It may only be midterms for students, but the final grades are in concerning sustainability for colleges and universities.
Once again, UNH is leading the class.
UNH was one of 26 colleges nationwide to receive an A- grade in the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) College Sustainability Report Card 2010, which was released last Wednesday. The A- grade was the highest grade awarded this year, making UNH an Overall College Sustainability Leader.
This is the third year that UNH has been ranked by the organization. The Report Card ranked the colleges and universities with the 300 largest endowments in the U.S. and Canada, as well as 32 additional schools that applied for inclusion. It is the second year in a row that UNH has received the A- ranking.
“I think it really speaks to the breadth of what UNH is doing in terms of sustainability,” said Sara Cleaves, Associate Director of the University Office of Sustainability (UOS).
Despite retaining the same overall score as the 2009 report card, UNH actually received less A’s and more B’s in the eight areas the report card looked at. This year, UNH received five A’s in the categories of administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, endowment transparency, and investment priorities. UNH was awarded three B’s in the areas of green building, student involvement, and transportation. A ninth category, shareholder engagement, was not applicable to UNH.
In comparison, last year UNH received six A’s and two B’s. Student involvement and transportation fell from an A last year to a B this year, and investment priorities rose from a B to an A.
“I’m kind of surprised because transportation is by far one of our strongest areas,” said Cleaves, who also noted the many student organizations on campus that involve sustainability.
She said the different grades may have been due to the fact that the surveys SEI sends out to each school were longer this year.
“This year they doubled the number of questions,” she said. “I don’t know if we can necessarily compare last year to this year.”
Additionally, the rankings are also getting more competitive. Twenty-six schools tied for the top grade this year, in comparison to 15 last year.
Lisa Chase, senior Communications Fellow with SEI, was unable to comment on the specifics behind UNH’s lower scores in transportation and student involvement, but said it was not due to the increased competition.
“A school's grade is not a reflection of competition from other schools, but the lower grade in specific categories likely reflects some minor change in UNH's policies or practices,” Chase said.
Cleaves sees the increased competition as part of a growing awareness by colleges and universities of their impact on the environment.
“In 2009, a college or university has to explain why they aren’t being more sustainable, as opposed to why they are,” she said.
And it’s not just university administrations that are interested in sustainability. According to a survey last year by The Princeton Review, 68 percent of students said that a college’s commitment to the environment affected their college choice.
“I am proud to attend a university with a strong commitment to a sustainable future,” said senior hydrology major Tyler King. “I would, however, beware that we don't lose sight of the impact of our individual actions. It is not enough to merely attend a ‘green’ school to consider yourself sustainable.”
Cleaves also noted that there are many different thoughts on what sustainability really means, and no ratings system currently ascribes to UOS’s exact definition. UOS divides sustainability into four areas, known as the CORE, which stands for Curriculum, Operations, Research, and Engagement.
Chase said SEI tries to take into account the different definitions of sustainability when creating their surveys.
“There are several measures of ‘sustainability,’ which is why the Green Report Card survey is so comprehensive,” Chase said. “We examine not only schools' environmental sustainability initiatives, but also the extent to which they are practicing socially responsible and sustainable endowment investment policies, while maintaining their endowments' financial sustainability.”
According to SEI’s website, their report card is “the only independent evaluation of campus and endowment sustainability activities at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.”
Overall, UNH has improved significantly from the 2008 survey, the first year it was ranked, when its overall grade was a B. It has also improved annually in some areas such as investment priorities, which looks at whether the university’s endowment is invested in environmentally and socially responsible companies. UNH’s investment priorities grade has gone from a C in the 2008 survey, to a B in 2009, to an A this year.
“How we invest our money really makes a different,” Cleaves said. “UNH Foundation is committed to making progress in sustainability.”
The combined value of the endowments of the schools included in the report card is more than $325 billion.
New England appears to be a hot spot of sustainable schools. Also sharing the top score with UNH are Amherst College, Brown University, College of the Atlantic, Harvard University, Middlebury College, Smith College, University of Vermont, Wesleyan University, Williams College, and Yale University.
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