Correction Appended
When it comes to being green, ASU shows that it might not be so hard after all.
The University’s sustainability practices, including different innovations and its School of Sustainability, landed ASU among 18 colleges listed on The Princeton Review’s Green College Honor Roll for 2011, released earlier this month.
The college ranking system recognized ASU for the third year in a row for its “green” features, like environmentally conscious roofs, subsidized public transit passes and a student-run bike co-op.
Karen Leland, spokeswoman for the School of Sustainability, said the school’s degree program, which brings together aspects of several different areas of study, is an important part of ASU’s role in environmental awareness.
“The school’s mission is to bring together multiple disciplines and leaders to create and share knowledge, train a new generation of scholars and practitioners and develop practical solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of sustainability, especially as they relate to urban areas,” Leland said.
According to The Princeton Review, the Tempe campus also has the highest number of solar panels on any university campus in the nation.
“ASU's leadership in sustainability spans our educational programs [and] offerings, our research, our business practices and engaging people in applied solutions to the challenges of creating a sustainable world,” Leland said.
The University also earned bragging rights this month from the U.S. News and World Report. The report named ASU the No. 2 “up-and-coming” university for “making the most promising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty and student life.”
This ranking is up from 2009, when the University came in at No. 4 out of 20.
“We’re happy to be recognized as one of the leading national universities in the United States,” President Michael Crow said in a press release. “It is gratifying that others are taking notice of what we are doing and have chosen ASU as a school that everyone should be watching.”
At the same time, however, ASU’s ranking in U.S. News and World Report’s list of overall best colleges slid to 143 out of 200, down from last year’s 121.
U.S. News and World Report lists reasons for fluctuations in ranking, including the fact that it altered the scale it uses to make the list.
Other changes that might have affected ASU’s score include the addition of new schools to the list, the universities’ graduation rates and the opinions of high school counselors, who were participants in the survey.
UA also dropped to 120 this year from 102 in 2009. NAU did not make the list of the top 200 schools.
The W. P. Carey School of Business earned its own top spot in the U.S. News and World Report's "Best Business Programs" in the country list, coming in at No. 28.
This marks the ninth time the business school has been listed on U.S. News and World Report’s Top 30 list in the past decade.
"We are honored to be noted consistently for excellence at the W. P. Carey School of Business," Dean Robert Mittelstaedt said in a press release last week. "It's rewarding to see our exceptional faculty, hard-working students and world-class research efforts really being acknowledged on an international scale."
The business school was also ranked 22 out of 100, compared to last year’s 24, on the "Academic Rankings of World Universities" list by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
"These rankings just help demonstrate that we're successfully working toward our primary goal of changing lives through education," Mittelstaedt said.
Reach the reporter at caroline.austerman@asu.edu
