Rooftop solar panels at the UA Visitor Center
The University of Arizona has joined colleges and universities around the country in the implementation of a rating system for sustainability in higher education.
The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System, known as STARS, was developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The 90-plus participating campuses were selected to represent a wide range of institutional types, sizes and geography. They include public and private schools, community colleges and research universities – such as the UA.
Participating college and university campuses will take an active role in collecting information about sustainability efforts on their campuses, testing the self-assessment system throughout the year and providing feedback to AASHE.
STARS version 1.0 will be released in spring 2009.
“The UA is taking an active role in developing a comprehensive and meaningful rating system for American colleges and universities,” said Glenn Schrader, head of chemical and environmental engineering and the chairman of the UA Campus Sustainability Committee. “As a member of AASHE, the UA is working with other leading institutions to develop a comprehensive evaluation of campus sustainability for use at all colleges and universities. It will be tough but fair, and it will hold universities accountable in more meaningful ways than current ratings can.”
STARS is designed to:
Given the rapid growth of sustainability initiatives at institutions of higher education in North America, measuring and assessing progress toward sustainability goals has become increasingly important. While many institutions have undertaken sustainability assessments and while a variety of assessment tools are available, there is currently no system that translates disparate sustainability indicators into a single metric that enables both institutional benchmarking and easy comparison across a large number of campuses in terms of overall level of achievement.
“There have been several attempts at sustainability rating systems, but many have focused on one area of sustainability, and they didn’t provide an accurate understanding of excellence campuswide,” said Kevin Burke, graduate assistant to the Campus Sustainability Committee. “This points-based rating system will provide a guide to universities to compare themselves to others and to measure their progress.”
“The launch of the pilot phase is a major milestone in the development of STARS,” said Judy Walton, AASHE’s acting executive director. “It has taken nearly two years of hard work and the contributions of hundreds of individuals from every sector of the higher education community to bring us to this point.”
The STARS system has some similarities to the Leadership in Energy Environmental Design, or LEED, green building rating system; however, ratings are applied to an entire campus rather than a single building. In addition, STARS evaluates social responsibility as well as environmental stewardship.
Campuses may earn credits in three categories – curriculum and research, campus operations and administration, and finance. Within each category are subsections of credits, ranging from purchasing and buildings in operations to investment and planning in administration and finance.
The UA has convened a working group to capture information about all of the sustainability initiatives taking place on campus. It currently consists of a faculty representative, a student representative and administrators from nine UA departments – including facilities management, risk management and parking and transportation.
“AASHE is looking for responses to 38 questions to develop our rating,” Burke said. “We will provide a set of data for every questions and the university’s online response. They will then provide us with a score.”
Kevin Burke
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