Princeton Review Names Top Green Schools
NEW YORK — The Princeton Review has revealed its annual list of the most environmentally friendly colleges and universities. Known for its collegiate rankings based on education, the company also scores schools by their sustainability-related practices, policies and academic offerings.
The company tallied scores this year for 861 schools on a scale of 60 to 99 and listed all of them under the “2015 Green Rating Honor Roll.” Green-rating scores will also appear in college profiles for the 2015 edition of “The Best 379 Colleges” and “The Complete Book of Colleges,” which are on sale now.
“The schools on our ‘Green Rating’ Honor Roll demonstrated truly exceptional commitments to sustainability across key issues we looked at from course offerings and recycling programs to plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We salute their administrators, faculty, and students for their collective efforts to protect and preserve our environment,” said Robert Franek, Princeton Review senior VP and publisher, in a release.
The Princeton Review based its rankings on how colleges responded to 10 questions about sustainability efforts, including — but not limited to — mass transit programs, whether buildings are LEED certified, waste diversion, how the school incorporates environmental studies, renewable resources and whether the school has a plant to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
The company developed its green rating criteria in 2007 with nonprofit environmental organization ecoAmerica. Then in 2012, Princeton Review teamed up with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), Sierra magazine and the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) to streamline the reporting and tracking process.
The colleges that made the list have proven sustainable commitments. Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., for example, has implemented what it calls a Climate Action Plan (CAP). The collaboration between students, faculty and staff has resulted in a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2008.
Fort Collins, Colo.-based Colorado State University’s Green Initiatives program incorporates classroom research and real-world applications. In July, the Department of Energy awarded $1.5 million to bio-agricultural sciences associate professor John McKay to develop a new crop for biofuels, and in the same month, the U.S. Green Building Council published a CSU graduate student’s collection of guidelines for schools to use as a framework for sustainability practices.
Another example, the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., has been a longstanding, multifaceted effort that spans from recycling to building retrofitting. The program also working to raise $4.3 billion over five years to support interdisciplinary research and teaching across the university.
Below are the top 22 schools on the 2015 Green Rating Honor Roll (in alphabetical order):
American University (Washington)
California State University, Chico (Chico, Calif.)
College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine)
Columbia University (New York)
Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.)
Dickinson College (Carlisle, Penn.)
Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
Green Mountain College (Poultney, Vt.)
Lewis & Clark College (Portland, Ore.)
Middlebury College (Middlebury, Vt.)
Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.)
Portland State University (Portland, Ore.)
Stanford University (Palo Alto, Calif.)
University of California – Irvine (Irvine, Calif.)
University of California – Los Angeles (Los Angeles)
University of California – Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, Calif.)
University of California – Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, Calif.)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, Ill.)
University of Massachusetts Amherst (Amherst, Mass.)
University of South Florida (Tampa, Fla.)
University of Washington (Seattle)
University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point (Stevens Point, Wis.)