ASU recently received top-tier scores as a sustainable school from The Princeton Review, Sierra Magazine and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The University received a perfect score on The Princeton Review’s honor roll for the nation’s greenest universities, joining 15 others to receive the score of 99.
This is the fourth consecutive year ASU achieved a perfect score.
ASU ranked 23rd of 118 schools with a score of 67.4 of 100 on Sierra Magazine’s “Coolest Schools.”
“While many universities are making admirable progress, at present, no school has attained complete sustainability,” Sierra Magazine stated on their website, adding the top scores in the low 80s still indicate progress to be made.
On the AASHE Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, ASU was one of the 22 universities to achieve the Gold rating. One hundred-seventeen universities were evaluated.
“For us, sustainability is a value and it permeates all that we do,” ASU President Michael Crow said. “You can’t just teach it —you have to do it. We are working to instill the objective of sustainability in everything we do. It isn’t one thing, it’s everything. Our approach must be transformative, not incremental.”
Crow has had a large impact on the success of ASU’s sustainability programs since joining ASU in 2002. He has ensured sustainability is in some way involved in the curriculum of nearly every ASU student, as well as cofounding American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, a group dedicated to acting as the vanguard in reducing global warming emissions.
To date, the ACUPCC has 650 signatory schools.
Urban dynamics sustainability junior Sarah Mertins said she was “extremely happy” with her decision to attend ASU because of the green community building initiatives.
“I looked forward to going to ASU since the first time I visited the campus 10 years ago,” Mertins said. “I always knew it was the school for me.”
ASU engages in a variety of activities that allow the University to achieve such high ratings on higher education sustainability indexes.
As of September, ASU has installed more than 10 megawatts of solar-generating equipment with an additional five megawatts to be installed in the near future, according to a University press release. ASU currently has the most solar generating equipment of any university campus in the United States, according to the press release.
In addition to solar installations throughout the ASU campuses, the school has taken several smaller, although not less important, steps to promote sustainability.
ASU now has recycling receptacles that must be emptied more frequently than their trash counterparts and launched programs to certify green offices and laboratories. Additionally, a Sustainability Literacy Education online program launched earlier this year for each staff and student.
“One of the primary reasons I came to ASU was because of their sustainability programs,” sustainability freshman Ryan Gasbarro said. “There is so much potential (in the field of sustainability) here at ASU.”
ASU was the first university to establish a School of Sustainability and offer bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in sustainability as well as a minor available to any undergraduate student.
Reach the reporter at doberhau@asu.edu
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