By: Deborah Johnson Wood
How do college and university campuses know if they're accomplishing the sustainability and environmental quality goals they've set? That's what a new pilot program — Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) — aims to find out.
STARS is a pilot program developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
GVSU has joined over 90 campuses across the U.S. who are testing the pilot before a final program launches early next year. The program will help GVSU track its progress in sustainable practices and assess the results against other schools through a points rating system.
The final program will ultimately track three categories of sustainability: education and research, campus operations, and administration and finance. The pilot program only tracks operations, and administration and finance.
"The system is similar to the LEED green building rating system," says Steve Glass, GVSU spokesperson. "However, it’s applied to an entire campus rather than just a single building. Under operations there are 29 rating areas, and in administration there are 11."
Some of the STARS categories are:
- LEED-certified buildings
- Dining services, including locally grown food, fair trade food alliances
- Grounds maintenance practices, such as, irrigation water consumption
- Materials recycling and waste minimization
- Financial investments and sustainability planning
"We're looking at all GVSU campuses as one whole," Glass says. "The STARS assessment will serve as an outline for institutional practices and will institutionalize sustainable practices."
The pilot program ends on December 31. The phase 2 pilot program begins in early 2009.
Source: Steve Glass, Grand Valley State University
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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