University system gets a nod from Sierra Club
August 27, 2008
None of Maryland’s colleges and universities made the Sierra Club’s list of “Cool Schools” – recognizing the higher ed institutions with the best environmental initiatives – but one university system did get a nod in Sierra magazine’s “bright ideas” section:
“Thanks to a coalition of students, all 15 institutions in the University System of Maryland are conducting greenhouse-gas inventories. Some are converting buses to biodiesel and starting green building projects, with the goal of eliminating carbon emissions.”
Some other area schools got a less shining review. Listed in the “five that fail” section are Virginia’s College of William and Mary, and D.C. schools George Washington University and Howard University.
Sierra slams G.W. for being the most expensive school in the country, arguing that it should have policies on climate change and green building standards. WAMU, NPR’s station in the District, reported Tuesday that reps from G.W. dispute Sierra’s ranking, and say the school was the first in Washington to codify green building standards.
Regardless of policies at G.W., environmental guidelines seem to be taking hold at larger schools. Last year, the Sierra Club’s magazine ran its first list of “Cool Schools” and only two of the top 10 were big, state schools.
This year’s list is more well rounded, with five of the top 10 being state schools of the largest kind. Here, Arizona State University at Tempe (51,500 students) and University of Florida at Gainesville (50,000 students) share space with Vermont’s Middlebury College (2,350 students) and North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College (850 students).
DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Reporter
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