TodayCollege scores highest grade on Sustainability Report Card
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Article RatingDickinson College, which last year was singled out as a leader in the College Sustainability Report Card, has improved its grades this year.
The college was one of only 15 to receive an A-, the highest overall grade given in the 2009 Green Report Card, administered by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a nonprofit, independent organization engaged in research and education to enhance sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices.
Dickinson is up from a B+ last year. The report card examines sustainability practices at the top 300 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, based on endowment value.
Dickinson was awarded six A’s and three B’s in the nine graded categories, posting improvements over last year’s report card in endowment transparency and shareholder engagement.
College officials say Dickinson is not only doing more, it is doing more with less. Fourteen of the 15 colleges and universities that received overall grades of A- have larger endowments than Dickinson College; 13 of the 15 endowments are more than twice that of Dickinson’s.
Eight of the 15 institutions have endowments into the billions, Dickinson officials note. The report card reviewed endowments as of June 2007. At that time, Dickinson’s endowment was $288 million.
In comparison, its peers in the A- grouping included Oberlin College at $648 million, Carleton College at $648 million and Middlebury College at $816 million, as well as large research universities, including Harvard University at $36.9 billion, Stanford University at $17.1 billion and the University of Pennsylvania at $6.6 billion -- the only other college in Pennsylvania that received an overall grade of A-.
‘Leadership role’
“The impressive depth and breadth of Dickinson’s sustainability policies helped it achieve the highest grade of ‘A-’ awarded in the new report card,” said Mark Orlowski, founder and executive director of SEI. “Dickinson has taken a leadership role in advancing sustainability both on campus and in relation to enhancing its sustainable endowment policies.”
The college received A’s in Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Transportation, Investment Priorities and Shareholder Engagement. It was awarded B’s in Green Building, Student Involvement and Endowment Transparency.
Dickinson plans to get even greener, officials say.
The college’s Center for Sustainable Living student residence – named the “Treehouse” – recently received a gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, the first college in Pennsylvania to do so and one of the first in the nation for a student residence.
Its new Rector Science Complex could achieve silver, or possibly gold, certification, officials note. Several building overhauls are in progress with sustainability in mind. Going forward, Dickinson’s master plan calls for all new construction exceeding $500,000 to meet LEED silver standards.
Dickinson’s environmental and sustainability efforts extend to its academics, too, an area not covered by the Report Card.
“Our greatest contribution,” Provost Neil Weissman says, “will be educating students for a sustainable future.”
