Although the University has been recognized by sustainability organizations nationwide as one of the top institutions in the nation for its initiatives, a recent less-prestigious rating from a new organization may surprise a few people.
According to the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System, a relatively new way to gauge a University’s environmental awareness created by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, the University was given a silver designation on a scale from no ranking to platinum, placing behind Oregon State University and Portland State University in areas like Emissions Reduction and Energy Consumption.
“I think our rating is actually going to surprise a lot of people, because for the last 20 to 25 years, we have been considered nationwide by everybody and anybody to be a national leader in sustainability and instituting practices long before it became in vogue,” said Steve Mital, University sustainability director. “I think most folks are actually going to expect us to achieve gold, when we in fact only achieved silver.”
Roughly 230 universities nationwide have agreed to participate in the new rating system, but only 38 have submitted their applications.
Evan Lewis, the graduate teaching fellow for the University’s community and regional planning program, estimates that nearly half of the schools that submitted their applications received a silver designation, while another 20 to 25 percent received a gold or bronze recognition.
So far, no university has received a platinum recognition, and only Earlham College in Indiana received no rating at all.
“The UO is recognized by many as a national leader in sustainability, from our pioneering sustainability research, to our state-of-the-art Campus Recycling Program, to the Sustainable Cities Year academic program, and many other ways we engage communities in sustainability issues,” University President Richard Lariviere said in a letter to the STARS committee. “I am proud of the breadth of our sustainability activities and committed to continue the university’s significant progress in programming, life style and building choices.”
Nevertheless, Mital said there is significant room for improvement in the areas of Emissions Reduction and Energy Consumption.
The sustainability director also said the University is currently working to develop a contingency plan that would place a cap on how much money is spent on the school’s energy use.
In light of the recent developments and renovations on campus, Mital said, the University is looking to harvest any additional needed energy from energy efficiency and conservation projects.
“That’s a really huge, bold step for us because there’s really no other university in the world that has adopted a policy like this before,” Mital said. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we may figure out how we can be the first.”
Despite that the University did not fair so well in the education and research category, Mital said many of the individual departments across campus have created classes and refocused certain concentrations that incorporate sustainability practices into their curricula.
“Those credits were much more focused on the breadth of sustainability research and curriculum rather than the depth of it, so we would have fared a lot better if it really dug into the details of what some of our truly sustainable-focused departments do,” Lewis said.
However, not all of the ratings were particularly negative.
Paul Rowland, Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education executive director, said the University is successfully fostering an environment that is open to the discourse of sustainability.
“There’s a fair amount of coordination, discussion and planning around sustainability by the institution, which means that the University is taking it very seriously,” Rowland said, “and really has engaged the campus community in thinking about how, as a whole, the campus can move forward in terms of sustainability. That’s really impressive to get (one) of those credits in that area, so I think that’s an area where I would say the University of Oregon has excelled.”
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