State of the Campus Environment: A National Report Card on Environmental Performance and Sustainability in Higher Education

• Mary McIntosh, Kathleen Cacciola, Stephen Clermont, Julian Keniry
• Jan 01, 2001

More than ever, colleges and universities are expected to take an active role in creating and modeling solutions to environmental problems. Yet there is little information available to show how successful our colleges are in carrying out that mission. While extensive information is available on most other aspects of university performance - such as enrollments, costs, competitiveness, and cultural diversity - no such data on environmental performance exists.

The State of the Campus Environment project was designed to address this problematic information gap. In this first-ever large-scale environmental performance survey, every college and university in the U.S. was asked to describe its environmental practices, from recycling, landscaping and transportation, to campus policies, curriculum and energy use.

The survey and resulting report will help schools assess, compare and improve their own environmental performance, and will heighten public interest in this key aspect of educational performance.