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges” as one of the greenest universities in the nation. Additionally, Roosevelt’s Schaumburg Campus received a number of sustainability awards, including accreditation as an official arboretum from the Morton Arboretum in 2014; designation as a Tree Campus USA site by the National Arbor Day Foundation; and certification as a wildlife habitat since 2013 by National Wildlife Federation.

“The gold-level recognition from the state of Illinois is particularly important as it recognizes all of the work that the university has done and has planned for the future at both of its campuses in downtown Chicago and suburban Schaumburg,” Matthews said in a statement.