Going Green in HIgher Ed

Sierra Magazine came out with its top 20 list of the most green U.S. colleges. From the article:

"Sierra magazine has just released its third annual list of what it calls “the most eco-enlightened U.S. colleges.” It ranks schools based on the results of a questionnaire sent to sustainability experts at hundreds of institutions across the country. Scores were assigned in eight categories: efficiency, energy, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, and administration. The rankings come at a time when two-thirds of college applicants say a school’s green record would influence their enrollment decision, according to a Princeton Review survey [PDF]." (italics mine)

Washington State boasts not one but two of the top twenty; University of Washington and Evergreen College (UW is #2 and Evergreen is #6). (Number one is University of Colorado at Boulder.) Both UW and Evergreen also made the Princeton Review's green list.

Comments

seattle citizen said…
The UW is greener than Evergreen? That's a hoot. Take a look at the Sierra rating scale: UW is ranked an 8 on curriculum while Evergreen only gets a 6! That's crazy. UW gets a 9 on "energy" while Evergreen only gets a 6?

Bah! Something's fishy at the Sierra Club. Perhaps they factored in size, somehow...

Omnia extares ("let it all hand out"), go geoducs, go!

SC
Jet City mom said…
THats what I thought Seattle citizen

I read that it was the opinions of high school students looking at schools- not even the students attending the colleges themselves.
Princeton review is not thought of highly among families looking for facts not opinions on schools.
But I admit it can be fun to read.

If someone is really interested in sustainable practices and environmental stewardship they may want to dig a little deeper ( like into the organic soil @ Evergreen)

Howabout the project at CWU that rewards four students for going without a car for a year- with a free bike or the $500,000 grant that researchers at WWU are going to use to convert dairy manure into fuel to power city buses.
http://www.esw.org/aggregator/sources/3
seattle citizen said…
Not just the organic soil at Evergreen, but the Organic Farm! It has been operational since Evergreen's inception, and all sorts of programs use it, not just teh environmental programs (which, indeed, make up fairly large portion of Evergreen's programs.)

I guess what I was trying to say in my last post was that Evergreen, by the very nature of its interdisciplinary study model, inculcates cross-connectivity that necessarily includes the envirnonment. When you're looking at whole systems, it's wise to look at the one that sustains us all! And all sorts of things have the earth and its forces as foundational structures...economy, social, mythology...

In the District, the good news (insert, for Melissa's sake, a smiley Orca breaching playfully in the cleaner waters of Eld Inlet and Puget Sound, or a smiling First Salmon sacrificing itself gladly into the net of the reverant human, who will ceremonially throw its bones back to the river to return home to the Salmon People So Salmon can tell The People that the little humans up top are actually cleaning the rivers!)...the good news in the District is that it is supporting schools in their efforts to leave less of a footprint, to recycle, to compost, to use less energy, fewer paper products, not as many Things.
Yea!
Robert said…
Go Dawgs!

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