The Princeton Review’s GUIDE TO 311 GREEN COPresentedLLE in partnership with Gthe U.S. GreenES Building Council 2011 Edition • 311 school profiles cover Green highlights on the nation’s most eco-friendly campuses, featuring everything from solar panel study rooms to fair-trade fashion. • Get each school’s vital stats on sustainability, including Green majors, Green job placement, getting around Green on campus, and more. • Includes special features on outstanding examples of living and learning Green on campus. THE PRINCETON REVIEW’S GUIDE TO 311 GREEN COLLEGES 2011 EDITION 1 THE PRINCETON Review’s Guide to 311 Green COLLEGES 2011 by The Princeton Review, Inc. The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University. This is for personal use and not for reproduction or posting. CONTENTS Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................................................5 About This Book ..................................................................................................................................................................5 Why Sustainability On Campus Matters .........................................................................................................................8 Getting Into College ..........................................................................................................................................................11 Getting Involved ...............................................................................................................................................................11 How We Produced This Book ..........................................................................................................................................14 How This Book Is Organized ...........................................................................................................................................17 Glossary ...............................................................................................................................................................................19 Lists ..........................................................................................................................................................................................21 Green Guide Schools with LEED-Certified Buildings ..................................................................................................21 Green Guide Schools that are STARS .............................................................................................................................26 Green Guide Schools that are ACUPCC Signatories ....................................................................................................27 The Schools ............................................................................................................................................................................31 Stories From Campus ..........................................................................................................................................................189 School Says ...........................................................................................................................................................................195 Index ......................................................................................................................................................................................215 Alphabetical Index ...........................................................................................................................................................215 Index by Location ............................................................................................................................................................221 3 THE PRINCETON Review’s Guide to 311 Green COLLEGES INTRODUCTION ABOUT THIS BOOK The key question for students and parents researching colleges today shouldn’t be “What college is best, aca- demically?” The thing is, it’s not hard to find academically great schools in this country. The key question—and one that is truly tough to answer—is “What is the best college for me?” Over the past 20 years, it has been our mission to provide students with savvy and sometimes hard-to-get informa- tion about colleges so that they can find and get in to their “best fit” schools. To do that, we have authored over 200 college guidebooks, most notably, our Best Colleges guidebook series, which provides statistical data and nar- rative descriptions of the most academically outstanding institutions in the United States. And now we’ve done it again. This is a guide to 311 colleges and universities that have demonstrated a notable commitment to sustainability. While it differs from our Best Colleges guidebooks in that it does not report informa- tion based on our surveys of students attending the schools, it very much embodies our philosophy that finding your “best fit” school means looking at everything from the school’s academic offerings to its extracurricular options and, now, its commitment to going green. We recognize there is a rising interest among students in attend- ing colleges that practice, teach, and support environmentally responsible choices. Among the almost 12,000 col- lege applicants The Princeton Review surveyed for its 2010 College Hopes & Worries Survey, 64 percent of respon- dents said they would value having information about a college’s commitment to the environment. Moreover, of that cohort, 23 percent said such information would “very much” impact their decision to apply to or attend the school (PrincetonReview.com/college-hopes-worries.aspx). Clearly the green movement on college campuses is far more than a pass- Did You Know? ing fad. There is a sincere and growing interest among students in iden- Middlebury College became the first tifying and applying to colleges where there is a demonstrated commit- institution of higher education in the ment to sustainability. But what exactly does this commitment entail? United States to offer an Environmental Why should it matter whether a college has practices in place that sup- Studies major, establishing the major in port green living? And how can you determine whether a school is com- 1965.1 mitted to going green? While you might be able to plug a school’s name into a Google search and come up with independent evaluations of the school’s commitment to sustainability, The Princeton Review’s Guide to 311 Green Colleges differs in that it’s not about grading schools. Nowhere in this book will you find a hierarchical listing of the “greenest” colleges or the ones with the “best” sustainability practices. The point begs repeating: THIS BOOK IS NOT A RANKING. Rather, our aim is to highlight 311 campuses which, based on our survey of their school administrators, demon- strate a strong commitment to sustainability. Some of them are just in the beginning stages of defining sustain- ability priorities while others are reaping the rewards of a long term commitment to green. A holistic approach to sustainable living on campus binds these schools together, covering everything from procurement and building guidelines to green academic programs and preparation for sustainable careers, and a willingness to be account- able for their green commitments. Just as there is no such thing as a perfect college (just a perfect college for you), there is not one way to be green; a school surrounded by a wildlife reserve will have different sustainability pri- orities than one in the middle of a giant metropolis, and what is actually achievable for each may not be the same. That’s why, in this book, we take both a quantitative and qualitative look at a school’s sustainability efforts in areas we’ve identified as most important to students: 1) whether students have a campus quality of life that is both healthy and sustainable; 2) how well a school is preparing students for employment in the green economy; 3) how environmentally responsible a school’s policies are. We invited 2,000 schools to take our survey in order to come up with the 311 profiled here. In addition to earning the highest Green Rating (which you’ll learn more Did You Know? about later), the green initiatives of these institutions enhance students’ Biodegrading in a landfill takes: academic experience and quality of life in ways that truly merit recogni- • 90 years for an aluminum can tion. • 700 years for a plastic bottle • 1 million years for a glass bottle2 1. Source: http://community.middlebury.edu/~enviroc/aande.html 2. Source: http://www.sustain.ucla.edu/handbook/article.asp?parentid=3465 5 THE PRINCETON Review’s Guide to 311 Green COLLEGES With more students going to college now than ever before, educational institutions are busy accommodating this growth with new classrooms and dorms while ensuring that the existing buildings and existing facilities are run- ning as efficiently as possible. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) helps provide a layer of accountability for college campuses seeking ways to make their green building projects, both old and new, as environmentally respon- sible as possible. USGBC LEED® green building certification program is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of green buildings. Many of the schools profiled in these pages have LEED- certified buildings